It is a pretty scary thought to realise that the Church is the shop window of Christianity and that precisely you and I, as Christians, are the Church’s shop window. The reality is that Christians have always been strongly scrutinised, tested and passed through multiple rings of fire before ever aspiring for trust and welcome. Perhaps it should be so.

For Christianity isn’t taught, it’s caught. The spiritual writer Richard Rohr once said: “the definition of a Christian is ‘someone who has met one’, because the true life of faith is attractive, transformative and contagious, and not for self-keep.”

More than ever we are becoming more concerned about the Church because we believe it should be more in touch with the people who are our neighbours, friends and colleagues we work with. In an age where individualism thrives, we all believe there is a dire need to redevelop a sense of community. We all believe in a more participative and engaging Church.

But many of us have preconceived ideas of what a vibrant Church is. Perhaps some overt displays of emotion which manifest themselves in certain Christian micro-communities and prayer groups are uncomfortable for many of us who have been brought up with a rather quieter and more respectful version of Christianity.

Yet small Christian communities have been re-emerging since the 1960s and are now flourishing all across Europe, Africa and America, and more recently in Australia. The result is a new way of being Church that is of the people and from the people. In these communities, where life is received and enhanced, the cultural values are passed on, the common challenges are addressed and bonds of relationships are strengthened or restored. These communities that live and experience and attend to the actual needs of their members will always be dynamic because like Christ, the Church becomes incarnate in the life of the people.

The local Church needs new ways of gathering God’s people

Authentic Christian communities are vibrant when they constitute a communion of faith, hope and love. They form a communion as a family of God, a communion of worship and prayer nourished by the Word of God. The Word of God animates, gives support and vigour to the life of the members, becoming a confirmation of faith, food for the soul and the fount of spiritual life.

These groups not only sustain the Christian life within their respective parish set-up but trigger and nurture multiple ministries in the areas of evangelisation, sharing the sacramental life, provide charity to the needy, to the abused, to the forgotten. They identify with the Body of Christ not only in their parish, but with the entire Church.

This echoes Pope Francis’s words that “the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity”.

This proximity cannot be confined to 45 minutes of Sunday Mass. The Church has to be incarnated at the most grass root level of the community, where the ordinary life of the people takes place. It is in this way the first disciples came to Christ, through relationship, and this is still the primary way people come to faith, through creating welcoming spaces which nurture a sacred experience.

The local Church faces many challenges to adopt and support these emerging communities. It needs to shift the default mindset to go beyond stereotypical congregations and envision new ways of gathering as God’s people, perhaps as regional communities within the parish set-up. It needs to minister a theological education that is more oriented to the laity and more aligned with today’s reality.

Authentic Catholic micro-communities are far from disruptive to the Church. Rather they are a tool for renewal, activating the Pope’s message of being with the people.

Again in the words of Pope Francis: “I dream of a Church that is mother and shepherdess. The Church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the Good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbour. This is pure Gospel. The structural and organisational reforms are secondary – that is, they come afterward.”

gordon@atomserve.net

Gordon Vassallo is an accredited spiritual guide at the Centre of Ignatian Spirituality.