Church as flourishing forest or dying whale?
Church as flourishing forest or dying whale?
Former CMS student Jenny Wooldridge wanted to get people in her region of Bristol and South Gloucestershire talking about ways of being church and how they relate to each other.
by Natalie Burfitt,
There was lively conversation and provocative thinking at a recent conversation day exploring just that.
For people focused on time-honoured, gathered church, there’s a lot to occupy the mind without even beginning to think about ‘those out there’ beyond the church’s walls.
For those who are eager to be in this space beyond, there can be complicated responses from the institution that are hard to navigate.
Jenny works as part of the Flourish Framework in Bristol and the conversation day at The Haven, Speedwell, that she and her team hosted in June, was a friendly and hospitable space to explore the common dilemmas and tensions between these (often) polarised responses to being church in contemporary Britain.
There were various metaphors offered by the range of speakers that Jenny had gathered, which opened up our thinking about church – among them forest and dying whales!
We pondered the image of diverse forest, where the mixed ecology of deeply rooted, storm-weathered older trees work in harmony with newer and smaller plants.
Simon Sutcliffe offered the growing knowledge around ‘whale fall’ – when a whale dies and sinks to the ocean floor, creating a new ecosystem as multiple species feed on the nutrient rich carcass – as an alternative image.
Do we need to think of inherited models of church not as dying but as a dead? Is this a possibility not to fear but embrace, knowing that something completely new can emerge from this outcome?
There was lively conversation throughout the day, nourished by good speakers and delicious food (provided by Houria who create Afrikan food, produced by women who have survived slavery or migration.
It’s conversation we need to have – in person, in local communities, in friendly spaces.
Otherwise we won’t be a diverse forest or a new ecosystem but squabbling neighbours, fighting over a boundary fence while our houses burn down. . .
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