The Proclamation of Free Grace, Pt. 1
Why the Church?
About the author: Sara Mannen is the McDonald-Agape Research Fellow in Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen. She is working with Professor Tom Greggs on the Ecclesiology After Christendom project. Sara recently completed her PhD on the concept of divine personhood in Karl Barth. She is passionate about theological study, especially modern and contemporary doctrines of God, and its import for the life of the church and world. She currently lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, with her husband and two daughters.
Why the church? What is God’s purpose for the church?
That thought is often found in the back of my mind as I reflect on my job as a theologian. By most accounts, the current state of the church is sobering. Pastors are experiencing burnout as church attendance plummets and churches close at an alarming rate, all while facing a deeply divided culture, abuse scandals, and a world at war (some of which the church is directly involved in promoting). The culture and world that the church inhabits have experienced seismic change over the past several decades—times have changed as the church no longer enjoys the same cultural prominence and power that it once did. These changes will be examined further in my next blog post.
I know this sounds bleak, but I do not think the only story about the church today is negative. The little parish I attend is life-giving not only to its members but to our whole community. I cherish my church community and desire to see more churches thrive, adapt, and grow in our ever-changing world. My intention is not to be a self-righteous bearer of gloom and doom. Instead, with eyes wide open to the reality of the church and world, I want to reflect on the importance of the church for the sake of the church.
I am convinced that the church cannot honestly reckon with itself, its new place in our changing world, and serve the world until it knows what it is. Tom Greggs has repeatedly highlighted the church’s need to understand itself before the church can be concerned with how to be the church:
Only in light of understanding the church within the economy of God’s grace can we begin to understand how we are to be the church in the vastly changed contexts of rampant individualism and post-Christendom in which the church now exists.1
This blog post will be the first of a four-part series that reflects on what the church is within God’s economy of grace by exploring Karl Barth’s essay titled “The Proclamation of God’s Free Grace.”2
Karl Barth lived through turbulent times in the church as well. He faced reality with his characteristic vigor and blunt honesty without losing hope in seemingly dire circumstances. Barth had a clear and consistent answer to the question: What is God’s purpose for the church? He affirmed that “the task of the Church is to deliver the proclamation of the free grace of God.”3 The church, in service to Christ, through its preaching and sacraments, and I would add worship and service to this list as well, is to proclaim God’s free grace to all people. For Barth, this is the purpose of the church—the very reason for its existence. Importantly, the church’s freedom is based on its commission and purpose. God’s free grace makes the church uniquely free. Free for God and free for the world.
Why does the church’s purpose to proclaim God’s free grace matter? In some respects, this may seem trite if you are a pastor facing the potential closure of your church due to financial difficulties or attempting to minister to deeply traumatized people. In no way do I think this gives us easy answers to the realities we face as a church. I do think solidly rooting ourselves in our God-given purpose in God’s work in the world must be where we start. My goal is not to give specific, concrete practical advice but hopefully to provide a theological framing and set of questions that helps each one of us reflect on being the church in our specific, local contexts.
First, the proclamation of God’s free grace reminds the church of the One whom it serves. It is absolutely central to Barth’s theology that grace is not simply a “property” of God or some occasional and arbitrary activity of God. Grace is not the exception. Grace is who God is eternally:
God is God by virtue of the fact that in His eternal Son, and therefore from all eternity, He was, is, and will be the God of men, who loved, loves, and will love men. He did this, does this, and will do this in freedom, for He is sovereign, He is majesty.4
No, God’s free grace is God Himself in His most inner and essential nature, God Himself as He is.5
It is completely understandable that, in our current circumstances, our first inclination as a church is to look to find solutions for the colossal challenges facing us, but Barth’s insistence on proclaiming God’s free grace firmly reminds us that cannot be our first move. Our purpose in proclaiming God’s free grace is to point to God. The church needs to hear this message first and foremost in our anxiety-inducing age. For the church cannot serve a community by proclaiming grace if it has not believed and embraced the content of its proclamation—the God of the gospel. The One to whom the church points is the God “who has made our business His own…It refers to Him who really does not sweep our human needs, concerns, cares, lacks, and problems under the rug, but takes them up, makes them His own, and answers and solves them better than we can know or desire.”6 The God of free grace will not abandon the church. This is the God the church must rely on even in seemingly unsurmountable difficulties—a God who makes our problems God’s own problems. We can trust this God because we know who and what God is through the grace revealed in Jesus Christ.
Second, the church’s purpose to proclaim God’s free grace means that the church is given freedom. The freedom of the commission to witness to the gospel of God’s grace releases the church from anxiety and panic. The church is free from the desire for “success” which also frees the church from nostalgia. This is a freedom from worrying about and trying to control the future and a freedom from becoming inflexibly and rigidly stuck in the past. Instead, the church is freed for the world. The church is freed to serve the world in new ways in the present. My next three blogs will each focus on the different freedoms the church enjoys in its purpose to proclaim God’s free grace.
I want to end on a positive note. For those in ministry who are facing challenging circumstances, ask yourself: am I proclaiming God’s grace in word and deed? If you can answer, “Yes,” then you are faithfully fulfilling your vocational calling. You are a participant in God’s work in the world by faithfully serving your congregation and world—even if your congregation is struggling. If you answer, “No,” which is understandable if you are in a high-pressure ministry survival situation, your honesty is to be admired, but please know that God’s grace can and does work through the most difficult of circumstances, including a ministry that has lost focus. The God of grace faithfully loves you and continues to seek you as a partner to proclaim God’s grace.
Tom Greggs, Dogmatic Ecclesiology: The Priestly Catholicity of the Church, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), xxx.
Karl Barth, “The Proclamation of God’s Free Grace,” in God Here and Now, trans. Paul M. van Buren (Routledge: New York, 2003), 34–54.
Barth, “Proclamation,” 37.
Barth, “Proclamation,” 36.
Barth, “Proclamation,” 37.
Barth, “Proclamation,” 38.
Sorry, old man hits the wrong button! Your last paragraph may function as a clarion call for us proclaimers of the Gospel to listen for it, ourselves.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you.