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
I have no doubt that for many people these are important questions that require answers, but our experience appears to paint a different picture. Relatively few people ask us to provide answers to one of the 'big questions'; instead, we have regular conversations with people about general issues of spirituality, relationships, prayer and politics. The people we meet, it seems, are less concerned with intellectual answers to the great issues of life – 'why' they should believe in and follow a God of any kind - and are more interested in 'how' a life lived following the Christian (or any) God may be led in a meaningful way.
It is no accident that here in the Diocese of Liverpool we have adopted the imagery of 'Lake and River' to help us understand and communicate the relationship between inherited and emergent forms of church. Lakes tend to form in settled places, where they become an oasis to the life around them. In the same way, our parish churches offer an oasis and source of life to the community around. Rivers are often still connected to lakes but are free to flow wherever the ground gives way into many more and different places. Very often new forms of church flow beyond the neighbourhood and into various networks, from workplaces to schools and hobby-based groups.
Two months after the 'official launch' of VOX City Church in Cape Town, and just a few weeks into the start of the Woodstock Missional Community, which I run, I have come to realise a basic mindset shift which most people fail to make concerning biblical community: biblical community is more about choice than affinity.
The vision of Nightchurch is to seek to become an inclusive community with Christ at the centre, learn how to be generous with hospitality, creative in spirituality and passionate about justice. We have a team who meet at Exeter Cathedral on Friday nights for an open space, free café, various spiritual expressions - from a conversation group to meditation, prayers for healing and the occasional time of communal worship. People also meet fortnightly in a pub for a discussion group – the only rule being that there are 'no Sunday School answers'. So Nightchurch is really a family of expressions. The one in the pub with a small group of people is one thing, but to fulfil our vision in a cathedral on a weekly basis? Madness.
As human beings and even as Christians, many of us have a tendency to fall 'in love' with our material stuff. One only has to pick up the Anglican edition of the Canadian Church Calendar for 2010 to view beautiful seasonal photographs of church buildings across Canada. The front of the calendar itself quotes Genesis 28.17: 'The house of God ... the gate of heaven.' Don't get me wrong. I can appreciate beautiful architecture and churches as much as the next person. But is the 'house of God' a building? Can God be kept in a box? We who encourage fresh expressions of church don't think so.
