The church became a pastoral institution adopting the shape of society’s structure with parochial churches and a division between clerici (priest) and idiotes (lay people). Even whilst the parish structure remained dominant, there have always been alternate models with greater focus on the small community, such as “prayer houses,” local lay fellowships of believers, and house churches.

Change Emerges through Immigration Today, the Constantinian model of Corpus Christianum and of parish structures is rapidly heading for change. The state Church may be dismantled in a few years and new church structures will emerge. Already there are a number of examples of experiments with new forms and structures, often initiated by missionaries returning from service abroad.

And we see house churches emerge. Using the images of clan, synagogue, and temple, one might say that the house church is the clan living together in a small hamlet and local communities in the countryside; the synagogue is a community where the smaller groups gather regularly; and the temple is the site of larger scale celebration where the many come together. Such emerging “mixed economy” models grow up in cities and suburban areas in Norway.

Norwegian society was, for centuries, a homogeneous culture and a country with Lutherans constituting the overwhelming majority. Today, the rapidly growing number of immigrants has also made Norway a multicultural and multi-religious society. A substantial number of these immigrants are Christians from Africa (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria) and Asia (Myanmar, China, Philippines). Probably one-third of churchgoers in Oslo on any given Sunday are immigrants. This is a good illustration of how the global comes to the local.

This reverse trend in mission now offers the old heartlands of Christianity a model for renewal and calls for a structural reform of the churches in Norway to grapple with the challenges of migration. There is a long way to go before the churches in Norway “see” and “discover” the new Christians in their midst and begin to consider them “fellow labourers for Christ” and not just strange and exotic bedfellows.

This process has started and migrant churches and leaders are increasingly realising the challenge to become a source of inspiration and renewal in the Norwegian setting of often stale church life. Here we are not talking about inspiration in terms of rhythmic dancing and hand-clapping. Rather, the local church in Norway needs the vitality, the brokenness, the spirituality, and the understanding of primal religious power from Christians in the global South.

Renewal of churches in the West is possible, and the most important way is likely to “go global.” From the churches in the global South we may hear the gospel in a new tone and witnessed by new voices. We may have the churches in the global South demonstrate the strength of the local congregation as an agent of evangelism.

Adopting a Missionary Stance The dream is to bring together the missionary focus on the specific mission activities of the church and the missional related to the nature of the church, as being sent by God to the world. This “marriage” is being tested in various forms in Norway, by mission societies, churches, and local congregations.

The dream finds expression in a desire to see congregations in both the North and the South become missional. Impacting the world begins with local congregations giving up Christendom assumptions and adopting a missionary stance both within their own culture and cross-culturally. Missional congregations pray both for renewal within their community and in the marketplace.

In local congregations, missional structures are created that go beyond the hierarchies of the past and provide a balance between worship, community, and mission at all levels of church life—in cells, Bible study groups, fresh expressions like café churches and sub-churches, and a growing interest in retreats and Taize.

The dream is to see every member being motivated and equipped to take his or her role in inspiring, encouraging, and equipping local believers, as God’s people turn inward (centripetal movement) in order to turn outward (centrifugal movement).