“Mind the Gap”

Peter Rouch explores the relationship between human and divine agency in evangelism, especially with those on the margins of society.

To London’s 9 million pre-pandemic daily visitors, these are familiar words. Mind the gap between the platform and the train. The gap is a place of danger, or at least uncontrollability. What goes into it, is at risk.

I have another gap in mind of course, but still one that comes with some caution. It is a theological and practical gap possibly existing between human and divine agency in the dawning of faith in human lives; in becoming a Christian.

For some of us there is a degree of reserve about putting too much into “the Gap”. Humans are really rather clever. We have extensive understanding of our own psychology, the formation of motivations, the patterning of social interactions. We have even developed mass algorithmic analysis to deploy this understanding at scale and in detailed ways with individuals. How much of this and other kinds of stupendous cleverness has a place in helping others find faith? Should we leave “the Gap” to God? Does it honour our created giftedness to deploy every capacity in enabling others to respond to their creator’s love, or is that just a sanctimonious smoke screen for market-style manipulation?

Anyone who has journeyed with another where faith is dawning will probably identify with the sense of being a handmaid[1]. It is as if what I do or say is both important, but at the same time insufficient in what is going on. Faith is the work of God, not my doing. Yet, what does the handmaid bring to the party? Is there a gap between human and divine contributions in the dawning of faith? For the evangelist, what do I need to do and be, and how can I play my part as well as possible? Hence, mind the gap!

Gaps manifest at margins and edges. Speaking as an Anglican, and of the Church of England, our mission has seldom been at its most potent at the social, demographic and economic margins. Yet, I lead a mission organisation where those margins are the heart of the matter. Church Army was founded from a missionary call to those excluded, most especially by material poverty, and it is a call we carry to this day. Church Army evangelists are sent to live and speak good news from within marginalised communities. Our key projects reach towards women and young people experiencing homelessness, young people wrestling with self-harm or coming to terms with questions around gender identity, and women trapped in on-street sex work. This mission is often hard to do and a challenge to fund. One amongst many reasons for that is this question of “the Gap”.

Investing in Growth

As denominations have invested in renewing mission there has been a tendency to celebrate numerical growth. Faced with the apparently existential threat of statistics of decline, we should not be too judgemental towards the decision makers about this. Yet, the glitter of numbers has not been easy for those working at the margins where it is less easy to drive numbers relating directly to church attendance.

I have worked on several expensive and high-profile church planting ventures, and they most certainly turned in the numbers! At times I have heard such mission called, especially by those engaged in painstaking mission on the margins, “non-contextual”, or “non-incarnational”. I have to disagree. It is highly contextual, but it is also very clear about what its context is. The musical genres, food choices, décor, modes of dress, timing of activity are generally familiar and welcoming to those being engaged. The implicit psychology of the approach, by which I mean the presumptions around sources of identity and security, understanding of belonging, sequential reasoning, linguistic processing, emotional regulation, deferral of desire, etc, are highly incarnational respecting those often reached by such missional engagement.

The question of “the Gap” is less problematic in relational to such mission perhaps because, whilst faith may still be the work of God, the relative numerical efficacy is sufficient for there to be fewer obvious questions about the link between what the missioner does and the apparent outcome. The missioner’s handmaid role is heavily populated by all manner of activity that is culturally resonant for both the disciple and the person for whom faith is dawning. To put it simply, there’s plenty of “stuff” for me to be a handmaid with, and the overall numerical outcome is clear and repeatable enough for detailed questioning about “the Gap” not to be an immediate issue, not least for funders.

Social Action and Dawning Faith

I hope that some readers have seen the 2020 CUF & Theos Report, “Growing Good”. If not, you should! Amongst many important reflections, it draws out that, whilst the numbers may not be large, faith does dawn for at least some of those engaged in or by missional social action on the margins. Church Army sees this in its own work. What the report is less able to articulate (and as far as I can tell no one really can) is what is going on in “the Gap”. How is it that divine and human agency creatively collaborate in the dawning of faith? Can we, by attending to the detail of this, become better handmaids and guides? We can offer some pointers to what may be happening, but not with the sophistication that can help us understand assessable intermediate steps to guide day-to-day activity or provide the kind of numbers that draw the eyes of funders.

There is then a gap. It is one where we can proclaim the significance of both the handmaid and the Lord of faith, but have not much more to say. It might be argued that the church planters can say little more either, and at one level I don’t disagree. Yet it is worth reflecting on the depth embedded in the praxis-based and contextually-oriented understanding implicit in the approach. Perhaps this has been easier to develop because of the socio-demographic proximity between the missioner and those most often reached by such mission. Implicit or otherwise however, that sense of what the handmaid needs to do and be in “the Gap” is effective enough to produce a recognisable and fundable outcome. The complexity of mission on the margins is such that it seldom produces such a clear and rapid outcome, and the ability to say more about what is happening in “the Gap” assumes far greater significance.

Populating the Gap

Can we be more sophisticated in understanding the relationship between missional social action and the dawning of faith? Are there more and less effective ways of living and speaking faith in challenging situations of marginalisation? Can we press into “the Gap” to develop greater understanding of our role as handmaids? At this point a theological fault line running through what I have already said, truly surfaces.

There is commonly some reservation about steering into this question of “the Gap”, and my sense is that it emerges from four sources.

1. Those working in areas of marginalisation are invariably facing a torrent of need. The idea of trying to explore such questions rather than meeting an immediate need is, frankly, rather wearying.
2. When such obvious celebration attends “the numbers”, people have got a bit worn down by implied even if unintended judgement, and have little wish to line up for more.
3. A sense that it is a question that is just too hard to address anyway.
4. There is (and this is often how the other issues present) an affirmation that faith is the work of God, and to address “the Gap” in the ways I have been suggesting is to encroach on divine prerogative with manipulative and theologically questionable human techniques.

The first needs to be heard and responded to. One can’t simply ask the same people for more with less. The second suggests that this is something to be owned by those of us involved in mission on the margins. Amongst ourselves we should expect to receive and offer an empathetic response to our weaknesses as well as our strengths. The third might seem more tractable if we could do better with the first and the second. The fourth is I believe largely a theological smoke-screen. It hides the first three from view. Yet unless we can dispel some of that smoke and face into this question, it will probably be to the detriment of our mission in areas of socio-economic marginalisation. Subconsciously there can be a fair bit tied up in holding that smoke-screen in place, in keeping “the Gap” open with a big danger sign on it, since that saves us from facing into numbers 1-3. I will then devote the remainder of what I have to say to this smoke-screen, to addressing “the Gap”.

“Mind the Gap”

In the dialectical theology of the mid-20th century there is a sense of the divine and human being placed in opposition. Despite their brilliance, there would be something troubling if Karl Barth has put his pen down at the end of volumes I & II of Church Dogmatics (CD). In these earlier volumes there is a kind of alternation between two perspectives. A question is addressed from the human angle, and then from the divine. These two perspectives seem to be set in polarity, and the space between left empty and unresolved. We do what we do because God commands it, the rest is up to the sovereign will of God. It is as if the more God there is, the less space there is for the handmaid.

Yet Barth does not leave things there. His later exploration of reconciliation in CD IV offers a way to hold these poles together rather than in opposition. Whilst this is not the place to explore that, it is important to note that Barth’s answer is Christological; it is in Christ that “the Gap” is populated. What I have opened up as a practical question about what we do missionally, is unavoidably a theological question that drives us straight towards the doctrine of God in Jesus Christ.

The centrality of Christology in Barth’s work reflects its unavoidable centrality in all Christian theology. Without Christ there is no Christ-ian, and “the Gap” I have been circling around is strongly related to our understanding of God in Jesus Christ and the nature of the incarnation. How do we hold together in our understanding the full and unified personhood of one who is both human and divine? How to conceive of this and speak of this in a way that does not entail one side squashing out the significance of the other…or do we just remain silent, and leave “the Gap” to itself?

The intense debates of the early ecumenical councils should remind us of the inevitability of facing this very gap, and also the challenge of doing so. For those interested in following these things through, the Council of Chalcedon (451CE) set out an understanding of Christ’s incarnation that is still the touchstone of contemporary orthodoxy, and further debates running through to the iconoclast Council of Nicea (787CE) evidence how this Christological territory impacts other practical questions where the relationship between divine and created is in debate.

In brief, Chalcedon will not countenance any separation of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. Both natures are fully present, fully distinct, and fully united. Whilst we of course, shot through with failings as we are, never achieve the full stature of Christ, this understanding of the nature of Christ affirms something important in relation to “the Gap”. This is that there is no necessary opposition between the full presence and involvement of the divine nature, and the full presence and involvement of human nature in all its capacities. In principle, both the human and the divine can and should be fully present and fully engaged in the journey into faith. There is then no encroachment onto divine prerogative in seeking to address “the Gap”; there is no gap as such. Human nature is not overcome, or even overwhelmed by the incarnation, but perfected. God in Jesus Christ is, as David Jenkins so memorably had it (within the language of his day which I will not amend), both the Glory of God, and the Glory of Man.

There is nothing about the creative and rational faculties with which we are endowed that makes them inappropriate to invest fully in being the best handmaids we can possibly be to the dawning of faith for others. That is so in whatever contexts to which God calls us. I am often struck by the extraordinary endeavour, and the investment of the latest technology and every scrap of understanding and creativity, that went into the construction of the medieval cathedrals. Shot through with the usual panoply of failings may have been the lives of their builders, yet from the engagement of human and divine life have come not just impressive spaces, but places of divine and human encounter that have served as such for century after century. Are their soaring arches, their achingly beautiful symmetry and the subtle interplay of light a manipulation of human response, or just an extraordinarily eloquent invitation to encounter with God? We like them need to continue in awareness of our own need for redemption. We must be always alert to the risks of manipulation and subversion, but I believe that the answer to this is not to run from “the Gap”, but to prayerfully explore it, always open to critique and question. It is important to seek to understand the ways in which we can be more effective handmaids in word and action to the dawning of faith.

“The Gap” does come with some sense of apprehension, some caution. It should, because we are talking of holy ground. Yet to “Mind the Gap” need not be a matter of fear and aversion, but of careful, prayerful, faithful attention. Ultimately this is attention that should yield understanding that can guide our actions, strengthen our missional engagement, enhance the good we seek to achieve, and support the ongoing sustainability of our work.