The idea of an unbound Christ may lead to another allied idea of an unbound Church. The unbound Church is a Church freed from its traditional closed inward looking thinking as well it’s essential frontal thinking. Unbound church thinks dorsal, frontal as well as inward. To come to unbound Church, we need a quantum leap thinking. This quantum leap in thinking makes a shift from ‘go and bring’ (into Sunday services ) to ‘go and stay’ with the people taking the Church into the universes of the lost. It is a radical challenge to become kingdom yeast and transform by immersion. Quantum physics challenges us to become an unbounded Church in its inclusive embrace as well as teleological destinations. This is a Church in the Schrodinger’s box. We have the challenge to put the notion of the Church in Schrodinger’s box and what we arrive at is an unbound Church. Maybe this new way of being a Church is badly needed in our time when our Church seems to be on a decline.
Church in Schrodinger’s Box
The notion of Church in Schrodinger’s box enters what we may call a semiotic blackhole. It loses its bound character and just like the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, we can imagine that Church remains unbounded and become unwalled. It is only when we open the box that the Church will appear bound this way or the other. Perhaps, the twentieth century challenges the Church to remain in Schrodinger’s box and remain unbound. Unbound Church is not a closed Church but an open Church. The unbound Church is true to its catholic nature. Such a Church is organic and missional and is freed from the traditional ‘go and bring’ people to Sunday services so as to embrace ‘go and stay’ with the communities so that the Church becomes truly a missional community that lives, acts and prays in the universes inhabited by the people of our time. Quantum physics seems to be opening a Kairos moment for us to truly be a Church in the world today. It may require us the courage to embrace this momentous occasion. If we miss the opportunity, maybe the way we have shaped Christianity might become a distant echo. This does not mean that we have to cease to be a maintenance Church that is maintaining existing Christian congregations but we also have the challenge to be among people lost in the several universes outside the fading Christendom.
Unbounded Church
The unbounded Church is unwalled and therefore is a new paradigm in ecclesiology. It is proposed by Martin Bragger from Australia. It is moving away from Drag-in Sunday-centric way of being Church to a life-centric missionary community that does not give up Sunday but does more to be missional. The congregational footprints are fast falling today. This is why an unbound Church that can open itself to the cultural universes of the people may be best suited to respond to the falling footprints our the people who seem to feel alienated by a Church walled by tradition that appears to them as frozen in the past. Thus, the notion of an unbound Church has the energy and potency to let it enter the lost universes of the people. This may take the Church from the margins to the mainstream of the cultural universes of the people. The light given to the Church cannot be kept hidden within it, it has to be kept on the lamp stand so that it outshines the darkness of the cultural universes of our people today. We have the challenge to penetrate these cultural universes of the people.
Unbound Mission
Albert Einstein famously said: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. New evangelization that was proposed by Pope St. John Paul was new in its ardour, new in its methods and new in its expression. Unfortunately, we seem to have struck old methods even more strongly and are insanely expecting results that will influence our changed conditions marked by the unbound digital revolution. We are indeed trapped by Einsteinian insanity. This is why we need serious tinkering with our notions of ecclesiology ( identity ) and missiology ( action) in light of Quantum Physics. We have the challenge to become Church for the society of our times. We have the call to be present in the parallel universes where we are as yet absent. This means we have to give up ‘In Drag’ activities and replace them with ‘Out Reach’ activities. The Church has to get out of its comfort zone and set itself up truly on a ‘ star trek’ mission. This means an unbound Church has the challenge to journey in a world alien to it. It has to enter the wormhole of the world where people are happily inhabiting away from the Church.
Conclusion
We indeed have a huge challenge to give up Einsteinian insanity. It is indeed a Kairos moment that invites us to leave the safety of a walled Church and become the unbound sacrament of God to all His people. We, therefore, have to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimagined so that God’s work of new creation in Jesus Christ begins again in and through a renewed unbound Church. God wishes to renew the multiple universes next door and His Church cannot lock itself into its walled fortresses. The challenge to be vulnerable is where the Holy Spirit blows. We have to let the Holy Spirit take charge of the Church. This is when our vulnerability (weakness) will become our strength. We will have the courage to walk the unmapped future. Only by becoming unbound, the Church can become all things to all. Inclusive nature is the DNA of the Church. We have the challenge to embrace the adaptive and dynamic metaphor of DNA and leave aside our old static metaphor of a Form. The DNA of the Church is catholic and, therefore, it has to continuously become unbound and bring about continuous outbreaks of the kingdom.
