Southwell and Nottingham
Diocesan Conference
Gen 12:1-9
Pilgrimage
Themes
• Church as Pilgrim Community
• Pilgrimage as Risk-Taking and Dissent
• Call or Vocation
• Theological Homelessness
Church as Pilgrim Community
Church as Pilgrim Community
as the agent of evangelization, is more than an organic and
hierarchical institution; she is first and foremost a people
advancing on its pilgrim way towards God. She is certainly a
mystery
rooted in the Trinity,
yet she exists concretely
in history as a people
of pilgrims and
evangelizers,
transcending any
institutional expression,
however necessary.
Pope Francis
Church as Pilgrim Community
In a missionary church, a community of faith is being formed. It
is characterized by welcome and hospitality. Its ethos and style
are open to change when new members join. Believers are
encouraged to establish interdependent relationships with fellow
Christians as they grow
Christ. As a community it
is aware that it is
incomplete without
interdependent relationships
With other Christian churches
and communities. It does not
seek to stand alone.
MSC Report
Church as Pilgrim Community
Questions for Discussion
• Take a few minutes to discuss what
pilgrimage means for you – how you have
experienced it in your own life.
• What does it mean for your church to be a
people of pilgrims as well as good
neighbours?
Pilgrimage as Risk-Taking and
Dissent
Pilgrimage as Risk-Taking and
Dissent
The need for the church in the West to begin a
pilgrimage of discovery
concerning its true vocation is
urgent. The missionary
imagination of the church is
best engaged when journey
lies at its heart. As one writer
puts it, ‘The ship is safest
when it’s in port. But that’s not
what ships were made for.’
Martin Robinson
Pilgrimage as Risk-Taking and
Dissent
I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary
impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the
Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and
schedules, language and structures can be suitably
channelled for the evangelization of today’s world rather
than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures
demanded by pastoral conversion can only be
understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them
more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral
activity on every level more inclusive and open, to
inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth
and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those
whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself.
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium
Pilgrimage as Risk-Taking and
Dissent
Mission involves moving out of oneself and one’s accustomed
terrain, and taking the risk of entering another world. It means
living on someone else’s terms, as the Gospel itself is about
God living on someone else’s terms,
the Word becoming flesh, divinity
being expressed in terms of humanity.
the transmission of the Gospel requires
a process analogous, however distantly,
to that great act on which the Christian
faith depends.
Andrew Walls
Questions for Discussion
• What might it mean for you to take risks
in your context?
• How might you be able to appropriate the
idea of dissent in your ministry?
• “Living on someone else’s terms” – what
might that mean in your context?
Pilgrimage as Vocation and
Spirituality
Pilgrimage as Vocation and
Spirituality
Not only does God in Christ take people as they are:
He takes them in order to transform them into what
He wants them to be. Along with the indigenizing
principle which makes his faith a place to feel at
home, the Christian inherits the pilgrim principle,
which whispers to him that he has no abiding city
and faithful to Christ will put him out of step with
his society; for that society never existed, in East or
West, ancient time or modern, which could absorb
the word of Christ painlessly into its system.
Andrew Walls
Pilgrimage as Vocation and
Spirituality
When you look at the important cultural
makers, not just designers, but photographers,
film directors, cultural people, over and over
they are people who are preserving a position
of some kind of independence, being able to
pursue their own direction, which produces
work which is of immense cultural value….
New ideas tend to originate in the margins
where those makers are freest.
Rick Poyner
Questions for Discussion
Does this idea of linking call with
pilgrimage work for you? If so, what might
it mean for you?
New ideas on the margins – any examples
you can think of?
Theological Homelessness
Theological Homelessness
Our first task in approaching another
people, another culture, another religion, is
to take off our shoes, for the place we are
approaching is holy. Else we may find
ourselves treading on people’s dreams.
More serious still, we may forget that God
was here before our arrival.
Max Warren, CMS Gen Sec.
Theological Homelessness
Trust must proceed and only in the going
will ‘the name’ be proven. Experience will
decide its content. Only in and through
exodus will the God who presides over it be
known for who He is.
Kenneth Cragg
Questions for Discussion
• Theological homelessness – do you
resonate with this? What might it mean
for you?