Recovering the Common Good (Part Three)

Recovering the Common Good (Part Three)

An Outpost of the Kingdom

In my earlier blog posts I suggested that Britain has not simply become more politically divided; it has, in many ways, forgotten the common good. I also argued that if we are to recover the common good, we first need to recover the story we are living in. The Church is called to inhabit the story of God’s Kingdom—a story that forms us into what I described as a fellowship of difference, where the waters of baptism run deeper than every political tribe competing for our allegiance.

That all sounds hopeful enough.

The harder question is what it looks like in practice.

What kind of churches does Britain need now?

I’m not convinced the answer is another programme or another initiative. The Church has never been renewed simply because someone found a better strategy. Renewal has always been slower than that. It happens as ordinary Christians are formed, often over many years, into the likeness of Christ. It happens around Scripture, prayer, worship, friendship, shared meals and acts of service. It happens as we slowly learn to inhabit another story.

Perhaps that means recovering a bigger vision of the Gospel.

My own home has been charismatic evangelicalism, and I remain deeply grateful for it. It taught me to love Scripture, proclaim Christ with confidence, expect the Holy Spirit to move and believe that lives really can be transformed. I hope I never lose those convictions.

But over the years I have also come to realise that the Gospel is bigger than the categories I first inherited.

It is certainly about personal conversion.

But it is never only about personal conversion.

When Jesus announces the Kingdom of God, he is not simply inviting individuals to make a decision. He is gathering a people. A people who learn to love their neighbours, welcome strangers, forgive enemies, seek justice, care for creation and bear witness to another way of being human.

Evangelism and the common good are not competitors.

One announces the Kingdom.

The other gives the world a glimpse of what that Kingdom looks like.

If that is true, then the Church should become a place where people are formed for public life.

Not as partisans.

Not as culture warriors.

But as disciples.

Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the peaceful.”

He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Peacemaking is not simply avoiding conflict. It is learning how to tell the truth without contempt, pursue justice without revenge and disagree without forgetting the humanity of the person in front of us.

I sometimes wonder whether churches should become known as schools of peacemaking.

That would be a remarkable witness in an age where outrage travels faster than wisdom.

I’ve seen glimpses of this over the years through Lighthouse

They rarely happen in dramatic moments. More often they happen around ordinary tables.

Sitting with the council, homelessness services, charities and people with lived experience, asking together how our city might respond more wisely and compassionately to homelessness.

Joining safeguarding professionals, social workers and healthcare teams to think through how best to support someone whose life has become painfully vulnerable.

Meeting with church leaders, civic leaders and others to ask what peacemaking might look like in an increasingly fractured city.

Standing alongside neighbours calling for action on climate change because loving our neighbour also means caring for our common home.

None of these moments feels especially glamorous. They rarely make the headlines. Most of the time they involve listening, learning, building trust and staying around the table when it would be easier to walk away.

Across Leeds there are numerous examples of churches and Christians serving the city, and serving the common good.

I have become convinced that this, too, is part of the Church’s vocation.

I think it was Tim Keller who once said that the Church doesn’t simply exist in a city, but for the city. Whether or not I’ve remembered the wording exactly, the idea has stayed with me.

The Church is not called merely to occupy a place or preserve itself within a neighbourhood. It is called to seek the flourishing of that place—to become a blessing to its streets, its schools, its businesses, its public institutions, its families and especially those who are most vulnerable.

That changes the questions we ask.

Not simply, How many people came on Sunday?

But, Who is flourishing because we are here?

Would the local school notice if we disappeared?

Would the council lose a trusted partner?

Would people experiencing homelessness lose an advocate?

Would isolated older people have one less place where they are known?

Would local charities miss our presence?

Would our neighbourhood be poorer because we had gone?

Those strike me as Kingdom questions.

Perhaps this is what the prophet Jeremiah meant when he told God’s people to seek the welfare of the city where they found themselves. The Church exists not simply to survive in a place, but to bless it. Not simply to grow, but to help others flourish.

Along the way I have also become increasingly grateful for the breadth of the Christian tradition.

My roots remain in evangelicalism, but I have found gifts in places I never expected. Catholic social teaching gave me a language for the common good and helped me think more deeply about human dignity, solidarity and our responsibilities to one another. The Anabaptist tradition reminded me that peacemaking is not an optional extra but lies close to the heart of discipleship. The Orthodox tradition helped me rediscover creation as gift rather than commodity.

No tradition sees the whole landscape.

Each sees something worth sharing.

Each has something to repent of.

Learning from one another is one of the ways the Body of Christ grows into maturity.

I don’t write any of this because I think the Church has got it all right.

Far from it.

We have often mirrored the divisions of our society instead of offering an alternative. We have baptised ideology. We have confused political loyalties with the Kingdom of God. We have sometimes preferred winning arguments to loving our neighbours.

There is much for us to repent of.

But repentance has always been where Christian hope begins.

Which is why I find myself wondering whether the next movement in the Church might sit alongside church planting, pioneer ministry and resource churches.

Not instead of them.

Alongside them.

A movement for the common good.

Churches that become schools of peacemaking.

Churches deeply rooted in the neighbourhoods God has given them.

Churches known for hospitality as much as preaching.

Churches that work with others for the flourishing of their towns and cities.

Churches that measure success not only by attendance, but by whether their neighbours are better because they are there.

Not churches that withdraw from the world.

Not churches that become captive to the world.

But churches that bear witness to another Kingdom.

Britain does not simply need louder churches.

It needs churches that tell a better story.

Churches whose life together whispers, long before they preach, that Jesus Christ really is Lord.

Recovering the common good is not about returning to some imagined golden age.

Nor is it another political project.

It is about becoming, once again, the people we were baptised to be.

A fellowship of difference.

An outpost of the Kingdom.

Seeking the flourishing of our neighbours.

And bearing witness, however imperfectly, to the reign of Christ until he makes all things new.

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Rev’d Jon Swales