In the mid-nineteenth century, Henry Venn of the Church Missionary Society (now Church Mission Society) famously developed the 'three selfs' principle in the field of Christian missions. Being of the mind that missionaries should only be temporary workers in their foreign contexts with the role of establishing indigenous churches, Venn provided this framework that gave missionaries both strategic goals as well as an indication of when their job was done.
Venn determined that when a local church was self-supporting, self-governing and self-extending (or self-propagating), then it had effectively come to organisational maturity and didn't need foreign missionaries any longer. Self-supporting meant that the church didn't rely on external finances. Self-governing meant that the church didn't need to rely on or refer to external leadership. Self-extending meant that the church was itself now a base for sending out believers to new Kingdom-building ministries.
In the Church of England's 2004 report 'Mission-Shaped Church', Venn's three selfs are applied locally to help think about how the church is grown in size and maturity at home and not just abroad (pp120ff). This is really helpful stuff as it drives the Anglican world to ask questions such as, How can we establish a bunch of new, independent, local Anglican churches without being overly constrained by the idea of the 'parish'? (NB. I am not personally opposed to the idea of the 'parish' at all, so long as it is seen as an area that a local church is entrusted with reaching and serving and not as a geopolitical patch that needs to be guarded. One parish could have many local congregations and should really welcome this possibility!)
For fun, you can consider Henry Venn's 'three selfs' using a Venn diagram - invented by Venn's mathematician son, John. But how would you label each of the regions? Here's my first pass thinking...
What this shows is not only that a mature church needs to be self-governing, -supporting and -extending, but also what you might have if you only hit two out of three.
A church that was self-govering and -extending could be considered to be a mission of other churches. This is not at all a bad thing since all churches should be very willing to support other parts of the body of Christ in their financial needs and local churches should not be too proud to receive this sort of generous support either.
The other two scenarios aren't quite so positive.
A church that was self-extending and self-supporting could be considered to be oppressed if for some reason it wasn't free to be self-governing. Less negatively, you might imagine this situation could exist where there simply wasn't the leadership capacity in the congregations. However, if Jesus gives the church the human-resource gifts it needs (Eph 4:11-13), then this shouldn't really be the case.
And a church that is self-governing and -supporting but not self-extending would just seem to be impotent in terms of Kingdom growth.
So how does the Anglican Church go with this? How are our young church enterprises going? Have we adopted this part of Mission-Shaped Church thinking? Do we push for the three selfs when seeding new churches? Or do we give too many handouts, not prioritise mission enough or not cut the apron strings when we can? I reckon it would be an informative project that used this grid as a tool to review our new works and perhaps to also help us think about how we'll work well to bring young churches to organisational maturity in the future.
This is really interesting Tim. Reflecting on it in the light of my limited experience of the church landscape in S.Korea. The church here (broadly speaking), though relatively young, has all the 3 self's covered. As do older churches in the west, I guess. However churches many have the three self's covered and still be immature. There seems to be a difference between a mature organisation and a mature church. I guess Venn is speaking organisationally? I would perhaps add to it self-critical in the light of scripture, but also open to external criticism in light of Scripture. Sometimes nothing can be more maturing than the objective perspective of a godly outside.
ReplyDeleteJust a couple of thoughts...
C.Adams
Hi tim its shane
ReplyDeleteMaybe think about it this way
Partner churches ( mission) still rely on outside funding
Parented churches (oppressed) are still being governed by another
Parochial churches ( impotent) are narrow focussed/turf minded rather than missional.
@CA - Yes, I think you're exactly right. Venn's selfs only help us think about organisational maturity and say nothing about spiritual maturity. (Although perhaps it could be argued that if a church is self-extending and self-supporting, then it may have some degree of spiritual maturity.) Also, I think the self-critical and open to external criticism (is there a 'self' for that?) are excellent measures that you'd want in any sort of mature church.
ReplyDelete@SR - Thanks for this - I like the alliteration and 'parented' and 'parochial' as less negative terms (tho perhaps less descriptive).
It's interesting to reflect on the mission work done particularly in the CMS/Anglican world in the light of this model. I'd say in general we have helped local churches to be self-governing and self-extending, but not done so well in helping them to be self-supporting. Even our brothers and sisters in places like Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, where the church is flourishing, still rely on foreign donations to help make ends meet. I'm not sure if this is because the Anglican parish and church building model is unsustainable in developing countries, or because we have taught a culture of dependency rather than self-support? As you point out, it's right that richer believers should give assistance to poorer ones, but shouldn't self-supporting be at least a long-term goal?
ReplyDeleteAnother important comment on this model came from Paul Hiebert, who suggested that "self-theologizing" was another necessary goal for new churches. Couldn't find the paper on Google, but it was titled something like "The Fourth Self".