Treading Grain

The Alpha Course has proved a remarkable gift to the church. It has given millions of people across the world the opportunity to ask the big questions of life in a Christian setting. It has been one of the main methods of evangelisation in the church worldwide over the past decade. Yet perhaps its potential is only just beginning to be realised. Many churches have found that running an Alpha course and bringing people to faith is one thing, integrating them into the church is another. Sometimes people wonder if their Alpha Course ought to be made a little more like church so the shock is not too great when guests eventually do start coming regularly on Sundays. Instead perhaps another question needs to be asked: might the church need to become a little more like Alpha, so the gap is bridged the other way?

If Alpha is run in a struggling church and yet the church remains exactly as it always has been, then however often Alpha is run, it is unlikely to make much difference. The questions around the church need to come up sooner or later. Why is it important that people are integrated into the church? What might that church look like? What is church for anyway? What does a truly ‘Mission-Shaped’ church look like?

This brief article outlines a map for thinking about the church that begins to answer these questions. It also tries to give a theological rationale for what church is about, and how a programme like Alpha fits into the overall pattern of what church is and does.[1] It also illustrates this with a glance at how this works out in Holy Trinity Brompton, an example of a church that has been working on these things for many years.

The Big Picture

The story of the church begins, as does the Bible, with Creation. In creation, God creates a world that is different from him. He gives it space, freedom to grow and develop, an existence independent of his own. It is a world not of independent entities, but of delicate balances and relationships. There are a series of relationships set up in the first chapters of Genesis between God, humanity his image bearers, the animate creation, the inanimate creation and much more. In short in could be said that we therefore live in God’s world in a set of vital relationships, with:

• God
• Other People
• The wider Creation
• Ourselves
• The gift of Language

The creation is made perfect, but not complete, just as a human baby might be perfect as a baby yet not a complete human being – it has to grow to maturity. Likewise, creation is ‘good’, yet it still has to develop, to be ‘subdued’ and ordered, developed to reach its full potential, and this task is given to humanity (Gen 1.28; 2.15) as endowed with the power of the Holy Spirit who broods over creation (Gen 1.2). As the early church theologian Irenaeus puts it: “What could the visible fruit of the invisible Spirit be, if not to make flesh mature and receptive of imperishability… The Holy Spirit is sent to the entire universe, and since creation, has been transforming it, carrying it towards the final resurrection.” Continue Reading…