Tables, Fonts, Pulpits November 30, 2008

Who owns a congregation? Members of a Board will likely answer that they represent the members of a congregation, or that they have a role as ministers alongside the pastor, or that they are responsible for the building and funds of the congregation. All of those, of course, are true to some extent, but not the most important answer.

Members of a congregation are not owners in the same way stockholders own corporations. So who owns a congregation? Jesus? God? Perhaps. But I put to you that the owner of a congregation is its purpose.

So what is the purpose of a congregation? It seems to me the purpose of a congregation is ‘changed lives’. Whose lives do we wish to change, and in what way? In order to change other lives do we also need to change ourselves? Management consultant Peter Drucker says that a congregation which limits its purpose to pleasing all the members falls well short of its true purpose. He says the job of congregational leaders is NOT to give the members what they want - because that says that the mission of the congregation is only to current members. The role of the congregational leaders is to teach people to want the things they don’t want - and the problem with that, he says, is that future members generally don’t vote - and if they did they would make up the majority. That means that not only are we seeking to transform the lives of people around us, but we are seeking to transform our own lives as well.

The role of the leaders is to discern what it believes the congregation needs (not what it wants, necessarily) and try to put that into practice. What is the role of the clergy? If you go by my job description, 60% of it is worship and preaching preparation. Why that? Because worship is the place we come together as a discipling community, and preaching is to educate, encourage, comfort, and provoke. The role of clergy is two-fold: to empower the leadership and the members of the congregation to discern, engage in, and live out, the purpose of the church; and to preach strategically in such a way that the congregation learns and continues to grow on its journey to another place. The problem is, that sometimes transformation feels like chaos, since we don’t really know where God is leading us till we get there - and like children we continually are asking “are we there yet?”, or even more “I don’t wanna go ” Remember that some of the Israelites got fed up with Moses and his purported vision, and wanted to go back to where they were comfortable.

So when we start talking about the purpose of a faith community - to change lives - we also have to talk about the message we give in our space. If you are a new person, and come to a church where the doors are closed or you can’t find the entrance, everyone sits in the same place all the time, the table and the minister are elevated *above* the people, and sit on thronelike chairs, the choir and musician are shunted off to one side, and the font is shunted off to the other where we forget it most of the time - what message are we giving about ourselves and our role.

Ken Gallinger, minister at Lawrence Park Community Church, talks about their reassessment of the building in relation to their perceived purpose. While the front of the church faces a main street, the main entrance is down a side alley. They realised that in itself sent a message about who was welcome and who wasn't. In rebuilding, they decided to put the front door on the front, making it mostly glass, open to everyone, with a fireplace, comfortable chairs, coffee available all the time - in short, a place which said "You are welcome here, make yourself at home."

I am going to take you - yet again - on a little trip through church history - because every single thing done inside and outside our churches has come from a particular cultural and theological understanding of the church.

God’s command to Moses was to build an altar of stone or earth, untouched by human handiwork. It was to be called an altar because it was used for the sacrifices and burning of animals. BUT the altar which Moses is commanded to build is NOT to be approached by steps, but is to be of the earth and from the earth, and accessible by all the people.

In Exodus, precise instructions are given for what is now the table - it is to be of acacia wood, square in shape - and God commands that is it to be a symbol of God’s presence among the people. Why square? So that there is no front or back - and still accessible by all.

Instead of being a static holy place where people go, the sanctuary is moveable - it goes with the people, and is housed (when they stop) in a tent. God clearly goes *with* the people. No building, even. The instructions for both the Ark to house the tablets, and the construction of the tent, were given so that it was clear to the gathered community, that God was *among* the people.

Exodus demonstrates that the idea of “holy place” takes on a whole new dynamic in the concept of God travelling with the people to meet them wherever they come to rest - and crucial to this understanding is the experience of journey.

Well, from table to temple. 1200 years prior to the birth of Jesus, Israel had got tired of being pushed around by other nations, and the antics of the sons of Samuel as the judges, with their hands in the till. The solution was a monarchy, they thought - and against Samuel’s better advice away they went. Three kings - Saul, David and Solomon - who decided to enshrine the Ark in a permanent place, and finalise a union of church and state. Neither the prophet Nathan, nor the strong indignation of God, were enough to deter the kings. In the end Solomon built the temple, and it became the ONLY place where sacrifice could take place, and therefore had to be a place of pilgrimage. Furthermore, because of the number of holy spaces from the door to the Ark, a rigid hierarchical system was set up in which the people could no longer approach God.

The new followers of Jesus - people of the Way, as they called themselves - returned to the understanding of God being among the people, - and for almost four hundred years the new groups functioned as house churches, meals around a common table, and all were ministers - with their supervisor Paul stopping by once a year or so. The first Christians borrowed as much as possible, and travelled light. The home had been the place of blessing and prayer for the Jews, and it is significant that Jesus used those very familiar home experiences into a prophetic act with common bread and wine.

Then along came Constantine, an unbaptised non-Christian emperor, who made Christianity the state religion. - and for the model of the church building chose neither temple NOR synagogue, but the basilica, or hall of the king. However, even in this space, the table was set in a central location where the people could surround it - and was square. Something new was added, however - a particular liturgical space for other functions. So the pulpit stood in the exact middle of the assembly, and the font was in a separate baptistry. Little by little steps and a chancel appeared, the priestly functions were taken from the people and appropriated by an exclusive group; the people’s participation came and went, buildings became more and more decorative - and so too did the priestly robes. Worship was conducted in a language which was increasingly more and more archaic.

Well, let’s jump to recent years. The church, as a whole, has begun looking at our response to what we hear both God and the world saying. It is known as the Liturgical Movement, and has in fact led to quite extraordinary renewal of worship and witness in the church on a scale not seen since the Reformation. The movement began in Belgium in the 1900's, and has continued to grow - culminating in ground-breaking agreements in 1988 among all denominations in the World Council of Churches. The liturgical movement says we must regularly reassess our purpose as churches, as well as our liturgies, and our buildings. It says we have to address God in language and forms appropriate to our current times, to do justice to new theological insights and God’s daily revelation.

The process of reordering helps us to discover who we are as a community of faith, and where we came from. The thing that will make our house of the church special, different and fun, will be the story it tells: first, the story common to all Christians, the life and work of Jesus and the journey with God; second, the story of this particular group of people and its pilgrimage in faith. So, alongside preaching and education, the internal arrangement of our building has to be used as a teaching aid.

Richard Giles, in this lovely book, points out that the reordering of any space has to focus on how the whole assembly can give full expression to its life in the risen Jesus - because that is, in fact, the reason we are here. In the gathered assembly, in the United Church, the table and the font are central to our life. He points out that the table should stand on the floor, in the middle of the worshipping space - a level approach to the table. The font should be in another room altogether - a room designed for that purpose - so that it does not become simply another piece of furniture shunted to one side when not needed. The breaking open of the Word is intended to be at a reading desk, in the middle of the assembly, and facing east. It should be neither a platform, nor an enclosed space. Choirs, he says, should be clearly a part of the worshipping community and not set apart in any way.

Whether or not we realise it, everything we do has both a theological reason, and makes a theological statement. As we in this community try to discern purpose, we need also to engage in review, reevaluation, and reordering.