Church Review: Cityside Baptist Church
Website: www.cityside.org.nz; Ph: (09) 377 3512; 8A Mt Eden Rd, Newton, Auckland; Senior Pastor: Brenda Rockell; Sermon topic: “teach, heal and cast out evil“; 15.6.08; 10.30am.
Rating: none given
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)
You’ll like this church if you: want an all-inclusive community of faith, are looking for a church that’s moving away from polished feel-good concert worship, seek new ways of thinking and practising your faith outside the confines of “church” or “doctrine”.
You won’t like this church if you: stick to propositional truths of the Bible, don’t approve of women serving in leadership roles, take exception to emergent theology and its lack of clear and Bible-based definitions, see church as a place to fill your spiritual needs rather contribute to conversations and doubts.
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One of the hallmarks of the Baptist church in general is a certain degree of independence of each church from a main organisational hierarchy, or a structure. This means that, though there are generally some common threads between different Baptist churches (for example, believer’s baptism), each church does certain things differently from the next. Our ongoing quest to find a home church has showed quite clearly that no two Baptist churches, or no two churches of any sort, are quite the same. So perhaps it’s in this environment of greater religious freedom that you’d find one of New Zealand’s emergent church communities at Cityside Baptist Church.
What is emergent? It’s hard to nail this right, but generally it could be church which is actively trying to reinvent how “church” is done, is open to people of all orientations, races, and gender, and promotes an ongoing dialogue and discussion rather than set-in-stone doctrine and truths. I’d say that Cityside is a particularly attractive place for Christians who are disillusioned with being washed up in corporate-style megachurches, as well as attractive for people who don’t consider themselves Christians but relate with this community’s social mission and push for interfaith dialogue. In any case, we knew this would be an intriguing experience from the moment we walked up the antique wooden steps and sat down in one of the many trademe couches, arranged around a room filled with hand and footprints on the walls, avant garde artwork and lighting fixtures, and offering bags sewn out of colourful, woolly socks.
Worship: A very informal affair, led by Fergus McKinlay who put some songs up on an overhead projector in between short, simple prayers. The song choice definitely reflected Cityside’s social activism focus, with song lyrics that implore worshippers “to make the earth the place in which the kingdom comes”, and most importantly, to “love your neighbour as you love yourself”. I’m a bit mixed about the efficacy of the social gospel (since we’re fighting against a world that’s irrevocably breaking down), but the sincerity of the worship relaxes me. It’s a joy to observe an interesting demographic mix, from Remuera mums to young couples, men in jandals to beanie-wearing ladies in long, flowing dresses and half-dreads, all singing “Jubilate Deo” in canon form. All songs were accompanied on the humble chords of a well-used piano – definitely no mike amps or guitar riffs in this time of worship.
Speaker: Brenda Rockell offered a half-hour discourse on her thoughts on what it was like to be one of the 12 original disciples, and what the “Good News” was actually being preached in Jesus’s years of ministry. Her main argument was that the good news of Jesus didn’t depend on His resurrection, summing up JC as a man of substance and a great role-model. Rockell urged the 50-strong congregation to look at a different commission: rather than proselyting and converting people to be Christians by title, she contended there was a different focus to the actions Jesus told his disciples to do when they were sent out into various townships of the day. [edited 29.7.08]
It all sounded very well and good, but even a cursory glance at the most well-known verses would quickly reveal that Jesus wasn’t just a preacher of positive action. His execution was the direct result of His making claims that He was God, not that He was a good role model for society in helping the poor and the sick, as applaudable as that may be. Even the verses surrounding Jesus’s proclamation of the Great Commission at the conclusion of the book of Matthew shows how the disciples not only modelled Christ, they worshipped Him too (Mt 28:1-20). Rockell’s scant use of Biblical references to back up her thoughts on meant that it ended up being almost a blog-post like opinion (much like this one here) surmising what may or may not have happened – it just felt like a thread in an forum post, rather than any sort of detailed look at God’s Word. Perhaps this one verse could sum up the viewpoint of Cityside Baptist: “Whey they saw Him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.” (Mt 28:17). Nevertheless, I appreciated the subsequent open discussion that gave a very smallgroup or bible study session feel to the service.
Church history: If the building looks like its seen a lot of history, that’s because it has. It was built at its present site a stones’ throw from old-school pub Galbraith’s in 1906, and Mt Eden Baptist Church enjoyed its status as one of the larger Baptist churches in New Zealand at the time. Increasing suburbisation led to the decline of worshippers and the building was turned over to the Auckland Baptist Mission in 1960. Eventually a change to a church-focus saw the name changed to Cityside Baptist Church and City Mission in 1993. Cityside retains its strong roots in missional service, and chatting with members of the congregation reveals the same enthusiasm for serving the community as their forebears.
Visitor treatment: After the service we chatted with two friendly women; Pauline and Kristin, as well as a father-of-two. Everyone we spoke to was friendly and amiable, and all shared their common passion for helping each other and the community at large. Pauline also shared her experiences of serving on a short-term mission onboard the Logos II, which is an OM sister ship of the Doulos that we went off to visit after the service.
Other faculties: For its size, the church had a surprisingly large number of children frolicking around with great abandon, running between chairs and tables in the kitchen area in front of a small fair-trade espresso machine station ($3 for a good conscience/cause). With church attendance “rather fluid” (there’s around 100 registered members but attendance levels vary greatly), as put by someone, it’s good to know that there’s still a range of activities like Playgroup (small child not a requirement), Monastic Group, and even after-work drinks. It’s hard to say what exactly some of these events entail without actually attending one or two of them – I’d say a Cityside brochure would be one of the few places you’d find a Benediction next to a call to drinks at Galbraiths.
Conclusion: Church on couches, love all your neighbours, sincere postmodern thought and banter – yet on the day, nary a mention that Christ crucified is why we have a church in the first place.
N.B. [29.7.08]: Have a look at the comments section below for a responses and clarifications on the sermon from Brenda Rockell, and visit this link for the full sermon.
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(Disclosures: none.)
Next week: cession|community.
(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)
Been waiting for this one! fantastic as usual. A most fascinating church experience, although probably not my home church…
Thanks for reading! It was a bit lengthy this time. I’ll have to work on being more concise.
Hi William,
thank you for your considered thoughts about Cityside – I’m glad that you felt welcome and enjoyed our worship.
I’m pretty disappointed in your review of my sermon, however. I was explicitly
NOT talking about the great commission. I was focusing my attention deliberately on Jesus’ sending of the 12 in his own ministry time. I carefully explained that the gospel we have to proclaim after Jesus’ death is broader than the missionary activity of his disciples while he was still alive. Of course, the gospel for those of us who follow Christ today includes Jesus as the Christ, as risen Lord, as the one who died and rose. In this sermon, I was particularly focusing on the actions Jesus told his disciples to do when they went among the towns he sent them to.
I’m disappointed that anyone reading your review would have the impression that we preach an exclusively social gospel. We don’t. I expect that your prior assumptions about emergent communities led you to hear what I said through that filter.
Anyone who wants to read the text of the actual sermon is welcome to visit the Cityside website (www.cityside.org.nz) and look up the sermon titled ‘teach, heal, and cast out evil’ under the ‘words’ page.
While we welcome doubt as a normal and even important dimension of faith, we also affirm Jesus as the centre and heart of the Christian faith – the ‘image of the invisible God’. As followers of Christ, we don’t view him as merely a role model – and I don’t believe I have ever used that phrase in reference to Jesus.
Perhaps it would have been courteous to send a link to your review to me, so that I would have the chance to respond to your critique. As it is, I found your site by accident.
Anyway, I wish you well in your exploration of various churches.
Hi Brenda,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply – I must apologise for the misconceptions that I seem to have made with regards to your sermon. I’ll be the first to admit that I only intended to chronicle our ongoing search for a home church at the time, and didn’t expect much of writing up my experiences at the time. I think on the day we were fairly interested in finding out more about the sermon but didn’t get the chance to talk, so I’m really glad you were able to share the proper perspective from your sermon (if a little surprising in circumstance). I guess it would have been good to get your point of view as well prior to publishing the post, though you may have found it quite intrusive/unsolicited at the time.
I don’t use the term “social gospel” in a particularly dogmatic or judgemental way – in fact, I enjoyed the increased focus compared to other churches that rarely put doctrine into practice. And I wasn’t denying that Cityside has a focus on Jesus Christ, but from my limited window I didn’t pick out any strong profession of Jesus’s divinity and his most important message (that all might be saved). While I can now understand that your focus on the day wasn’t on that, to me, the gospel for us today should always include that as its priority.
I guess one of the limitations of a once-visit is that you may have covered the salvation message in more explicit detail another week that I wouldn’t have heard, although I did recall you terming “salvation” in quotation marks (though my memory is fuzzy as to what the context was).
In any case, I definitely don’t see Cityside as a purely social-gospel church, and I’m sorry if in trying to quantify the experience I described Cityside as a straight ‘emergent church community’. I found it notoriously difficult to pin down what type of church you were other than using the term ‘emergent’, but perhaps describing it as a church community with emergent facets might be more accurate?
Anyways, wordpress seems to be a pretty fluid format so I’m happy to tweak any gross inaccuracies that you might insist on. Thanks for the humble rebuke!
From reading this blog I think its clear that it was never intended to be a particularly public exercise. And for the most part I felt that the reviews had a “fair flavour” even if at times the nuances were necessarily muddied. It is good you posted the link to the sermon because I think it backs up the pastor’s contention that this was a highly contextual sermon framed with a clear appreciation of the life, death and resurrection of Christ (2 of which had yet to happen at the time of the passage under discussion).
“Clearly, the good news that the disciples went to proclaim was not that Jesus had died for their sins, or that Jesus had died and is now risen, or that they could have a relationship with God through the Spirit of Jesus. None of these things had happened yet.”
Implication: that they would happen
“I’m not suggesting that these passages are a total blueprint for defining valid Christian mission or practice. They’re too limited for that, which is to say, they’re firmly fixed to the context in which they took place.”
Implication: read it in context
“And, this picture of what Jesus sent his followers out to do is constrained by the fact that it is a pre-Easter message. It is good news of hope and forgiveness, and a call to repentance of heart, none of which depends on Jesus dying or rising. However, there are spiritual dimensions to life with God that come to us through the wider, post-Easter experience of a resurrected Christ. These dimensions are part of our ‘good news’ as Christians today. And they are, of course, missing from the story that the first disciples had to tell prior to the events of Easter.”
Implication: this is a pretty firm contextual set up, not a replacement gospel
And just in case you missed it in the introduction:
“And, as I mentioned before, I don’t see these three things as the totality of what it means to practice our Christianity today. But, they’re a useful tool, when we ask ourselves what we’re called to do in the world, as followers of Jesus.”
Implication: I think she made her point with abundant caution.
Not to undermine the sincerity of the reviews, the integrity of disclaimer and the care to be balanced and fair, I do think these specific passages from the sermon need to be highlighted to give balance. Not everyone can be bothered searching this stuff out. I am a sad media junkie who does.
Will there ever be any more reviews? They were interesting. And the journey was compelling if a little surprising with its outcome, given the breadth of appreciation otherwise expressed.
Disclaimer: I don’t go to Cityside Baptist. I don’t know anyone there. I don’t think I’ve met the pastor.
Nice thoughts! The only thing I would probably add to that is in reference to the following:
In thinking about this, the only issue I have is with the above assumption that the gospel had a different meaning. You nailed it on the head when you pointed out that “they would happen” – John the Baptist was already preaching it in Mt 3:2, so there’s no reason why the Disciples couldn’t be proclaiming the Gospel before “these things had happened yet”.
In fact, considering Jesus himself was bold about his claims (think the six “I am” statements throughout John for example) and what would happen to him, it would be rash to assume that the 12 Disciples weren’t proclaiming Jesus’s imminent role in the salvation of the townsfolk they met.
I’m still trying to digest some new thoughts about Big Gospels and little gospels that Frank points out on his site. It sort of relates to this because what he’s saying is that aside from the major themes like atonement and salvation, the various exhortations of Jesus Christ and his disciples can be termed as little gospels. I don’t why can’t they just be termed as doctrine, or just plain commands we follow as Christians after we accept our gift of salvation. Perhaps it’s a postmodern way of reaffirming what’s in the Bible.
As I pointed out, some of my thoughts needed correcting given my limited scope of a one-off church visit, and I was grateful for the pastoral rebuke. I liked many things about Cityside that made it unique, and would be happy to visit if time ever allowed one day.
re: future reviews, probably not in the meantime, unless there’s a pull somewhere else. But that doesn’t mean I’m not involved in any more write-ups. As you pointed out, I appreciated the majority of the churches, and would not have minded making a number of them my home church. However, I’m not the only one that makes decisions…
I enjoyed these reviews a lot. I’ve been to most of the churches you’ve mentioned at least once (including Cityside) and I agreed with almost everything you said, especially i nthis review.
It was also cool to know just what’s going on out there.
The best thing was, compared to how I would do a review, you were remarkably restrained in your criticism,which is shown in your rating system.
I liked it.
Thanks Rhett
Now all you have to do is to get your SimChurch going and then I could visit it! hehe~