Edgelessness

In chapter 8,1 demonstrated the ways in which the ARCS Practices, as distinctly intentional outreach projects, offered a reading of church which was powerfully re-centred at its organisational edges, and, radically, often at the edges or margins of human living. Paradoxically, such a re-centring carried with it an edgeless account of church, as the lay-led FBAs in particular witnessed to encounters with Christ’s presence, with the Spirit, in these places of the margins. Whilst this was particularly clear in the LJV and Housing Justice projects, in different ways all the Practices spoke of this energy of ‘church beyond church’. There is no need to repeat the learning of chapter 8 here; rather, drawing this basic ecclesiological sense together with other aspects of the ARCS learning, I want to highlight the significance of such a commitment to edgelessness.

Fundamentally, what we are seeing in the Practices is the vivid reality of church lived in and for the world, going out from its centre.⁴ This reminds us that the church is ‘in the world’ because the world is the only place the church can be; and that it is ‘for the world’ as the Body of Christ⁵ and as a “kind of sacrament of salvation”⁶ for all humanity. This, in turn, militates against any ecclesial or academic energy which would somehow want to separate ‘the church’ out from the wider, worldly living of faith, and the wider still human living toward truth, in all its embodied, enculturated and flawed complexity. Any such setting apart of church suggests it can be simply an object, bounded and visible, of study. In their own ways, both systematic theologians’ work with ‘blueprint ecclesiologies’ and many practice-based ecclesiologies risk this ‘objectifying’ of church. Rather, as Dan Hardy puts it, speaking of his own Anglican tradition’s ecclesiology in particular:

there is no straightforward ‘doctrine of the Church’ but an ongoing theological formation of the practice of church life. It is a way of theologically and practically renewing the Church that does not necessarily ever become a fixed doctrine. In that sense, thinking ‘the Church’ is unlike other doctrine: it is more a theological and practical engagement with what Church is and should be.⁷

It is this sort of reflection on the edgelessness of church that has led me to want to see church as a verbal expression as much as, if not more than, in terms of its noun-al reality.⁸ This is to return to Barth’s call not so much to talk about church as be it,⁹ but with new insight gained from theological action research with the ARCS Practices. For this is not simply - or even - a refusal to articulate church; rather it is, in accord with Dan Hardy’s observations, a call to articulate church as the mysterious

What account of church? 231 and on-going practical-divine reality that it is, by attending to the workings of the Spirit in the world, and Christians’ attempts to respond to them. What we encounter there, as distinct (though not separate from) what is seen in the organisational centre of ecclesial structures, is dynamism and life, all be it struggling with sin; we see ‘living tradition’ in MacIntyre’s sense of this term.¹⁰

There are two more implications of this reading of church which I would particularly name as having especial significance, ecclesiological and practical, for today and into the future. First of all, and perhaps most com-pellingly, this edgeless understanding of church calls for a reorientation of ecclesiology (and church) away from any assumption that the organisational, structural centre is, in fact, ‘the centre’. What has become clear through this book’s reflections is the very limited and particular place of the structures of church - structures which are only truly effective when they serve the church-in-the-world. This prioritising of ecclesial structures as of service in this way carries with it an additional imperative: that of becoming an organisation characterised by disciplined and attentive listening if it is truly to be such. After all, we cannot be authentically served by one who already knows what we need before they get to know our daily lived realities.¹¹ If the ecclesial institution is essential as the holder of tradition and community,¹² it is also to be known as something essential but ‘small’ in relation to the Christian living in the world, and the wider humanity it exists to serve. It is called, as part of its primary task, to be thoroughly attentive to the real living of Christian faith in all the complexities of the world.

An account of edgeless church also nuances how we might see Christian ‘community’. For many, this is construed as a gathered and stable community - a network of relationships and mutual commitment in faith, which is especially (for Anglicans and Roman Catholics) nurtured around the Eucharistic table. The research set out in this book does not undermine this: we need only think of the ‘magnetic’ community of St. Mary’s (C), or the centrality of Eucharist in Portsmouth (F), to be reminded not only of the emphasis on hospitality and relationship but also on the persistent presence and practice of liturgy and sacrament. However, I would suggest that even these moments of affirming community are to be seen in a new light by virtue of what has been learnt. First, from a more ad intra ecclesiological perspective, the Practices’ learning makes clear that community is not without demand (C); indeed, it might even be demand that really makes someone feel they belong (D4, final quotes). At the same time, as a second point, significant for the church’s participation in the missio Dei is the witness to more fluid kinds of ‘community’, appropriate to the world as we find it: communities that do not require a tomorrow (A3, Joseph), community that knows its life primarily through encounters on the street (D3). Such a vision of the Spirit’s healing work in the wounded ‘skin of humanity’¹³ liberates Christian mission from the (self-taught) burden of ‘building communities’ and frees it to recognise the human and gracedcommunity of the chat in the playground, the singing at the children’s bathtime and friendship to the stranger. That these things ultimately ‘belong’ to Christ, and that it is to be desired that they are named and celebrated as such is true; the difference is that, in the expansive working of the Spirit, they are already graced, and do not need to be made to belong to Christ by us.