In Newham the challenge of inclusion often revolves around ethnicity. For example we are often asked to open our church buildings to churches that draw their leadership and membership from a particular narrow ethnic base. I remember once being asked to find space in our church/community centre for a Sri Lankan Church. When I suggested that there was already a Sri Lankan Church meeting down the road, the response was “Ah, but we are German Sri Lankans”. The would be pastor was attempting to create a small “church” based on holding together a narrow grouping of immigrants of Sri Lankan ethnicity who had previously been living in Germany.
A church that responds to the challenge of the Gospel will reflect the inclusive love of God in the diversity of its membership and in the way it orders its life. It will welcome and include all, and that will necessarily mean being led to accept and celebrate the diverse gifts of all. When we reflect that diversity in the gathered worshipping community we more fully respond to God’s generosity.
To be inclusive means much more than being welcoming. When I welcome somebody to my home it remains my home, I am still in possession, still in charge. We might say women are and always have been “welcome” in the Church, but “inclusion” means recognising women are not second class citizens of the kingdom of heaven or the church. Inclusion is the church joyfully recognising that God has given leadership gifts to women as well as men and expressing that in the visible life of the church. Scripture teaches that God intends men and women to work in partnership, and to express that in ministry, lay and ordained, is not to depart from biblical truth but to express it more fully.
If inclusion is more than welcome what are its limits? A theology of inclusion does not remove or undervalue the importance of conversion and sanctification. Inclusion means that we recognise that God desires salvation for all regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation and that we are all called to lives that are faithful, honest, other-enriching and socially responsible, again regardless of our race, gender or sexual orientation. It remains the church’s task to help the Christian discern a pattern of holy living in response to that Gospel challenge. The difference between “welcome” and “inclusion” is that we recognise the Church can not discern what that pattern of holy living is without the participation of those whom the Church has formerly rejected or patronised, those it has excluded from recognition, affirmation and leadership. Only when all are included as full participants in the life of the church will we come to a deeper understanding of what God asks of us today. This is a process that will include the serious reading of and attending to Scripture, but it will not confuse the Gospel with the presuppositions and exclusions of the first century, nor will it mean an uncritical acceptance of the mores of the culture of today.
The Revd Brian Lewis
