I recently wrote in response to Affinity UK’s announcement that they were heading up an initiative to launch a UK version of The Gospel Coalition. My initial response was to ask some questions because I genuinely wanted to understand what was behind the proposal, what it was that the proponents were trying to achieve. I also wanted to help us think through the proposal for ourselves.
Now, despite that, I’m sure you will have picked up that I was coming from a sceptical perspective. I was going to take some convincing. Sadly, I have to say that I was disappointed by the initial response. As I noted in a postscript, there seemed to be a level of surprise and unpreparedness for questions and challenge. We were told that only private email correspondence would be responded to and one friend of the initiative went so far as to say that those raising concerns were:
“kicking against an initiative that wants to make Christ known and see believers equipped.”
Now, If this is simply a case of one organisation developing a new formal relationship with another and undergoing a rebrand, then we might say “fair enough, this is a free country and you are free to do what you please.” It doesn’t really matter to me what Affinity does with its time and resources. However, a number of the people raising questions are of course either direct members of Affinity or members of affiliated organisations such as The FIEC, So, they do have a direct reason to scrutinise what Affinity does.
However, the original statement from Affinity suggests something different: They stated that they were:
“now in the process of consulting with Gospel partners outside of Affinity about how to create a broader fellowship of churches and Christian organisations to serve the cause of Christ and his church.”
That gives the impression that those of us outside Affinity were being invited to consider joining in partnership. It is surely reasonable in that context to first want to ask probing questions and secondly, if we did not think that this was the right vehicle for achieving those objectives to say so. I do think that it is incumbent on us then to put forward alternatives and so I intend to do that shortly.
But first, it is worth double checking and asking the question “What exactly is it that we need?” Now, we might say to start with that what the church in the UK needs is Jesus. We need a spiritual awakening, a move of the Spirit, a return to God’s Word, revival, we need prayer, we need people motivated to evangelise. You can choose your preferred language but all of those answers amount to the same thing and I believe are right. The spiritual need comes first and without it, we are bluntly just moving the deck chairs about on the Titanic if we focus on organisational stuff, websites, institutions and journals.
However, the practical response should go hand in hand with the spiritual. I am not sure that everyone has quite caught on to what TGC is at heart about or have grasped the vision stated in the Affinity Statement. So most people think of TGC in terms of a website, conferences and journals. However, whilst those things exist, TGC primarily grew out of a decision by key reformed leaders in the US to work together for the Gospel. That also is the vision indicated in the press release “a broader fellowship of churches and Christian organisations”.
With one modification, I think that this is right. I would limit it to “a broader fellowship of churches.” What I mean is this, Evangelicalism is very small and very fragmented in the UK and Reformed Evangelicalism smaller still and just as fragmented.
Within that constituency, I would identify the following main groupings.
- The FIEC
- New Frontiers spheres
- Grace Baptists
- EFCC (cogregationalists)
- IPC (Presbytarians)
- AMiE (Anglicans outside of the CofE)
- Some micro networks such as Co-Mission.
There are also reformed evangelicals in other networks that might not be distinctively reformed. For example, there are groups such as Partnership and Counties UK that serve Brethren rooted churches, many but not all of the churches and people involved would be reformed or have reformed leanings but that would not be a distinctive of the overall movement. Then there are those in mixed denominations, The Baptist Union, The Church of England etc.
Now, we might argue that the need for greater evangelical unity beyond the Reformed tradition is important. I would not disagree, however, I would suggest that this need is already served well by the Evangelical Alliance and I would simply encourage some from my own tribe to engage better there. I think, for example that there have been moves on the part of the FIEC through John Stevens to do this.
So, I’m limiting my thinking to the Reformed tradition for now. Essentially, what we see is that there are two delineating marks. The first is between charismatics and non-charismatics. Traditionally, I think we would have assumed that charismatics formed a small minority but that is I believe changing rapidly.
Then there are differences on the complementarian/egalitarian spectrum. I suspect that out and out egalitarians form a very small minority but they are present amongst reformed evangelicals and also there are a range of views within the complementarian camp.
So, the question is whether or not we can bridge the gap and enable greater partnership at both a national and local level between reformed Evangelicals who might differ on second order issues but share a common theological vision overall. I’m confident that this can be done when it comes to the charismatic/non charismatic divides. I’m not so sure that we are in such a good position or I there is even the will no the complementarian-egalitarian divide yet. However, what I do think would be helpful would be for us to find more opportunities for those seven streams listed above to talk to each other and to work together. If a little bit of formal structure would help with that then I would be supportive.
What this boils down to is that we don’t need to over- complicate things. At any level, Gospel partnership is just about giving time to connect, talk, work out what you can and can’t do together and learn from each other where you can’t.
i might add that it works best when it starts from the grass roots up.
Faithroots 