I want to suggest that at the heart of a renewed missional praxis there should be something like a theology (more precisely a missiology) of ‘public presence’. For me this line of thought has developed, over the last few months, less as a matter of abstract theological reflection than as a response to a practical necessity. We’ve been meeting each week in a local pub, and we’ve had to ask ourselves: What are we doing here? What’s the point of being here rather than somewhere else – somewhere less smoky, for example?

Behind this immediate concern are some more general questions about mission: On what basis can the church, which in many respects has found itself to be persona non grata in the brave, new post-Christian world, expect to reconnect with society, make friends again, win respect, gain a hearing? How should we exist, where do we position ourselves, what mode of being community should we adopt in order to be effective as the people of God in the world? And as we dig through these issues, we come to another layer: What do we mean by ‘salvation’? What is it for the world to be ‘blessed’?

These are some preliminary thoughts…

1. We have tended to understand the metaphor of the church as ‘temple’ or ‘priesthood’ either as a statement about the community’s relation to God or as a figure for certain aspects of inward behaviour (worship, for example). But the temple was the place of God’s dwelling not for its own sake or for the sake of the priests, but for the benefit of those on the outside. The believing community, therefore, may be seen as the dwelling place of the Spirit of God for the sake of those who are not part of the community.

2. A theology of public presence inverts the conventional missionary objective of getting unbelievers to be present in church. The operative principle is not invitation but infiltration – the word carries overtones of subversion that are not inappropriate, but it must be a subversion that aims to recreate, restore, heal, bless.

3. Whereas evangelistic activity has tended to be spasmodic (bursts of frantic and often fruitless zeal in the run-up to a mission or an alpha course), presence is slow, patient, continuous, persistent. Presence is a matter of taking up residence in the midst of the world; it is simply our way of being; it is a garden which we painstakingly and loving cultivate in the hope that understanding and trust will take root and grow there.

4. Presence is relational rather than programmatic; it is communal rather than institutional; it is conversational rather than presentational. The church, in attempting to engage with the world, has usually put on ‘events’ in the hope that they will generate relationships. This should be turned around: whatever events we put on should arise out of being already community; they should be integral to the life of the community; they should be motivated by internal needs and ambitions.

5. The sort of presence in the world that I have in mind needs to be differentiated both from the presence of a believing individual in a secular environment, who struggles to ‘witness’ to his friends and colleagues, and the beleaguered presence of a group of believers who feel threatened by the world around them. We are looking for the presence of an active community, a relational nucleus, that is confident that it has in itself the resources of spirit, wisdom, and love to be able to contribute something of enormous value to the lives of people in its vicinity.

6. A properly embedded presence will provide a more credible, more honest, and more sustainable basis for a prophetic, priestly or pastoral function.

7. There may even be a sense in which the world may come to relate to God vicariously through the life of these priestly communities in its midst. Whereas some traditional theologies have, in different ways, made the individual priest a mediator between God and the church, a theology of public presence may make the believing community, as priesthood, a mediating body between God and the world. Should the church perhaps take the view that it has been entrusted with a responsibility for the spiritual well-being (understood quite holistically) of the world?

8. This perhaps points in the direction of a relativized and contextualized notion of ‘salvation’ as the process of being ‘healed’, of being made whole, as a result of living in proximity to the ‘temple of God’, where the Spirit of God is active. This process may arrive at the critical juncture of baptism in the name of Jesus, at which point a person exchanges the spirit of the world for the Spirit of God in order to become not only a receiver but also a giver of grace – but this is not the sole object of the exercise.

9. If you pour a bottle of red ink into the sea, it will become ‘present’ but it will also very quickly lose its distinctiveness as red ink. A theology of public presence will also need to establish some boundaries. What is poured out into the world must be gelatinous enough, viscose enough, gooey enough not to lose all shape and identity. The nature of any priestly ‘mediation’ will need to be defined. Presence, for all its slowness, still needs a sense of direction.