From the Press

Making the church more welcoming

This article first appeared in the Church of England Newspaper on Thursday 28 August 2003 and is reproduced with their permission.

By James Jones

Like many bishops at a confirmation I ask adult candidates what brought them to this point. Three reasons stand out over nine years of doing confirmations. Bereavement, Welcome and Alpha.

The way the clergy minister to the grief-stricken and the church supports them as they mourn leads many to faith in Christ. The second is the warmth of the welcome people get whenever the spiritual instinct comes to the fore and drives them to church to seek God. Churches that are open to God and open to outsiders under good leadership, lay and ordained, grow. The third reason is Alpha. Creating a safe space for seekers after faith to ask questions and find answers is key to bringing people to faith.

These three reasons say important things about our society and the strength of contemporary evangelicalism. Troubled by death, people are drawn to hope of an after-life. Also, people have a deep social instinct to belong and when their relationships are fractured, they are drawn to new communities where they are genuinely welcomed. Furthermore, we live in a questioning culture and churches which take questions seriously offer an appealing door to faith. Evangelicalism with its three-fold Biblical emphasis on the Resurrection of Jesus, the fellowship of the Spirit an the God who has spoken speaks convincingly into a culture where people are fearful of death, longing to belong and searching for answers.

The weakness of contemporary evangelicalism, however, is that it still needs convincing that there is an inextricable link between personal salvation and social justice. My experiences in Hull and Liverpool have immersed me in urban mission and have changed me. I believe passionately in the transforming power of the spirit through a personal encounter with Jesus, crucified, risen and ascended. That personal relationship is crucial to social transformation. But to ignore the social dimension of the Gospel is as unbiblical as to ignore the personal. We cannot divorce justification by faith from acting justly in God's world. How can we be personally reconciled to the God of justice without at the same moment being caught up in the dynamic of him doing justice in world?

Reading the Bible brings us face to face with God who requires from us 'to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God'. That humility should be seen in us not least when handling the Bible itself.

As we seek to find answers to our own questions and those of seekers of faith we have a fourfold reference: to the authority of Scripture, to the lessons of tradition, to the voice of reason and to the experience of contemporary culture.

Anglican evangelicalism stresses that in this four-fold reference there is a primacy to the authority of scripture. Understanding the Word of God and applying it to a multi-cultural world is one of the great challenges facing the 21st Century Church. That is why NEAC 4 is so vitally important. It brings together the diverse groups within Anglican evangelicalism with a common commitment to discern humbly what principles the Bible teaches us about the multiplicity of complex issues facing the 21st Century.

My prayer is that our gathering will prove a major contribution to the wider church as we seek to act justly, love mercy and humbly with God

The author is Bishop of Liverpool