The Anglican Communion website tells us that the Five Marks of Mission are an “important statement on mission which expresses the Anglican Communion’s common commitment to, and understanding of, God’s holistic/integral mission”. The were first set out at an Anglican Consultative Council in 1984.
The Five Marks of Mission are:
To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
To respond to human need by loving service
To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth
And these things get rolled out at many a clergy conference and General Synod and spoken of as though they are really important.
The trouble with the Five Marks of Mission is that really they should be the Seven Marks of Mission and include Motherhood and Apple Pie. They are clearly good things. They are clearly aspirations that every church should have. The honest truth though is that I’d have been surprised if as many as 1% of the congregation at St Mary’s today would have been able to name the Five Marks of Mission without having the opportunity to look them up. Most people wouldn’t of heard of them. And unfortunately for the many people on those very many clergy conferences, the Five Marks of Mission bear little connection with what actually makes a church grow.
There’s nothing wrong whatsoever with the Five Marks of Mission but if you want to make your church grow a bit they are better descriptors of what you might expect to observe in a living vibrant congregation than actually things which will do the business for helping your congregation to grow.
And the thing is, people in the church generally would like their congregations to grow a bit. There’s not much wrong in most congregations that another couple of dozen faithful giving members couldn’t put right.
And it is my view that it isn’t beyond the boundaries of possibility that most congregations could find another couple of dozen giving members fairly easily if they sorted their lives out according the Seven Actual Marks of Mission rather than getting all hung up on the Five they are told they are supposed to be concentrating on.
The Seven Actual Marks of Mission (or Marks of How To Grow A Congregation), are these:
1 – A community that enjoys singing things
2 – Ability to deal with conflict. (And a leadership structure that allows this to be done).
3 – A sense of humour that isn’t an optional extra
4 – Life changing liturgy and preaching
5 – Being truly welcoming
6 – Confident leadership
7 – Ethos, ethos, ethos
1 – A community that enjoys singing things
There have not been many revivals of life and energy in churches that have not included singing have there? It seems to me that a good deal more attention should be spent by the churches on music.
The honest truth is that liturgical style matters far less than whether people are enjoying what they sing and feel as though they can join in.
I’ve been puzzled recently at the phenomenon of some evangelical churches going so far down the “band-led worship” pathway that the band seem to be the only ones singing whilst the congregation watch. (This is not merely my observation but a critique that I’ve seen evangelicals themselves making). Whatever your style, I’m convinced that an enjoyment of singing together is one of the primary things that makes people come to church. Furthermore, when it is obvious that the congregation is uncomfortable, grumpy about style and choice of music or just plain unsupported by those trying to lead the music from the front it is an instant turn off. Those trying out a church won’t go back if the music is miserable.
So why not make it more of a priority in mission planning and ordination training? I never understood why I was continually asked what I needed during ordination training and when I told them the answer (singing lessons) it was pooh-poohed. Everyone can learn to sing better and everyone in the church business can learn how to help a congregation sing better too.
You can’t sing as a congregation? You can’t grow as a congregation.
2 – Ability to deal with conflict. (And a leadership structure that allows this to be done).
Nobody likes conflict but here’s the thing – where two or three are gathered together, there a disagreement will break out sooner or later. Because Christians are particularly naughty? Because the devil always finds a way in? No – just because people are people. It is the way it is. There will be conflict. People will disagree.
A significant measure of a congregation’s ability to grow is the manner in which it deals with conflict.
Again, ordination training for me was characterised by conflict and there were no safe mechanisms for sorting it out. Whilst you can learn negatively from experiences it wasn’t a good start. I suspect one learns most from the ways in which conflict is dealt with by those whom one trusts.
Someone once told me that when someone gets angry with you it means they trust you with a part of themselves which is vulnerable. It was a key insight that turned around the way I see conflict and the way I try to help other people deal with it when it occurs.
And by the way, some churches have decision making structures that don’t allow conflict to be dealt with. A governance review every 10 or 20 years might not be a bad idea. We changed our constitution a few years ago and suddenly my job became a doable job after decades when I think the structures were putting all kinds of unreasonable pressure on the people who held the post I now hold. It is difficult to change a church constitution. It should be difficult. However, it shouldn’t be impossible.
3 – A sense of humour that isn’t an optional extra
I suppose you can try and grow a congregation by being po-faced but if you want a short cut, find a way at laughing at the absurd. Go further, find a way at laughing about yourself for the collection of pomposities and contradictions that makes up you isn’t to be taken entirely seriously.
Or so I’ve found.
I’ve always admired that saying which I think comes from Richard Giles to the effect that good liturgy should be such that it feels as though everyone is about to laugh.
Quite so.
4 – Life changing liturgy and preaching
If liturgy and preaching is not about changing lives then don’t get out of bed to do either. Again, liturgical style doesn’t matter nearly so much as whether what we do moves people, challenges people and celebrates people.
I can’t tell you how many times people say to me that I’m very lucky because I have all the resources of a cathedral and that makes it possible for us to have lovely worship.
Well, I’m grateful for all the wonders of my own congregation but the truth is, I don’t need any of it in order to worship God and I don’t need any of it in order to lead other people in worship that has the potential to be beautiful, moving and yes, life changing.
Here, I did have something positive from my ordination training. I didn’t go to a seminary with a lovely chapel. I didn’t spend all my time as an ordinand swanning around in vestments. Our worship when I was training had to be created from what we had around us. It was always creative and we worked hard at it.
We had a weekly meeting when I was an ordinand which was kept secret from the members of staff who were not invited. The agenda was 1) How can we improve the worship 2) Any other business.
I can’t help but wonder what the effect would be on the national church if that way of thinking was fundamental to the life of every local church. It formed me and I still wake up on a Monday morning asking myself how the worship can be better and commit myself to having the conversations that are necessary to make it so.
Yes, I am lucky to have St Mary’s and all that it means. But throw me a bag of tea-lights and sing the words after me and I can take you to heaven any time, any place, any where. That’s what I was formed to do. And in this, my training did me proud.
5 – Being truly welcoming
You just can’t make a congregation grow without people feeling welcome. The fact that people are different means that there’s room for different welcoming styles. Some people like to be hugged and gushed over and others (I’m guessing most others in the UK) don’t. But somehow or another a congregation does need to exude a sense of welcome to people who are not already its members or it is simply not going to grow at all.
Most congregations think that they are welcoming because the key players in the congregation themselves feel welcomed when they come to worship. However, that’s not enough and it isn’t really what it is all about.
I’m prepared to say now that it is almost impossible to be a welcoming congregation without good on-line engagement. That doesn’t just mean having a website now either. The danger is that congregations think that because they’ve got a website they’ve done what they need to do.
It isn’t enough.
The question is not whether your congregation has a website. The question is whether people looking on-line for a congregation to try out (who exist in every part of the country no exceptions) can get to know the personality of the congregation and having encountered that personality find it attractive.
How many times do I need to say, if the opening words of your website are: “Welcome! St Agatha’s By The Windmill is a congregation in the United Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway, one of the historic dioceses of the Scottish Episcopal Church, in full communion with the Church of England and all the Churches of the Anglican Communion! We welcome everyone. All are welcome in this place.” then you are missing the mark by quite a long way. People don’t join congregations for these reasons. They join congregations because of the people. They join because the people look spiritual. They join because the people look godly. They join because the people look as though they are having fun. They join because the people look diverse enough to find a space for them. They join because the rector looks and sounds like someone you wouldn’t mind conducting your daughter’s wedding next summer. They join because one day they might need these people to gather for their funeral. They join because they are lonely. They join because they have something to give. They very, very rarely these days join a congregation because of its physical location or its denominational affiliation.
6 – Confident leadership
Congregations need confident leadership. That means flexible leadership, collaborative leadership but fundamentally it doesn’t mean the absence of leadership. One of my great worries in recent years is that I fear that very many clergy seem to think that they are called to give only pastoral leadership. Whilst caring for a congregation is fundamental, it is a long way from being the only tool in the priestcraft toolbox. You also need to have some understanding of how systems work, some wisdom about how people work and some knowledge of how you yourself tick. Authentic leadership is about far more than just looking after people. It is also about inspiring people, setting the direction for people, saying the things that people need to hear and sometimes saying things that people wish you wouldn’t.
I went on a leadership training course last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, it did make me wonder all the way through why my own church doesn’t make any serious attempt to boost the leadership skills of its clergy. (I fear sometimes that the answer is that the desperation to DO MISSION means we’ve no energy to boost the things that would actually attract people to our churches).
7 – Ethos, ethos, ethos
This one can’t be avoided. A congregation that is to grow needs to have a conscious ethos and needs to be able to express it.
It is not uncommon for people to look at successful congregations and see particular elements of the worship (a band, a 30 minute sermon, a time for “praise and worship”, a large collection of blazing thuribles etc) and try to replicate the experience by putting those elements in a service that has not had them before. The result is more likely to generate conflict than growth. The starting point for growth is ethos. If a congregation knows why it exists then it will grow. The things that large growing churches have in abundance is a confident sense of what they are there for. If you know your purpose and everyone involved accepts what it is then you can bring more people in who want to share that vision.
If you look across the churches, it is not just big city evangelical churches which are growing. It is churches which know who they are. That’s why self-consciously Anglo-catholic churches which are a mile high up the paschal candle can do reasonably well in the current climate. The churches which seem to me to be struggling are those who rely on their geography to bring in a crowd. The parish is dead. If you want to grow a church the hard way then promote it as the church for your locality. Far easier is to find the essence of the congregation – the core reasons why people might encounter God in that place and once you’ve got that, distil it and let the world know.
Here in St Mary’s, we’re Open, Inclusive and Welcoming. Well, that’s what we hope to be. We fall short of it. We struggle with it. But it is who we are and everyone knows. That ethos brings people in.
I don’t think that any church has all the answers to how to do mission or how to grow. My own certainly doesn’t and certainly isn’t perfect in achieving the seven marks that I’ve listed above. However, when I look at the churches which do well, it is these things which I see as key elements whereby a little development can lead to a lot of growth.
Remember the Five Marks of Mission?
No, no-one else does either.
37 responses to “Keeping the faith”
It was an inspiring recitation. Following the English translation in the service sheet provided added insight to the life of Mary. All the more so as the cathedral is dedicated to St Mary. You are reminded of Mary every time you walk into the building with the Gwyneth Leech mural over the High Altar.
Kelvin is quite right. The very self-righteous defenders of the Bible (including the ones who trolled a brave young Muslim woman, for days, with the most vile language, and those who did not reprimand them) totally ignored the Biblical instructions for raising concerns with a brother in faith (Matthew 18:15; 2 Tim 23). Very practical instruction too! As anyone who has ever lived in community can verify. Could all these obsessive men *please* stop trying to divide our communities in Glasgow. We will not be divided. At the first sign of trouble we rush out to embrace one another. These abusers have much to repent of, even if *just* standing by while others throw stones.
I HATE it when the wrong tune is picked for a hymn … it is simply an abomination before God.
However, helping people to think about how we share hospitality, welcome and learn from each other is the WAY of God! Blessings on you Kelvin.
Some reasons why this time was different:
1. The other quaran recitations you mentioned happened at Nine Lessons and Carols, or special ecuminical and interfaith events. While 9L&C was originally a modified Evensong, nowadays it’s usually considered a seasonal community musical recitial with a religious tinge, so having a Muslim from the community recite something from their faith would seem natural enough. Civic and interfaith services will likewise naturally include representatives of every faith in the community. By contrast the Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship and people expect to hear ONLY Christian doctrine proclaimed in the Holy Eucharist. In other words, this was the wrong venue for showing hospitality to Muslim neighbors. You did not intend to practice syncretism, but I think the outcome was syncretic despite your good intentions.
2. Post Brexit (and post Trump) British Muslims are now seen as alien invaders rather than fellow members of the community.
3. Because hostility to Muslims is now fashionable, the Express and rest of the gutter press decided that this was a story worth reporting. Since conservative Americans often read the online editions of the British gutter press, the story then went global.
4. Because you are gay and out, your every action is scrutinized for any possible hint of heresy by GAFCON and Co.
Of all these reasons, only reason #1 is a legitimate criticism, but I hope you do think about criticism #1 as well as defending yourself from other, illegitimate criticisms.
Thank you for your comment Whit J – all the more because it is a thoughtful criticism.
I’ve plenty to reflect on about the how and the when we do things like that and I do hear loudly and clearly that many people think this was an inappropriate context. Though of course, I’d be bound to say that some are saying that the Eucharist is precisely the place indeed there are some saying that is what it is for.
I’m not going to get into a back and forth with all the comments on this post and I’m deliberately not letting through things that have already been said but be assured that I’ve heard the criticism and will reflect on it not simply now but over coming months. (I’ve learned a lot about where God is this week that will take a long time to process). I’m grateful for the way you’ve made your point.
I think there is a good deal in what Whit J says, although I am not sure the effect actually was syncretic. I think one does perhaps have to be a regular worshipper at St Mary’s to understand how totally orthodox the worship there is, and how much Jesus is the focus of worship – how utterly unlikely it is that anyone there would make the mistake of thinking he was not revered by the congregation as a whole as very God from very God. It would be impossible for them not to realise that all the clergy there rejoice in this belief. The congregation saw the words of the Qu’ran in an English translation which portrayed that book’s far-from-easy-to-follow account of Islam’s view of the conception of Jesus, in which there was nothing offensive, and heard a very beautiful voice singing in a strange and glorious language. These were clearly indicated to be the beliefs of another faith. We certainly neither saw or heard or understood any insult to the person of Christ. I am sure none was intended, either. Whereas, and this bears repeating, I am totally sure that many of those commenting (not of course by any means all of them, and nobody whose comments are published here) simply wish harm to relationships between the great faiths in Glasgow.
I have spent my whole adult life in dialogue with people of other religious traditions, it has been deeply rewarding. However I feel that what happened at this service was profoundly wrong. When we are truly ourselves we allow other people to be profoundly themselves. The truth of Christianity is not compatible with any other religion. To avoid that incompatibility is to avoid reality. Worship of Jesus is the fountain of our faith the Qu’ran is opposed to that. I love Jesus and therefore cannot conceive of reading the Qu’ran in an act of worship – no problem doing so in other contexts but not in worship. I am profoundly disturbed that you cannot see this Kelvin.
There are so many things aren’t there, not just around this issue which we hold dear in faith and which we can’t see from another perspective?
I can hear and see that people are upset by this and clearly there are many people not upset by it too. And obviously, at least I hope obviously, I love Jesus too.
The trouble with religious questions and the questions that religious people have I think is that so often that our love for our faith can make it impossible to comprehend others who also claim to love the same faith but who take different views about things. We can hear them claim that love but be intellectually unable to process it because it leads them to different conclusions.
I’ve found the same thing to be true in the sexuality debates very frequently though I perceive that to be changing sometimes now. Similarly with other identity issues and some political issues. Israel/Palestine conversations for example often seem to be conducted (when they are conducted at all) by people who seem to behave like ships passing in the night.
I happen to have views about Church Schools which are pretty intransigent and negative. You are one of the few people, no the only person, who ever made me really think there might be a point of view about them other than mine which might have an integrity I could respect. And I’m very grateful for that.
Kelvin, thank you for your reply. I have enormous respect for you. I have no doubt that church schools can be argued against from perfectly respectable positions. Worship of Jesus is simply a different order, it cannot include a reading from the Qu’ran. Worship is one thing, study, dialogue, relationship something else.
I am really grateful to Richard for the phrase “When we are truly ourselves we allow other people to be profoundly themselves” which reflects my experience of interfacing with sincere people of other faiths. Is a Christian Eucharist a place this should happen? I can understand some Christians feeling it is not, but as long as everything was clearly labelled as what it was and the integrity of the liturgy was intact, I can also understand some feeling it is.
Brother Kelvin,
Although I do not agree with allowing the Koran to be read in our Christian churches, I truly appreciated your firm and resolute stand for the deity of Jesus. He is our great God and Savior and I love Him very much. Blessings from Tennessee.
Just as a perhaps amusing point of reference, the 1982 hymnal of the Episcopal church in the USA has “Brightest and best of the STARS” (caps mine) “of the morning,” apparently so as to avoid offending any daughters who might be present, and the two tunes included are “Morning Star” by James Proctor Harding (1850-1911) and “Star in the East” from The Southern Harmony (1835). The Harding tune was also in the 1940 Hymnal, wherein the word “sons” was still used.
I am not clear as to whether the hospitality at St Mary’s anticipates infinite extension of parallel lines between Islam and the Church in Glasgow. Are you planning some opportunities for Glasgow Muslims to understand the Christian faith and prepare for Baptism and the glorious liberty of regeneration by the Holy Spirit? (In whichever order; no axe about that!) As you move around the Glasgow community and meet more Christians of Islamic background, why not invite such to participate in groups for new Muslim enquirers? The testimony of an ex-Muslim can express vibrantly “How I know He lives” (as your SA brethren would sing). You might find not only new hearts from a divine work of grace among your Muslim neighbours but in other neighbours too. Amen. Inshallah!
There are a small number of people in St Mary’s who are converts from Islam to Christianity just as there are a small number of people in local mosques who are converts from Christianity to Islam.
St Mary’s regularly puts on events and courses for people discovering and exploring Christianity. Most living religions do the same thing.