One of the greatest gifts of
Anglicanism since its inception is an unequivocal affinity and allegiance to
the local character of the church. The
church in the past five centuries has promoted and supported this concept in
various parts of the world. Simply
defined, the local character of the church, means that the jurisdiction is in a
context and the context is an ecclesiastical province i.e. the church of
Nigeria, the Anglican Church of Canada etc.
The province within the International Communion shares the context with
its dioceses and other geographical bodies as deemed important and established by the General
Synod of the church. The churches in the
communion globally have been able to define mission and ministry as
contextually relevant and effective because of the adherence, acceptance and
respect for the local character of the church.
The application of this principle
allowed the churches and provinces of the southern hemisphere to engage with their
culture through concerted and organized evangelism. Their efforts and passion for the church in
their culture and context translated in major numerical success and spiritual
renaissance. I am a product of a
committed community from the global south. I was born to a priest and a teacher in
Karachi, Pakistan. My earliest and most
significant memories of church life are associated with the All Saints Parish
in Karachi, Pakistan. I was seven years
old when my father was appointed to the parish.
I vividly remember worshipping for the first time in All Saints with the
other five worshippers in the living room of a parishioner. The parish had been recently created and did
not have a church building. A patriarch
of the congregation was gracious enough to offer his living room for worship
services. Within a year the worshipping
community grew to a hundred or more and took over the whole house of our
gracious host. Congregation sat in the living room, dining room and even their
bedrooms. Sunday School for the children
was organized and held in the house next door.
The parish continued to grow. By
the time I emigrated to Canada it had a church building, a parish hall, an
healthy financial base and congregation of four hundred plus on Sundays. At present it is one of the strongest
parishes in Karachi. The short answer to
their success is the commitment of the parishioners. The analysis of the parish reveals the
dedication and faithfulness of the leadership, priest and lay, to preach and
live out the gospel in their context. The ethos and essential message of the church
was to inform the lower middle class congregation that their struggles
financially are real and not merely the will of God; that they are unjustly
persecuted and harassed because of their financial status and religion; that
they share equality in the house of God which is and should be a place of
comfort and solitude to the weary; and that they can, through their mutual
efforts, change the circumstances for themselves and others. The parish organized and managed several
ministries such as literacy program, free tutoring program, cricket team,
community Christmas tree etc. In their
efforts and ministries everyone was directed to keep Christ in the Centre of
their being, ministry and relationships with others.
According to the statistics gathered
and gleaned by the sociologists, the churches in Canada are beginning to show
signs of a renaissance after experiencing a major decline in the past forty
years or so. In that dark period for the
churches, various churches adopted a quasi business and community development
model as a measuring stick and perhaps conscience to be deliberate, focussed
and united in their efforts to encourage and stimulate growth. The model is called a Strategic Plan and has
several variations, patterns, processes and steps to ensure that there is calculable,
obvious and physical result after the careful implementation of the plan. Strategic Plan and the process is one half of Result Based Management style
which operates on the premise and expectation to produce desired short term
(after one year) and long term (after three to five year) results for the
organization. The danger with super
imposing a business model on a church is that it can transform a faith based
and grace seeking body into a group consumed with goals, objectives, time
lines, action plan, long term/short term results and evaluations. There is merit to being focussed and concentrated in delivering
ministry but to be committed to a process which cannot measure the commitment,
faith, and movement of the holy spirit (metaphysical and spiritual) without
concrete evidence of a physical result is not applicable for the churches. The other danger is that result based
ministry can exhaust and tire laity and clerics rather easily and unnecessarily.
John Hick, an Anglican scholar, in Christianity at the Centre submits that
every Christian man and woman through careful personal examination should
discern the gifts they can offer to God in the service of other humans. The collection of all those gifts given and
received and shared in a congregation ensures that Christianity is central to
their lives and is practised through their ministries. It will also lead to keeping Christ in the
centre of our ministry and will exhibit an individual’s efforts as an offering
to God and a gift with others to share.
The Parish of All Saints in Karachi,
Pakistan exemplified that through their humility and ministry. Members of our
congregations all around us have been doing that every day in various
ways. Harnessing the desire to keep
Christ in the Centre and making it an integral part of congregational
development will enable the congregations to speak the language everyone can
understand and loving others as Jesus has loved us.
