A book review on: The Church of Tomorrow by John McGinley.
If you read one book this summer then it should be this one.
McGinley opens with this prayer of Thomas Merton: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me … Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow …”
And he closes the book with a prayer from Iona: Holy Spirit, wild goose of the Almighty, disturb me where I have settled and release me to fly with you. Set me on fire with love for you and give me courage to obey your voice. In the dark places, let me carry your light. With the broken, fill me with compassion and minister your healing. Send me to the lost, that they may find life in you. in humility I offer myself afresh to you so that, with others, you may form and forge us to be a people for yourself, living for your glory. Amen.
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His book is a simple call to Just Do it. So: be a people who remember daily that Jesus is Lord. Lord over all our fears and worries. The Lord who frees us from all our sins and addictions. The Lord who calls us. Notice our dependence on the Holy Spirit and so pray and pray. Pray when someone springs to mind, pray when you’re on the loo, pray when you standing in a check-out queue. Don’t get huffy and puffy because the traffic is slow, take a moment to pray, for God’s love is in you and you are in Christ and Christ is in the heavenly realms interceding for you, so pray and pray a bit more. This is the God who can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine!
What would happen if your prayers were answered? What differences would there be? Pray with your heart, pray big bold prayers, prayers that make God say: “What did you just pray?!” Pray prayers that make God sweat!
Pray for a variety of congregations, and support groups (my daughter’s church calls Home Groups Life Groups). This way different people can gather and support each other, practically, prayerfully as we together grow as disciples.
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McGinley has four words that he would love to cure us of.
- Church. McGinley notes that the Church of the Global South is growing rapidly (so perhaps there are lessons to learn from them) and that whenever the Church goes stale, God finds a way of getting on with it (see the Monastic movement through the ‘dark ages’ and the Pentecostal revival at the turn of the 19th Century). He laments the way the word ‘church’ is synonymous with the building not with the community. This is really an Anglican problem as Baptists and others are happy to speak of Chapel and Congregation (or other variations). I was once asked ‘How old is your church’ and when I replied about “sixty years.” I replied to the puzzled inquirer that I suppose when you factor in the children that the average age of the congregation must be about sixty. It wasn’t what he meant. I knew that.
- Christendom. This really started to die with the Reformation, but certainly by the French Revolution it had gone. We see glimpses of it on Remembrance Day and at a Coronation but really the prestige and whatever privileges you might have thought came with Christendom are long gone. This is liberating as we let go of being worried about status and instead focus on being a non-anxious presence, happy to be on the margins of society and loving our neighbours as ourselves.
- Cessationism. You probably use this word even less than the one above. It’s the old idea that when the Holy Spirit came and did its Pentecost thing with signs and wonders to launch the Church that that was it, a one-off injection and now good luck to you, so there’s no more need for more miracles and things. However since the rise of the Charismatic aspect of the Church, the renewal of the Holy Spirit in the Church, it has been harder to be an actual cessationist. Nonetheless it is still quite easy to be a functional cessationist: one who prays but doesn’t really expect anything to happen. McGinley points to Jackie Pullinger who prayed in tongues for 15 minutes every day before she started to see miracles. Perhaps we could try something like that.
- Clericalism or Father knows best or best not to do anything while James is on Sabbatical. Rubbish. McGinley even has a quote from the Pope saying the same thing. I don’t think we suffer from this one too badly these days. For example we don’t suffer from the ‘I didn’t get a visit from a cleric, so it doesn’t count even if another member of God’s family brought me Communion’.
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How we perceive ourselves can significantly affect how we understand our calling, the love of Jesus in us, the power of the Holy Spirit drawing us. So, God at work inside of us, and us together as a community are then well placed to just get on and do it.
McGinley lists the 5 marks of mission. I think we do some of them quite well. I hope that as you read the list you will be drawn to two or three and put your prayers and power into them. (page 56, 57) 1. Proclaim the Good News; 2. Teach, baptise, nurture the faith; 3. Respond to needs in loving service; 4, Transforming unjust society; 5. Caring for all God’s creation.
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He closes his chapter on prayer with the prayer of St Patrick. Aware that as we as a Church family become more aware of God’s empowering and God’s calling, that we will need to daily connect to God, to put on the armour of God. The third stanza of the prayer (p144) starts like this: I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me, God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hard to guard me, God’s shield to protect me …
I think perhaps we should pray this prayer daily.
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(Photo is of a top bit of pillar in the Iona Abbey showing a stone carving of a bible story (not sure which) but it reminded me of the stone pillar in St Leonard’s with a carved bible story.) (And thank you to the lady who gave me this book!)
Here’s the Prayer of St Patrick in full
Prayer of St Patrick’s Breastplate
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness,
Of the Creator of creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial
Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgement of doom.
I arise today, through
God’s strength to pilot me, God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me, God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils
From temptation of vices
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
afar and near.
I summon today
All these powers between me and those evil,
Against every cruel and merciless power
That may oppose my body and soul.
Christ with me,
Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of all who think of me
Christ in the mouth of all who speak of me
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.