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Comprehensive Witness

Written by Frans Hancke | 10 August 2010

FACTORS INFLUENCING COMPREHENSIVE PERSONAL WITNESS AND ENLARGING MISSIONAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE LOCAL CHURCH

Ph D 2005

Introduction

In the The Split-Level Fellowship, published in the mid-1960s, Wesley Baker analysed the role of individual members in the Church. He gave a name to a tragic phenomenon with which Church leaders are familiar. He called the difference between the committed few and the uninvolved many, "Factor Beta" (in Van Engen 1991:150). Van Engen describes Factor Beta as “the simple, plain fact that within the recognized corpus of the Church there are two quite different kinds of people - or at least two different sets of motive patterns.” He goes on to describe today?s typical parish as “made up, usually, of a small inner core of believers who assume the necessary posts of leadership with gratitude and devotion (albeit frequently naive).” Surrounded by a “cloud of uninvolved and mildly approving witnesses”, it can move in no prophetic direction as the Church “without doing greater interior battle with the forces of inertia, practically sealed in by the religiously immobile whose grasp of the meaning of the Church is something less than courageous. No local parish is free to be a Church, in the sense of a community holding unspoken, deeply valid affirmations to action, because of the sheer tons of dead weight” (1991:150).

In a previous study (Hancke 2001: 81, 84) it was determined that the existence of Factor Beta is a hindering and demotivating reality in most Churches today. Church leaders were positive to discuss ways and means to mobilise the Church towards becoming a missional Church but frequently the reality of Factor Beta casts a shadow over every effort to become the Church-on-mission. As long as only a small minority of believers accept and understand the responsibility to be living witnesses for the living Lord, the impact of Christianity in the world will be marginal.

On the positive side: If the existing global influence of believers is the witnessing result of only 10% of global believers, the effect of a positive shift can have astonishing effects in the world. Speculating about the effects of a 5%, 10% or even 20% shift can, humanly speaking, change the face of the earth!

The question may rightly be asked if Factor Beta is still relevant after nearly three decades since Baker published his insights. Are the remarks and experiences of those Church leaders still applicable to modern day Christianity? What about positive indications reflected by researchers like David Barrett?

The reality is that even statistically positive trends are mainly limited within the bounds of a small minority of Church members. Van Engen states that the decades “since Baker's work appeared has not brought us any closer to dealing with the central issue. It is still true that a Church is composed of 10 percent active, core, dedicated people - and 90 percent inactive, peripheral, semi-interested people. Though the percentages may vary, the general pattern holds true in too many congregations. Moreover, the situation is evident in all six continents, although Europe and North America suffer the most from "Factor Beta." In the early stages of work in establishing a mission congregation the ratio of inactive to active is at least as high as Baker's 90-10” (1991:150).

It is also noteworthy that much is being researched and written, numerous conferences, meetings and consultations are taking place across the globe and many global strategies are aimed at the unevangelised areas of the world. Rightly so, but relatively little is being done about the vast potential that can be unleashed by addressing uninvolvement in the local Church. Statisticians make sure that the status of global christianity remain a priority on the agenda of the global Church, but an uncanny silence surrounds the crippling results of Factor Beta!

This research will endeavour to make a contribution in this regard to:

develop a better understanding of those factors resulting into Factor Beta;
to model these insights in such a way that Factor Beta can be addressed at its core; and
that a significant shift in missional involvement of local Churches can be initiated.

Why? Why should we not accept the status quo? Or, should we accept that when we speak about the Church we are “really only talking about a select few and not about the entire membership: the "ordained," the "clergy," the "nuns and monks," the "priests and religious" of the Church? The Protestant Reformation attributed great importance to the "priesthood of all believers" and the fact that every Christian is called to intercession, prayer, justification, sanctification, and service. At stake in Factor Beta is the question of whether Protestant Christianity retains any meaning” (Van Engen 1991:150).

This statement emphasises the relevance and importance of this study. We cannot allow ourselves to drift into a no-care slumber. We, the Church, is equipped by the power of the Holy Spirit to be living witnesses, to bring Hope to a hopeless world. We should never accept anything less than the whole Church taking the whole gospel to the whole world!