MINISTRY
Church leaders are wrestling with real problems of trying to minister to people living in a culture that has shifted radically in recent years, which render most traditional ministries archaic and ineffective. To begin with what we need to do is reconsider the ways we envision God, how He ministers, and compare our findings to the ways we do ministry.
I want to begin by strongly suggesting that the fellowship of the three persons of the trinity actually represent the kind of community we are called to replicate in the church. If we are made in God’s image and after His likeness, it seems logical that we should, to some extent, behave like him.
The Trinity is not merely some antiquated construction that belongs in the writings of the church fathers, which doesn’t really speak to us today. Instead, the Trinity is central to:
- Understanding the nature and function of God,
- Understanding His relationship to His people, and
- Understanding how they efficiently function together.
That God is, in fact, triune is foundational to our understanding of how God personally relates to the world in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit. One author referred to the Trinity as a differentiated unity.
In the seventh century, John of Damascus, A Greek theologian used the term perichoresis to describe the relationship of the persons of God. The word is the Greek term for round dance. (Perichoresis – peri = around; choresis = dance).
Karl Barth wrote of perichoresis, “[It] asserts that the divine modes of existence condition and permeate one another mutually with such perfection, that one is as invariably in the other two as the other two are in the one” (Church Dogmatics, pg 425).
Although it is not a New Testament word and not all theologians accept its appropriateness as an image of the Trinity, this metaphor of dance is effective. Eugene Peterson explains:
Choreography suggests the partnership of movement, symmetrical but not redundant as in a folk dance with three partners in each set. The music begins and the partners holding hands begin moving in a circle. On signal, they release hands, change partners, and weave in and out swinging first one and then another. The tempo increases, the partners move more swiftly with and between and among one another, swinging and twirling, embracing and releasing, holding on and letting go. All this without confusion; every movement cleanly coordinated in precise rhythms, as each person maintains his or her own identity. To those watching, the movements are so swift it is impossible at times to distinguish one person from another; the steps are so intricate that it is difficult to anticipate the actual configuration as they appear” (Peterson, Christ in Ten Thousand Places, pp. 44, 45).
This picture of a circle dance implies intimacy, equality, unity (with distinction), and love (p.4 Cladis).
Theologian Shirley Guthrie (1994) calls this image of God a “lovely picture.” She goes on to say:
In this circle of God is a sense of joy, freedom, song, intimacy, and harmony.” The oneness of God is not the oneness of a distinct, self-contained individual; it is the unity of a community of persons who love each other and live together in harmony (my emphasis).
Miroslav Volf in his book, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (1998), speaks of perichoresis as “reciprocal interiority.” He recognizes that on one hand the perichoretic fellowship of God is not possible in human communities because it is so utterly divine. J. Moltmann observes, “By the power of their eternal love, the divine persons exist so intimately with, for, and in one another that they themselves constitute themselves in their unique, incomparable, and complete union” (quoted in Volf, p. 210). On the other hand God makes possible a kind of mutual giving and receiving imaged in the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He goes on to write:
In personal encounters, that which the other person is flows consciously or unconsciously into that which I am. The reverse is also true. In this mutual giving and receiving, we give to others not only something, but a piece of ourselves in communion with others; and from others we take not only something, but also a piece of them (Volf, p. 221).
“Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren't mere words. I don't just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act” (John 14:10, The Message).
As important as the concept of perichoresis is to our understanding of Trinity it is also essential to our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in the church. As we keep in view the mutuality present within the Godhead, we must carry that forward to the mutuality present within the Godhead and the church. This mutuality (unity) is the subject, the image, and foundation for church effectiveness.
I believe the team-based approach to leadership in the church will work because Scripture emphasizes Spirit-led, Spirit-gifted, collaborative team work and because today’s culture is receptive to the concept of participatory leadership.