Keeping Christ in the Centre

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.