For those who follow the Congregational Way of being the church
each local church is a ‘gathered community’ of people who share together in
Christian faith, in Christian living and in Christian mission.
Gathered together in
Christ
Believing that where two
or three meet together in the name of Jesus Christ, He is present with them,
they do not accept that anyone or any institution has authority over the local
church.
Church Meeting
Those who belong and share a faith in God and in Jesus Christ as
Lord and Saviour meet not only to worship and to pray but also to plan and
organise the life of their church. That
church meeting, often held monthly, is a fundamental part of their church life.
It is very much more than a business meeting. It is the place where in a spirit of worship
and prayer those who belong to that particular local church come together to
seek the will of God for them as a church.
With the guidance of the Spirit they believe God then empowers them to
act on what they decide.
God’s rule through the
mind of his people
This form of Church government is sometimes mistakenly called
‘democratic’. It would be better to
think of it as ‘theocratic’. Democracy
means rule of the people. Theocracy means
rule of God. Church meeting is not
about majority rule. Those who come
together in Church meeting come together to pray, to worship and then to seek
the mind of Christ on the strategic planning they need to do together. You might say that the principle governing a
Church meeting is: God’s rule through the mind of his people meeting in the presence of
Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit.
Ministry, Service and
Leadership
They will often delegate specific tasks to particular
people. A Church will appoint a team of
Deacons to help in the leadership of the Church, and often call a Pastor or a
Minister to exercise a preaching and pastoral ministry as well as leadership of
the Church. Sometimes a Congregational
Church will also appoint Elders. Scottish
Congregational Churches speak of Church Office Holders. The role of Church Secretary in many
Congregational Churches is more than a ‘secretarial post’. It carries with it an element of spiritual
leadership too.
Sharing Resources through
the Congregational Federation
Individual local churches pool their resources together with
other similar churches in a fellowship of Congregational churches. The Congregational Federation is just that
... a federation of Congregational Churches.
It is quite wrong to think of it as the Congregational Church
nationally. It is a fellowship of equal
and like-minded churches who come together as equals to support each other and
where it helps the cause of Christian mission to pool their resources.
The English churches are grouped into ten Areas. The Scottish and Welsh churches are grouped
into The Congregational Federation in Scotland and the Congregational
Federation in Wales.
Each Area in England sends a representative to each of the three
committees of the Congregational Federation, the Congregational Federation in
Wales sends two, and the Congregational Federation in Scotland sends three.
· The Mission and Society Committee
enables the churches to join together in Christian mission and to address
together major social issues. It is the
point of contact with other churches in this country through Churches Together
and the point of contact with other churches internationally through the
Council for World Mission and the International Congregational Fellowship.
· The Christian Ministries Committee
enables the churches to share resources and undertake youth and children’s
work, and in particular ensures that such all churches have the proper guidance
and support to ensure that all work with children and also with vulnerable
people is done properly and in accordance with the law. CF Youth gives the young people of our
churches the opportunity to meet together, enjoy with their own peer group and
also have an input into the thinking of the Federation as a whole. The Pastoral Care board enables the churches
to share the oversight of pastoral ministry together and helps churches ensure
that those they call to ministry have the support not only of the individual
church but also of the wider fellowship too.
There is a need for important safeguards here too in this day and age. The All People Together Board enable
churches to pool resources and address the issue of inclusion of all people in
our churches. Again there are
implications legally with Access and Disability legislation that churches need
to share together. The Worship group
supports those who lead worship and preach in our churches. The Training Board supports training for all
people in our churches in order to enable them better to fulfil the calling
they have within their local church and in the wider world. It runs the Integrated Training Course.
· The Finance and Support Services
Committee oversees the finances and the support necessary to enable all the
work churches share through the Federation to be carried out.
· Each Area is also represented on the
Council of the Federation. Each
Committee is accountable to the Council.
The Council cannot go over all the work of the Committees a second
time. But it does ensure that any major
decisions have to go through two bodies that are representative of all the
Areas.
· Legal matters to do with property and
trust deeds are overseen by the Congregational Federation Ltd whose Executive
Committee are the members of the Council.
They appoint a professionally qualified Company Secretary and a small
committee to oversee the every day management of those legal affairs.
· The Annual Assembly gives people from
all churches the opportunity to hear the reports of the Councils and Committees
and to share in vision building for the Federation as a whole.
So, how did it all begin?
What prompted our forebears to follow a Congregational Way of being the Church?
Something happened in the Fifteenth Century that resulted in a
process of change for the whole of the Church in the Sixteenth Century. One way of answering that question is to see
what happened then.
The Third Great
Information Revolution
In his book, The Dignity
of Difference Jonathan Sacks suggests that ‘there have been three great
information revolutions in the past, and we are living through the
fourth’. First, was writing; second,
the alphabet; third, printing; and fourth, the world-wide web.
“No sooner had printing been developed,” observes Jonathan
Sacks, “than Bibles started flying from the presses in their hundreds of
thousands.... One sixteenth-century writer said that ‘It almost appeared as if
the angels themselves had been their messengers and brought them before the
eyes of all the people.’ ... Nothing did more to challenge ecclesiastical
authority than the fact that the Bible in vernacular translation was now
readily available to large masses of people, who could read and debate its
words in the privacy of their homes.” [Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference (Continuum, 2002), 126f.]
Reading the Bible in your
own language for the very first time
People began to do just that.
They began to read the Bible in their own language for the very first
time.
Ordinary people applied it to their ordinary everyday lives.
Martin Luther prompted people to re-discover the Good News at
the heart of the Gospel. Faith was the
key to it all: not doing the right thing.
John Calvin teased out the heart of the gospel even more and
shared the Good News that salvation is by the free gift of God’s grace and is
made real in our hearts by the response we make in faith, a response that is
prompted by the unseen working of the Holy Spirit of God.
These great thinkers and other like them made people think quite
differently about the heart of the Christian faith. To re-discover the Gospel
in this way excited people. William
Tyndale in Gloucestershire determined to make the Bible available in such an
ordinary everyday English that even the ploughboy at the plough would
understand it. Cranmer determined to
enable English people to use a prayer book in their own language.
Re-forming the Church ...
without waiting for the permission of the State
Getting the church to change was a marital convenience for Henry
VIII, was resisted by Mary Queen of Scots and put firmly in place by all the
power of the State by Queen Elizabeth.
By the second half of the Sixteenth Century many wanted to take
things further. Before Constantine the
Church had always been independent of the state. Couldn’t changes in the Church be taken further? Couldn’t the Church be separate from the
state?
By the time he was 50 Robert Browne was one of those whose
imagination was fired by such a vision.
Why do we have to wait for the state to agree before we can make changes
to the church to restore it to the simplicity of the New Testament church? In 1582 he published a ground-breaking book Reformation without tarrying for any. Here he set out what later came to be
thought of as ‘congregational principles’.
A graduate of Cambridge University he had put his ideas into practice in
a church fellowship that had had to flee to Holland where there was greater
religious toleration.
Separation from the State
Small groups of Christians began to take these ideas
seriously. Called ‘separatists’ because
they believed Christian people covenanting together to form a Christian Church
should be separate from the world and its values and much more importantly
separate from the State.
Separatists covenant
together and go underground
Many of those churches had to meet in secret. The Elizabethan state had no time for them
and saw them as a threat to the establishment.
The church that met in the woods north of London in what is now
Islington was not untypical. Some of
their members were imprisoned for their faith.
At communion they would take a special collection that would then be
taken to the Fleet prison in central London to support the imprisoned members
of the congregation. Many
Congregational churches keep up the tradition of taking a special communion
collection for pastoral care of the church family or the work of a local
charity.
Martyrdom - Penry, Barrow
and Greenwood
In 1593 three key leaders of churches like this were
imprisoned. Penry, Barrow and
Greenwood. John Penry, a fiery Welshman
who had cultivated links with Scotland had a passion for religious
freedom. In prison he wrote comments on
the Bible, letters to supporters and appealed to the council of state. In one of those appeals he said stirring
words: ‘We crave but the liberty to
live openly and to do justly in the land of our nativity’.
Their appeal was turned down.
In the middle of that year they were burned at the stake.
Within a year or so a popular playwright who lived just fifty
miles north of William Tyndale’s Gloucestershire home in North Nibley produced
a play all about the destructive effects on a city of warring factions whose
activities end in death. Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet has little to do with distant Verona. It is a powerful critique of London in the 1590’s. Set it in modern dress and locate it in
Belfast as a recent 400th Anniversary production did and you come
un-nervingly close to the London of the 1590’s.
The seed is sown
Martyrdoms like that were few and far between. But the clamp-down of the state was pretty
severe. Things didn’t get better in the
reign of King James I of England. Once
the seed of an idea is sown it is very difficult to stop it growing.
Another Cambridge graduate, John Robinson, by the time he was in
his 20’s was pastoring one of these radical, separatist churches based at
Scrooby Manor in Lincolnshire.
Pilgrims together on A
Journey into the [New] World
In 1609 John Robinson’s
church fled to Holland setting sail from Boston Spa to avoid a fresh surge of
persecution. They became established in
Leyden where they remained for eleven years.
Basing their church life on Congregational principles the church decided
to emigrate and make a fresh start. As
a group they returned to England where they chartered a small fleet of ships,
foremost among them The Mayflower.
Before they embarked on their momentous Faith Journey, their Pastor,
John Robinson, bade his flock fare well.
His parting words inspired that wonderful hymn, We limit not the truth
of God to our poor reach of mind. The
refrain reads, The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his
word. [You can find the full version of
this hymn in Peculiar Honours,
(Congregational Federation /Stainer & Bell, 1998) number 99.] The Pilgrim Fathers as they came to be known
set sail from Plymouth and started a new life in New England.
Much of the history of what became the United States owes its
roots to the Separatists, Independents or Congregationalists and their longing
for congregational church government that would be separate from the state.
Commonwealth and Country
Many more churches were by now coming into being and the ideas
of congregationalism and separatism were beginning to take a hold of the
imagination of more and more people.
When King Charles I attempted to clamp down on these ideas in the name
of the Divine Right of Kings, many joined forces to oppose the King and set up
a Commonwealth where Parliament and the People would be supreme.
Some of the great names of this Commonwealth period owed their
thinking politically, socially and theologically to the principles of
Congregationalism with its emphasis on the importance of the small unit of people
meeting together under the guidance of God to make their own decisions. Oliver Cromwell, John Owen, John Milton.
Religious Freedom and
Toleration
Advocates of religious freedom for themselves, they also
defended the right of people who thought differently to exercise their own
conscience. The great English
declaration of freedom of speech was made by John Milton in The
Areopagetica. The return of the Jewish
people to England after a period of 300 years in exile was due to Oliver
Cromwell.
State repression once
more
The backlash came in 1660 with the restoration of Charles
II. In 1662 a sequence of Acts of
Parliament were passed forbidding independent congregational worship led by the
Spirit in which the Preacher would be free to preach as the Spirit
prompted. Ministers in charge of Parish
Churches were given an ultimatum. By St
Bartholomew’s Day, 14th August 1662 they had to conform and preach
only according to the lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer and conduct
worship only according to the words of the Book of Common Prayer.
On that Sunday 2000 of them were ejected from their
livings. At Mansfield College, Oxford,
the walls of the corridors are adorned with wonderful portraits of these
remarkable preachers.
They could not meet with more than five other people at the same
time, and were not allowed to come within five miles of the church they had
once ministered to.
The idea could not be suppressed.
Anglicans may talk with pride of the 1662 Prayer Book. That hurts those who know their Congregational
church history. For that was a year of
severe persecution and repression. It
is also a treasured year in our history.
Many of our Congregational churches came into being that year. People met in a barn or some other building
in small numbers and just over five miles from their old parish church.
A challenge.
If you live in England or
Wales, or the next time you visit England or Wales try to find a 1662
Congregational Church and find out about its history. Nearby there may be an Anglican parish church that is older. There may well be a list of the church’s
Vicars. Have a look at what happened in
1662. You often find that there was a
change of Vicar in 1662 - this may well be the reason.
In the face of
persecution the preaching goes on
Bedfordshire was not untypical.
There the Congregationalists and the Baptists shared their church life
together. One of their preachers, a
tinker by trade, would travel through the countryside visiting the small
churches that had sprung up since 1662.
He was imprisoned for his efforts more than once. And on one such occasion in Bedford Gaol
John Bunyan wrote the all time great classic Pilgrim’s Progress.
The museum at the united Congregational Federation / Baptist
Church in Bunyan Meeting Bedford is well worth a visit. A postcard of Bunyan’s Christian was the
only thing to get through to Terry Waite in his long imprisonment in Beirut and
was an inspiration to him.
Why not try getting hold of a copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress. It would make an excellent read
in the context of our Faith Journeys!!
Many have found it a wonderful help on their own Journey of Faith.
Religious freedom ... in
some measure
In 1688 Britain experienced another revolution. Again it was the Dutch who provided a degree
of freedom that had not been accepted by the previous English, Welsh and
Scottish dynasties that had ruled as Kings and Queens. The so-called Glorious Revolution resulted
in a greater degree of religious toleration.
A Revolution in worship
Now with the freedom to worship that they desired people
worshipping in Congregational churches wanted to express their faith in words
that were different from the creeds and the prayer book, but no less
memorable. They had only sung metrical
versions of the psalms and other scripture passages. The music they used in
worship was limited and not very lively.
One of their ministers came up with a novel idea that was to
take Britain and all the churches by storm.
Isaac Watts started setting Psalms, paraphrases of the Scripture and statements
of faith to the popular music of the day in the popular rhythms of the
day. He has come to be known as ‘the
Father of English Hymnody’. He gave
birth to a form of singing that was to prevail in Congregational churches for
the next 200 years.
Younger contemporaries took up the idea. The converted slave trader John Newton and
his depressive friend William Cowper
worked together in the Buckinghamshire town of Olney to publish the Olney
Hymns, Amazing Grace, Sometimes a light surprises. It was as if the Spirit was moving in a remarkable way. The wind of the Spirit swept through these
islands thanks to the inspiration of the Wesley Brothers and their hymns too.
The Power of Preaching
They had a commitment to vibrant preaching of the Word of God based
on the latest biblical scholarship.
John Wesley equipped his preachers with a new translation of the New
Testament complete with commentary. It
was a thorough revision of the Authorised Version based on the latest
manuscript evidence and research. The
power of that evangelistic preaching caught the spirit of the age in a
remarkable way.
By the end of the Eighteenth century there was an upsurge of
preaching in what had by now become the churches of ‘the old dissent’, the
Congregational and Baptist churches.
The Influence of
Education
Limitations were still imposed on people who worshipped in
Congregational Churches. In particular
their children were denied access to Higher Education. To go to University in England you had to be
an Anglican. Congregational ministers
responded by opening their manses to young people. Philip Doddridge was one of
those who founded such an Academy.
The story of the Academies, written up by Bill Ashley Smith,
first secretary of the Congregational Federation’s Training Board, played a big
part in the development of the Higher Education Curriculum in these islands.
Church Planting
The 1790’s and 1800’s saw two things happen. On the home front this upsurge in Academies
equipping people to preach more effectively led to the establishment of
colleges. They were instrumental in
planting new churches in the new towns that were springing up at that time.
A number of academies in London came together in 1820 to build
the Highbury Congregational
College. People linked to the college
planted many churches, often giving them the name, Highbury Congregational
Church. The one of which I am minister
was planted in the rapidly growing new Spa town of Cheltenham. In 1842 the college was sold to the
Anglicans who in 1915 sold it to a football club from south of the river. Ever since Arsenal have played in their
Highbury stadium just as we have worshipped in our Highbury Congregational
church!!
World Mission
At the same time the ease of world travel prompted people to
broaden their horizons. William Carey,
the Northamptonshire cobbler, had challenged the Baptist people to look to
India to spread the Gospel. In 1794 the
challenge went out to Congregational churches to meet regularly each Monday for
a time of prayer. The prayer meetings
led to the establishment of a London Missionary Society. Although supported by Congregational
churches its foundation principle forbade it to be ‘denominational’ - instead
it was simply to take the Gospel to all the world.
A Zeal for Mission in
Scotland
It was this missionary zeal that led in Scotland to the
formation of the first Congregational churches there. Up until the end of the eighteenth century there had not been the
same move towards separation from the quite different established church which
itself held to so many reformation principles.
In the 1790’s,however, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland would
not accept the Missionary vision. Only the predestined would be saved, so
missionary zeal was not called for.
Many broke away from the Kirk as a result and the churches they
established later came together as the Congregational Union of Scotland.
Joining together in Union
... in England
With the growth of the missionary movement abroad and a passion for
church growth and evangelism at home it became necessary to bring
Congregational Churches more effectively together in fellowship with each
other. In 1832 the Congregational Union
of England and Wales was formed.
... and in Wales
This brought together the English speaking Congregational
Churches of Wales with the Congregational churches of England. A parallel story was unfolding among the
Welsh speaking churches of Wales who formed themselves into the Welsh Congregational
Union, Undeb Yr Annibynwyr, the Union of Welsh Independents.
The Nonconformist
Conscience
It is perhaps no coincidence that the CUEW came into being in
the same year as the Great Reform Bill reached parliament. Through the Nineteenth Century
Congregationalists were at the forefront of radical reform in society at
large. One of the greatest thinkers,
R.W.Dale of Birmingham not only wrote a classic Manual of Congregational
Principles but also worked out a theology based on a reforming appeal to
conscience. [R.W.Dale’s Manual of
Congregational Principles has recently been re-issued and is a very valuable
resource for understanding the principles that underpin our churches.]
Congregationalists became very much a major force to reckon with
in the nation. The nonconformist
conscience was the driving force of much social reform. It is again perhaps no coincidence that when
the Labour party came to be formed they met for the first time in the
Congregational Memorial Hall that had been built in 1862 to mark the 200th
anniversary of the Great Ejection of 1662.
Incidentally, the Labour Party also adopted a voting system based on the
customs of the Congregational Union.
The impracticalities of the card voting system were dropped by the
Congregational Federation before the Labour Party cottoned on to its drawbacks!
A Gospel of Grace and a
Social Gospel
Some Congregationalists at the beginning of the Twentieth
Century took their commitment to the Social Gospel to extreme, losing sight of
the Gospel of Grace and the power of the Word.
Others, followed the pioneering theological work of P.T.Forsyth who
advocated a re-discovery of the authority of the Word and the power of positive
preaching of the Gospel.
New forms of liturgy and
worship
Up until the end of the Nineteenth Century worship in
Congregational Churches had focused on preaching, hymn singing and extempore
prayer. Something happened at the end
of the Nineteenth Century that was to take hold of many Congregational churches
through the twentieth century.
Increasingly some churches turned to set liturgies and the use of
written prayers. The middle years of
the Twentieth Century saw an upsurge in this way of worshipping that coincided
with moves towards an organic union with the Presbyterians.
Union in a different way
... this time with the Presbyterians
A series of commissions resulted in 1966 with the Presbyterians
refusing to continue conversations with a Union of independent churches. The Congregational Union invited its
churches to covenant together to form a single churchly body, The
Congregational Church in England and Wales.
In 1972 that body just got a big enough majority to join with the
Presbyterians and form the URC.
The Congregational
Federation
About 2000 of the approximately 2,700 Congregational churches
joined with the 300 Presbyterian churches in England to form the URC. An evangelical fellowship of quite large,
evangelical churches had already come into being following the 1966 move
towards a national Churchly body. They
continue to function as An Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational
Churches. The Congregational Federation
brought together about 300 churches of a wide spectrum of theological views.
International links
through CWM and ICF
The Federation continued many of the traditions of the old
Congregational Union becoming a full member of the newly formed Council for
World Mission in 1977. CWM was a new
way of doing mission that brought the churches that been founded by the old LMS
and other Missionary societies together in a world-wide partnership of equals
sharing the resources of mission.
The Federation also joined with the International Congregational
Fellowship that has continued to support Congregational churches throughout the
world.
The Scottish experience
When the Congregational Union of Scotland followed a similar
path to the old Congregational Union of England and Wales thirty years later
and became the Congregational Church of Scotland in readiness for amalgamation
with the United Reformed Church 40% of their churches decided to join the
Congregational Federation, making the Federation for the first time a
fellowship of Congregational churches throughout England, Wales and Scotland.
Core Principles of the
Congregational Federation
Those who joined the Congregational Federation were convinced of
two things.
· First, they believed passionately that
the Congregational way of being the church has something to contribute to the
Church of today and to the world of today.
Its emphasis on the gathering together in one local
place of a community of Christian believers captures the yearning people have
today for community and a sense of belonging.
As they meet to worship God in the presence of Christ with the guidance
of the Holy Spirit and recognise no external human authority that carries with
it risks but also a wonderfully exciting vision to share with people in the
twenty-first century.
· Second, they believed passionately that
Christian unity must not be identified with uniformity of structure,
organisation and theological statement.
True unity affirms difference and rejoices in God-given diversity. Back in 1972 much was made of a phrase that
has only recently come into its own in church circles: unity in diversity. That’s the kind of unity we want to work
for, the kind of unity we rejoice in.
Rooted in the Bible
As I tell the story of Congregational churches I find myself
coming back to one thing over and over again.
People were not consciously trying to do something new. They believed passionately that they were
returning to the heart of the Christian faith as it could be found in the
experience of the New Testament Church.
· In the Sixteenth Century John Penry
turned to the Bible when he was in prison writing comments on many biblical books
in his prison notebook.
· In the Seventeenth Century John Owen,
John Milton, John Bunyan were steeped in the Scriptures as they shaped the
Church of their day.
· In the Eighteenth Century Isaac Watts
in his hymns, Philip Doddridge in his Academy and the founders of the London
Missionary Society were absorbed in the Scriptures and fired by a vision to
bring them alive in their own day.
· In the Nineteenth Century R.W.Dale
based his understanding of Congregational Principles on a study of the New
Testament Church.
· In the Twentieth Century P.T.Forsyth
mapped out his vision for the Church based on the revelation of the Word of God
in Scripture.
· And as the Twenty First Century begins
we would do well to take to heart the picture on the front cover of the little
book that tells The Story of the
Federation by R.W.Cleaves. It shows
a tree whose roots come out of an open Bible.
It is a picture inspired by words shared by one of the greatest
Congregational historians, Tudur Jones in his presidential address to the Federation. Tudur quoted from the preface to Matthias
Maurice’s Monuments of Mercy (1729).
‘Maurice,’ explains Tudur, ‘mentions one who made the boast, “I have
rooted Independency out of Kent, and I am resolved I will root it out of
Essex.” And then Maurice makes the
rejoinder, “But alas! All will be in
vain; so long as the Root of it is in the Bible it will grow again!”
How important for us to ensure that our Congregational way of
being the Church is firmly rooted in the Bible.
In my telling of the story of the Congregational way of being
the Church one question still haunts me.
I began my story with the invention of the printing press and the third
great information revolution.
Is that really where our story begins? If our roots are in the New Testament way of being the church
what about the intervening 1400 years?
Back to the beginning
This is where my telling of the story of the Church would differ
from Micahel Keene’s. I would argue
that that kind of emphasis on the local gathering of believers meeting together
in the Spirit in community based on the Scriptures can be seen throughout those
years.
Pre state-control
Until the time of Constantine the church was very much more
loosely organised. The first
‘episkopoi’ or ‘bishops’ were ‘overseers’, people exercising ‘pastoral
oversight’ often linked to a particular congregation. It is possible to argue that the Diocesan Bishop didn’t quite
become what it later came to be until after Christianity had become a state
religion.
Travellers on their
journeys take the Christian faith with them
In all likelihood the Christian faith arrived in this country
first of all as people who had become Christian travelled on their journeys to
this far-flung part of the Roman Empire.
They wanted to pass on their faith and so they formed small Christian
communities based on their own home.
The evidence for that interpretation of what happened is here in
Gloucestershire. The earliest Christian
inscription in the United Kingdom is a word square also found in Pompei in AD 79. It was found on the wall of a Roman house
during excavations in Cirencester.
Corinium was a major Roman city, a colony with the same status as
Philippi.
The earliest chi rho monogram the P and X sign that brings
together the first two letters of the Greek word Christ can be found around the
spring that feeds into the baths of the Roman Villa at Chedworth also in
Gloucestershire. Clearly the Villa was
lived in by a Christian family who in
all likelihood carried out baptisms in the spring and worshipped in the
courtyard and the rooms of their villa.
The villa is much the same design as the houses that would have hosted
Christian churches in places like Colossae.
Celtic Christian
communities centred around the preaching of the Word
The Celtic Christians had links with Rome, but they observed a
different date for Easter and had quite a different understanding of the nature
of Christian community. Individual
preachers would gather a small community around them at key places in Ireland,
Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Northern England that to this day bear the name
of those great early saints. Until the
seventh century and the Synod of Whitby the Celtic church followed a pattern of
being the church that was not subject to the absolute authority of Rome.
Monastic communities
centred around the preaching of the Word and Prayer
That Celtic monastic tradition was then supplemented by St
Benedict whose rule sought to return to the simplicity of the New Testament
church and create autonomous monastic communities under an Abbot who would give
pastoral oversight. Within those
monastic communities where the Scriptures were faithfully copied out and read
something of that community idea that later came into its own in our
Congregational churches prevailed.
Reforming movements of
the 13th and 14th Centuries
In the reforming movements of the Victorines and then the
Lollards in the thirteenth and fourteenth century the idea came to the fore
again.
Back to the third
revolution in communication
But it was only with that revolution in communication that the
idea took on a new and well defined shape in the Congregational churches we
have come to know.
And what about the fourth
revolution in communications?
Returning to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks he suggests that we are now
living through the next pivotal revolution in information technology. The web has the potential to fragment the
world. It also has the potential to
enable the small communities that are at the heart of our way of being the church to support and encourage each other
and share their ideas too.
Which way that revolution takes us is for all of us to determine
as we follow our Journey into the World.