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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I can honestly say it was one of the greatest privileges of my ministry to be involved in the first national Pioneers Conference in Cambridge this Easter. It was a wonderful meeting place for pioneers to learn, share together, worship and have fun.
We asked everyone present: 'If there was one thing you could do differently what would it have been?' The overwhelming answer was a desire to have had a longer period of preparation before launching into the fresh expression; a longer period for listening to God, praying, engaging with the community, developing the team, clarifying the vision and values, and many other things.
Often there was sensed by the pioneer a pressure to get going as soon as possible. This pressure sometimes came from the self-expectations of the pioneer. Sometimes it was from the team that wanted to get going, or a deanery, circuit or diocese that wanted something to happen and some success to celebrate.
My wife has been involved in rowing races all week here in Cambridge. So far it has been a dismal week for her crew. The main issue has been problems at the start which then handicapped them for the rest of the race. It's better to invest the time and energy in getting that start right.
My experience with church planting is that you will never get to the point where you are perfectly ready. But maybe it is important not to be pressurised into going too early. Take your time as you respond to God's timing.
And why not think about joining us at our Pioneers Conference in 2010, July 5-7 at Kings Park, Northampton?
Dave Male is involved in training pioneers in two Anglican theological colleges in Cambridge and is planting a church to connect with sports people, called Relay. His blog is here.
If you have something burning to say and want to contribute to the Share weekly guest blog, please contact Beth Keith.
The rhetoric of this second phase of Fresh Expressions seems to place a large focus on embedding fresh expressions in the ordinary life of the traditional church. Fresh Expressions, as an institution, is moving towards the centre. My personal vocation has always been to the edges, and hence I personally react against this move towards the centre. It may be that the move towards the centre is correct for Fresh Expressions, but my question is whether this centripetal movement is missional suicide for fresh expressions.
When I began ministry eight years ago, there was no Mission-shaped Church report, no Fresh Expressions, no mixed economy, no Ordained Pioneer Ministers, no Bishops' Mission Orders; it was an exciting time as we broke boundaries and defined church alongside the traditional pattern. In the past five years all these areas have been developed; many resources have been poured into them as the edges have been pulled towards the institutional centre. The edge is now neatly defined by its relationship to the centre rather than by those outside the church. Fresh Expressions is mainstream.
For many spiritual searchers and post-modern pilgrims, the mainstream nature of Fresh Expressions is deeply problematic. Many questions will be asked such as: 'Do I want to be part of a mainstream, hierarchical institution?' If the answer is no, then we will have failed in this part of the missional task and so, whilst I recognise the importance of the relationship to centre, it seems that we need to nurture the new emerging edges rather than the edges defined by the centre.
Bio: Ben Edson established Sanctus1, a fresh expression of church in Manchester city centre, in 2001. He blogs here.
If you have something burning to say and want to contribute to the Share weekly guest blog, please contact Beth Keith.
I feel I have to respond to Paul Roberts' Share blog of 27th April entitled, What is 'missional'?, Paul argues that a church he is involved in can be missional without 'a proven and primary capacity to bring unbelievers to faith and discipleship'. He adds that 'full-on intentional evangelism work is still on the back foot'.
Sorry Paul, but that's not missional! It may well be important and necessary work, but it's not missional. But I do think Paul highlights an important discussion concerning what we mean by 'missional'. The danger I find is that with many emerging churches, everything is missional but mention evangelism at your peril.
Yet David Bosch, whose work on the Missio Dei is at the heart of our missional language, writes: 'Evangelism is the core, heart or centre of mission. We do not believe that the central dimension of evangelism, as calling people to faith and new life can ever be relinquished. I have called evangelism the heart of mission. With evangelism cut out, mission dies: it ceases to be mission' (Evangelism: Theological Currents and Cross-Currents Today).
Now, I am not suggesting that evangelism and mission are synonymous, but I do believe that evangelism is at the very heart of mission. We do not help the fresh expression movement if we are not enabling unchurched people to become transformed and transforming disciples of Jesus. As I have written elsewhere, we have too many safety nets and not enough fishing nets.
We also do evangelism a disservice when we divorce it from discipleship. As Graham Cray says in the June edition of the e-xpressions newsletter, we need both quantity and quality. It is about winning people to Christ, but it is also about the qualities of discipleship that we are seeing developed in new converts and their communities.
The danger is we reject evangelism because our present (or past) models are deficient for this age. But that's no reason to excuse ourselves from the work of evangelism. The need is great today and so we must to do the hard work of seeking out and developing good, faithful and relevant models of evangelism. (There is no one model!)
Scott McKnight, the American theologian, in a recent article in Christianity Magazine (April 2009) on the emerging church, put it most bluntly and starkly when he wrote, 'Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord.'
Dave Male is involved in training pioneers in two Anglican theological colleges in Cambridge and is planting a church to connect with sports people, called Relay. His blog is here.
If you have something burning to say and want to contribute to the Share weekly guest blog, please contact Beth Keith.
One of the most useful chapters that came out of the new book Ancient Faith, Future Mission: fresh expressions in the sacramental tradition, was by the now Bishop Steven Croft. In his chapter (where he critiques the development and resistance to fresh expressions in the Church of England), he reminds us that the key focus of fresh expressions is to build ecclesial communities out of contextual mission. Steve reminds us that in the end all labels such as 'emerging church', 'fresh expressions' and 'alternative worship' are about contextualisation, and about the important refocusing on mission in our increasingly post-Christendom, post-modern and post-secular culture.
Often the term 'fresh expressions' can be confusing. This is why it is so important that the focus is on building church and not as some people seem to think, 'it's all about worship'. One of the strengths of the Fresh Expressions initiatives is that it draws on deep missiology. From the start it has drawn on the work of Vincent Donovan and Roland Allen, both accomplished missionaries who have written comprehensively about the process of mission as growing the church in particular contexts. It is for this reason that Fresh Expressions in its second phase of five years is focused on the process of listening, responding in loving service, building community, discipleship/catechesis, and finally, the development of contextual forms of worship.
This process is key if mission is to be focused on the 'unchurched', the largest growing missional need. As we increasingly become a post-Christendom culture, it is expected that the numbers of 'dechurched' will fall. The dechurched were a much easier group to do mission to in some ways; the unchurched are a greater challenge because of the socio-cultural challenge of engaging with people who have no understanding of the Christian faith at all, and some of the ways we express it can be deeply anachronistic. However, if we are to be committed to 'proclaiming the gospel afresh to every generation', this missional focus on the unchurched is crucial.
We know from research that traditional church planting models are good at engaging with the open dechurched and recycling Christians, but not good at engaging with the unchurched in general terms. The other great problem with traditional church planting is that it tends to set up attractional rather than missional models of church. Attractional models of church tend to over-focus on a strong Christian subculture that makes it hard for contextual forms of church to develop. So we must not lose the focus on building ecclesial communities out of contextual mission. After all, this is the focus and definition of fresh expressions, of seeking 'to build church with people who are not yet members of any church'.
So how do practitioners engage with proper cultural, missional, theological and I would argue Trinitarian thinking to assist good practice? Well, one good book that has come out that I really think hits the mark is Pete Ward's Participation and Mediation: A practical theology for liquid church. This book is about keeping focused on building ecclesial communities out of contextual mission. The strange thing is that many of us, including me, are quite shocked by how well Pete articulates a method and process out of experience, which is pretty much spot on the journey that many of us practitioners have been making. Pete therefore has drawn together a book out of his great experience which I can only say would have made my life a lot easier if it was around 15 years ago! Further, Pete's work takes contemporary approaches to mission by culturally listening and engaging where people are as a bedrock to then engage with practical theology. As Pete says, I am convinced that practical theology and engagement with it, is crucial as a form of prayer and discernment. Or as Pete puts it:
The Challenge I faced as a youth minister required the ability to reflect both theologically and culturally ... The style of relational ministry ... I set myself [was] the task of journeying into the world of young people and meeting them in situations where they felt at home. The idea was that I went to their territory. This means that I was a visitor in a context where they were in control and they set the rules. Needless to say this was not at all easy, but interestingly almost from the start I felt that this kind of ministry was a deeply spiritual practice. Going to young people, rather than asking them to come to me, gave me a strong sense that I was in some way sharing in God's love and concern for the world. In fact more than that, I was struck by the conviction that the Holy Spirit was there with the young people even before I arrived. (Pete Ward, Participation and Mediation, SCM Press, 2008, pp. 13 & 27.)
Commitment to reflection of the cycle of need, cultural analysis, mission, theology, God as Trinity, and building ecclesial community has to be the central craft of any committed pioneer minister. So, enjoy the journey, because at the end, it is about thinking and acting in our attempt to catch up with what God is already doing in people's lives, and this is what I believe fresh expressions of church is all about.
Bio: Ian Mobsby, author, priest missioner, fresh expressions core team member and associate lecturer in theological education
Blog: www.ianmobsby.net
Moot: www.moot.uk.net
Ancient Faith, Future Mission can be bought here.
If you have something burning to say and want to contribute to the Share weekly guest blog, please contact Beth Keith.
