St. Patrick Presbyterian Church is in its fifth year, and I often think about the future. Whenever I do this, I always return to the past, back to first principles, the reasons we exist and ask myself if these ideals are still central to our vision and imagination. One thing I keep coming back to is the idea of parish. I have been thinking about this as I ponder the future but also because I stood before the Board of Mayor and Aldermen this week and articulated the reasons I thought the city should sell us the old First Baptist Church building. Also, someone told me the other day they heard the word parish spoken of and wasn’t sure just what it meant. "Parish" is an old, quaint word, but full of meaning for work, community and ministry.

Parish comes from the Latin meaning an area or district. During pre-Christian days, European landowners took care of a particular region or district. Although noblesse oblige dictated this, they provided a priest to perform the community’s religious rites for those who lived on their land. After Europe became Christian, a clergy was brought into the parish and here is the point of the parish in antiquity: the parish was the place where “…the religious community was co-terminus with the total human community." (This quote and others that follow are from “The Role of Parish in Society”, by Lesslie Newbigin.) The parish was simply the little world where people lived, had friendships, their work and play. We might say, my grandfather lived in a parish. His little village of Moore’s Mill, in northeast Mississippi was where he lived, worked, played, fished, hunted and where he felt a keen responsibility towards everything and everyone in his town. Now that we no longer live in an agrarian society where people are connected by soil and blood, or community, does the parish still exist?

Newbigin writes, "Many people would say NO. Their picture of the Church is a series of competing congregations, each of which is a sort of religious club catering to the religious tastes of its members. The aim of each congregation is to attract as many members as possible to its services, increase its income and improve its buildings. A ‘successful’ congregation is one that does all these things. The game is ‘free for all’ and everyone is at liberty to join in the scramble for membership. Each congregation is simply concerned for it own self-aggrandizement and there is no sense of responsibility for the welfare of the society as a whole. The concept of ‘parish’ is completely lost." [Emphasis mine]

What is lost in this view of the church as it abandoned its place in the village or local geography is that it marginalized itself and has become a footnote. The church in the New Testament is different, it functions as a sign and indicator of the reality, goodness and power of God to those people involved in it. There, men and women take seriously the claims of sin, grace, forgiveness, healing – making the rule and reign of Jesus a reality. You can no more think of the church apart from being rooted in and part of a community where the people live, work, play and raise families, than you can think of Jesus without a human body. The church is always somewhere in time and place. The church, any church, exists in a particular, concrete community, village or suburb or city. "To speak of God’s new creation means to speak also of God’s will for these particular and specific communities that make up mankind. If the Church is to be in and for the world, it must be in and for these particular segments of the world. It must be the Church in and for this village, this factory, this suburb. In other words, the structures of the Church must be organically related to the structures of the secular world. That is the enduring theological justification for the idea of parish. There is no meaning of speaking of the Church as first-fruit, sign and instrument of God’s reign in the world if this does not apply specifically to this bit of the world where the church is set."

With the loss of the parish, where it once was rooted in a place to be a sign of what God’s restoring power can do -- the church has since lost its power and influence. When the local church exists only for itself and its members, and ignores its larger responsibility for the whole life of the community, churches more and more take on the look and feel of a country club rather than a redeemed community. Yet, when we begin to view the community around us as living in "our parish" we are beginning to think right. Community problems are our problems. The ascended Christ gave to his church all she needs to bring the healing restoring power of the kingdom of God to bear. It is only when this happens will the church have any impact in society more than just a mere curiosity or oddity.

Newbigin concludes his remarks about the parish idea with the following, "It is easy to say that the Church is God’s servant for the world. It only becomes realistic if we act concretely in relation to some segment of the world. That is the enduring validity of the concept of the parish."