When I first thought about working for Hope08, quite a few people told me not to bother. It was 2006 and nobody was really sure what this 'Hope 2008' thing was – just that it had some famous Christians attached to it, a bit of hype and a fairly unspecific website. I was told that the concept of unified, holistic, nationwide Christian mission was at best silly, and at worst cynically motivated empire building.

I'm not good at taking advice so I signed up to work for Hope08. I liked the passion of the leadership team and the real efforts they were making to genuinely give their idea away to local churches. I also liked that it was a bit ridiculous and that it could only work if God liked it too.

So we started trudging away – getting churches excited about working together and suggesting ways they could bless their communities. We put together books, gave advice, published yet more websites, went to conferences and made up a framework of 'high points' to help churches access the year of intense mission.

We were a comparatively tiny team attempting to commission the UK to 'do more evangelism, do it together and do it in word and action'. Sometimes it felt like the whole thing was stuck on pause, and sometimes we couldn't handle the number of people signing up. We had no idea what – if anything - was going to happen in 2008. Christmas 2007 was scary.

I've been in shock for the whole of 2008 – we were unprepared for the generosity, beauty, kindness and grit of the church in the UK. We'd had a few ideas of what churches could do, but our feeble bleatings were drowned out by the weight and originality of what happened in that year.

I couldn't ever sum this all up, but I do know that all over the UK people came to church for the first time because the church had come to them. Cheesy, but true! Simple things worked, like car washing and litter picking. Complicated things like citywide youth outreach weekends also worked. In some places family fun days gave churches roots in their communities, and in other places social action projects flooded Jesus into the places that need him most.

We've published an evaluation with lots of numbers in it – you can find at www.hope08.com. We like it because it's full of encouraging stats, and also because it tells the truth – there are things we could have done better and that future projects probably need to know about. Mainly, though, it's exciting stuff and it seems that Hope church groups aren't stopping here but are carrying on into 09 and beyond!

We had no idea it was going to go as well as it did, but we're glad to have been involved.

Note: How do you feel about Hope08? What was good? What would you have done differently? Please leave a comment.

 

As we look to 2009 and beyond, Graham Cray, incoming leader of the Fresh Expressions team, gives his thoughts on the future of the church:

'I think the church over the next few years is going to hear the word of the Lord through the credit crunch. A former diocesan secretary in Canterbury used to say: "The Church of England as it is now structured cannot afford the Church of England as it is now structured." And my guess is, that is true for almost every historic building with plants and churches and manses and so on.

'The critical question then is, if we have to be a more lightweight church in terms of plants and bureaucracy - not in terms of theology and spiritual vision - then will we find the way to live the mixed economy in the new realities? I'm quite convinced that means a townwide partnership of every church willing to take part; that we dare not compete with one another. We do need to complement one another's strengths. And one of the threads that runs right through that sort of ecumenism is actually fresh expressions.

'So it may be that in God's economy - and having been taken by surprise by what he's done already, I'm just having a guess at how he might take us by surprise in the future - that this becomes critical in enabling the energetic partnership of churches together doing lighter weight church in serious mission and involvement in their communities. Hope '08 gives a hint of that. I think fresh expressions gives a hint of that.

'The real changes, I think, will be renewing of imagination to do church with less of the very costly historic resources. That doesn't mean the mixed economy disappears, because we will still in historic denominations do beautiful liturgy, do dignified worship. But I am convinced that there's got to be some significant change in the use of our available resources.'

The full 14-minute interview with Graham Cray is available as a podcast extra, alongside the December 2008 Fresh Expressions podcast. All Fresh Expressions monthly podcasts, plus other audio material, can be found here.