The Guide contains how-to-do-it advice on starting, developing and sustaining fresh expressions of church based on shared experiences.
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The Guide contains how-to-do-it advice on starting, developing and sustaining fresh expressions of church based on shared experiences.
More about The Guide
Posted by Andrew Wooding on 23 March 2009
My explorations of fresh expressions in Britain have been remarkably encouraging. Normally, my job has me visiting new ministries throughout the Episcopal Church, constantly in search of what I might share as 'learnings' with the larger church. That persistent search for 'learnings' and new insights suits my job title perfectly as Program Officer for Church Planting and Ministry Redevelopment for the Episcopal Church. In short, I am the Episcopal Church's Chief Cheerleader for new ministry development, and I am based in New York.
This visit to the church in Britain has been marked by gracious hospitality and generosity from leaders in the Diocese of Liverpool, Church Army and The Sheffield Centre, Fresh Expressions and local saints in Manchester, Liverpool, London and Sheffield. I am really grateful.
As I prepared for this trip, I surveyed colleagues and advisors for the questions they wish they could ask of ministry leaders here in the Church of England. What emerged as the key question is based on the belief that the CoE has wrestled with the effects of secularisation considerably longer than we have in the States.
The question goes something like this: 'If you'd known 20 years ago what you know now about the church's needed responses to secularisation, what might you have done differently, in anticipation?' In other words: 'How would you have intentionally prepared faith communities to partner with the work of the Spirit in a rapidly changing world?'
The question is not meant to be heard as: 'What do you wish you had done, back in the day?' as much as: 'How might we (as an institution) prepare our hearts to embrace the new work that the Spirit is longing to engage in us?' I look forward to sharing your responses with our Ministry Innovators back in the States.
With hope, Tom Brackett
Note: Tom received a number of answers to his question while visiting Britain. How would you have answered him? Maybe you could leave a comment.
Comments
20 years ago . . .
Posted by Andrew Jones on 31 March 2009 - 13:26
Tom's question is good. 20 years ago, as someone much younger and brasher, I was starting a church service in a coffee shop environment but one that was still controlled by the mother church - which pulled the plug on the experiment a few months later, despite its success.
I suppose I would have started earlier to help educate the church on a deep ecclesiology that does not see the traditional models as home-base and the fresh expressions as experiments, nor sees the physical location church as the "real" and the web-based online communities as "virtual". I wish I had read the letter to the Hebrews a little earlier than I did, and I wish I had created less of a perceived division between old and new.
20 years ago ...
Posted by Pam Smith on 26 March 2009 - 16:33
... I was a very new Christian. mother of young children and already very frustrated by what I now recognise as the 'attractional' model of church.
What inspired me then and still inspires me now is 'looking for where God is already at work and joining in.' So much of church life can seem to be about 'doing what we want to do (and/or have always done) and asking God to send us pew fodder.' God loves people too much to send them along to your church to prop up your activities - which, if they are not focussed on God's mission, are more secular than Marks and Spencers! (Or Macy's).
And maybe we could trust God and try to understand what he's doing rather than moaning at him all the time? Maybe secularisation is a good thing not a something he's sent to try us with?