Relational Church Doctrine for House Church

Earlier this year I started on a theology paper on doctrine and truth after modernity, a course I thought could be helpful in unpacking the role of doctrine in what we regard as a postmodern environment. When I was given the challenge of exploring in words the doctrines at work in my community of faith, I had to think carefully. For four years I’ve been a member of Pacific Parks Uniting, a house church network that would sit most comfortably in the Emerging Church movement.

Together with other leaders in the group I’ve struggled with the distinctive values and how they’re worked out in practice. But how do these values link in with the doctrines of the Church?

Over our first two months together in 2002, we developed the following statement about our life together:

“We are learning to be a relaxed, relational and relevant church in our community”.

In this post I’ll be exploring our understanding of being ‘relational church’, and how that relates to Christian doctrine. In the next two posts I’ll be exploring our values of ‘relaxed church’ and ‘relevant church’ and how they relate to Christian doctrine.

I’ll also be posting on how Pacific Parks’ approach to doctrine relates to George Lindbeck’s approach to theory of religion, considering his typology of cognitive-propositionalist, experiential-expressivist, and cultural-linguistic understandings of truth, expressed respectively in propositions, pre-cognitive experience and performance.

Relational Church

1. We value our personal and corporate relationships with God.

Here we begin with our primary assertion that our life’s meaning is found in relationship with God whose very being is relational. We discover in the way God interacts with creation, and indeed within Godself, that we are created to live in community. We’re invited to join in an experience of community expressed in that already developed in the being of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We affirm both personal and corporate expressions of relationship, reminding ourselves that no one person or group of people can claim to express or live out the fullness of relationship with God. Although we each have individual perspectives that are shaped by our unique life experiences and formation of beliefs, we are committed to our connection with the universal community of Christian faith through time. We are shaped by our dialogue with people who inspire us, as well as people who irritate us!

Our worship is shaped by that commitment to personal and corporate expressions of relationship with God. Each week as we gather, we find ways to grow in our everyday spiritual disciplines. Our worship style allows for a diversity of approaches to prayer. Some of us are aided in connection with God by prepared prayers and use of symbolic images, objects and acts. Some of us connect with God through corporate singing – which we do by linking up with celebration services in conventional churches in the weekend. Some of us worship God most meaningfully in active service in the home and community.

2. We value genuine relationships which are caring, generous and empowering, and which show integrity and mutual accountability.

It has been said that conventional churches tend to measure the quantity of relationships, while the house churches measure the quality of relationships. As a house church we have set out to measure our effectiveness by the capacity to foster authentic conversation in which we open ourselves to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. We don’t expect to stay the same.

Although many of us have been influenced by our engagement with the behavioural sciences, we ground our commitment to genuine relationships in the person of Jesus. The Uniting Church in Australia in its founding document, the Basis of Union, begins with Jesus Christ, the risen crucified one. As the fellowship of the Holy Spirit we confess Jesus as Lord over our own life, the beginning of a new humanity. Our commitment is to practically live out what that new humanity is about.

We see in Jesus the expression of God’s intention for servanthood (rather than grandiosity), generosity (rather than cynicism and acquisition of wealth), empowering leadership (rather than controlling leadership), integrity (rather than unthoughtful reflection of surrounding values), and mutual accountability (rather than self-righteousness).

So how does this translate into doctrine? Our belief in Jesus Christ affirms his reconciling work in the world, through his death and resurrection. The Uniting Church describes Jesus as the risen crucified one in whom God has taken away the world’s sin. But our doctrine of Christ goes beyond a one-off transaction that deals with sin. It’s this, and more. We believe that calling Jesus the Christ and referring to his reconciling work implies much more than preparing people for eternity in God’s presence in heaven. From a relational point of view, we perceive Jesus to be repairing the social fabric that has been marred by distorted expressions of humanity. We are called to be part of that transformation by learning, under his leadership, to be ‘relational church in the community’.

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