In recent years there has been a good deal of attention and thought given to how society has undergone enormous change within the last few decades: We now live in a much more fragmented society than in the past. People expect to live in many different places in the course of their lives, have different jobs, perhaps even change careers. Relationships are generally speaking shorter-lived than they used to be and less and less people feel able to enter life-long partnerships.
How does the church respond to such a fragmented society? How do we organise our church communities in the light of such change? Some Christians have felt that the church needs to change in a way that reflects how society is organised.
Traditionally the church has operated on a parish system meaning that the country is divided up into parishes each with its own church and a vicar who has the cure of souls of everyone living in that parish. We are each expected to worship in our parish church and have the right to be baptised, married or buried there. But this might seem rather anachronistic today. After all, this system was devised when most people grew up and lived and worked in the same town or village all their lives.
These days, when many people leave the area they were born or brought up in and work perhaps a long way away from the area that they call ‘home’, they may find themselves worshipping somewhere other than their parish church. This often means they worship at the church where they feel most comfortable.
So in a society which is much more fragmented than it ever was in the past geography becomes less the determinant in our lives; rather education, profession or interest become the factors which determine our sense of belonging and identity. In the light of these changes doesn’t it make sense to organise our church communities not around the parish system but around other factors? Following this line of argument it might make sense to create a church which is specially geared towards young professionals for example, rather than being based in a particular geographical area.
Well this may be something the church needs to explore more fully, but Paul’s letter to the Corinthians provides a theological framework for thinking about the parochial system and these new, perhaps more fluid ways of ‘being church’.
The earliest Christians- among them Peter and Paul- were trying to work out the most fruitful and truthful ways of being apostles of Jesus Christ. We are given a sense of the intense negotiations that this involved in the Acts of the Apostles. Quite early on it was agreed that Paul have a particular responsibility to the Gentile community and Peter to the Jewish community. They both preached Christ crucified but they did not infringe on one another’s community. In his letter to the Romans Paul writes ‘I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation’. Thus the earliest apostles regarded themselves as allies rather than rivals, working in different areas rather than competing for converts in the same area.
Although the apostles believed that they had clearly delineated areas of responsibility Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, is writing to a community where there seems to have been some disintegration, where people saw their Christian leaders as requiring loyalty towards themselves rather than Christ to whom the leader was pointing. The Corinthians had received the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and been transformed by this but after the initial establishment and growth of a Christian community different factions seem to have emerged. In the earlier part of his letter Paul writes “each of you says “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos” or ‘I belong to Cephas”…’Has Christ been divided?”
In the reading we heard today Paul is pursuing the same line of thought. He talks about himself as a ‘skilled master builder’; there are other builders but only one foundation. The error comes in imagining the builders are something over and above the common foundation which is Jesus Christ. The work of each builder will be exposed on the day of judgement; their contribution to the building up of the Christian community will be revealed in the fire. This doesn’t mean poor workmanship will receive retribution; rather that it will be tried and purified. There is an eternal significance to what we do on earth and how we work for the Christian community but its lasting significance will be that which survives the purifying fire.
But how does any of this inform the discussion about the parochial system? Might we not argue that assuming we share a belief in our common foundation that is Christ crucified and resurrected then everything is secondary? Whether we organise our church on the basis of shared interest or geographical location is largely a matter of administration rather than theology?
Later in his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes of the Christian community as a body with many members; we need diversity if we are to reflect the unity of Christ. We all belong to the body of Christ and the body needs its different parts to be fully functioning; it cannot function without the eye or the ear, or if it were only eye or ear it would be no body at all. So if the church organises itself around communities based on interest or profession it is far less likely to reflect the diversity of His body. It is liable to become an interest group with vested interests unable to wholeheartedly welcome those with different opinions or views of how Christ operates in the world.
We are also more likely to end up with a church that rather than responding to the changes within society simply uncritically duplicates these changes. The fragmentation of our community is exacerbated if our church divides itself according to the interest or profession of its members.
The parish system was intended to bring together rich and poor, educated and uneducated, young and old to worship as one for in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free.
It is in our meeting together that we become a temple; a meeting place between God and humanity. How ever the church operates its holiness lies in recognising Christ as its foundation and its diversity as its calling. We pray that the church today might grow in holiness and that it may be truly prophetic to a changing society.
Amen