Churches often ask how 'we' can do mission. But who are the 'we'? How was the membership of our church determined? And the answer mostly is: worship style. In these 'worship-shaped churches', the worship style gives people their essential sense of 'belonging'. The problem with worship-shaped churches engaging in mission is that they find it very hard work. It is like introverts going to parties, or extroverts going on silent retreats – it's just not their 'shape' or their inner style. They can do it, but it drains them because their membership is not 'gathered' around this purpose.

The churches in one Devon town provide a housing trust that supports homeless people. Now, if a homeless young man is touched by God's care for him expressed in this project and wants to explore the Christian faith, what does he 'join'? Where is the fellowship of Christian people who are energised by this aspect of the Christian mission that has touched him? He can't join it because it isn't there. The Christians who work together in this project have melted away into their separate worship-shaped churches, where that project is frankly peripheral to their corporate life.

Our challenge today is to create churches where the primary reason people join is the particular focus of its mission. Such churches will find worship hard – as hard as the worship-shaped churches find mission. Worship will not be the emotional powerhouse that it is for worship-shaped churches. But it will also not need to be. 'Gathering for mission' is what will give a mission-shaped church energy, and will keep it on track as a mission-oriented church.

In a sense, worship stands at the most intimate centre of the church's life. It can be totally enthralling, whether it be a charismatic celebration or choral evensong. A good worship life in a church is like a good sex life in a marriage. But what would we say about a marriage where the couple talk constantly about sex, earnestly read books about how to make their sex life even better, spend most of their spare time in bed together, live from one sexual encounter to the next? We would worry for them – because the truth is that marriage is much more than sex. It is about building home, creating stability, providing places of companionship and welcome – and, of course, having and raising children.

Jesus invites us to put the kingdom of God and his justice first, and everything else will be ours as well. For those who love to worship, but who also want to be instruments of God's kingdom purposes and his justice in our day, it is a saying they need to learn to trust. 

David Muir is an Ordained Pioneer Minister in the Okehampton Deanery of Exeter Diocese. With a long background in adult Christian education, he is now supporting 24 largely rural parishes to create fresh expressions of church that will resonate with the increasingly diverse population of Devon. He is also course leader of The Pioneer Disciple, an Anglican/Methodist Devon adaptation of the mission shaped ministry course (see www.exeter.anglican.org/pioneer), and he writes a regular column on how to do church in a 'pioneer' way (see www.exeter.anglican.org/pioneerprimer).

If you have something burning to say and want to contribute to the Share weekly guest blog, please contact Beth Keith.

A thread running through many fresh expressions is God's call to take risks – to step out of comfort zones. Maybe the Spirit doesn't want us to become too settled or reliant on our own way of doing mission and being church.

Jesus did this when he called his first disciples - pioneers who helped God to build his church. To Simon the fisherman, who had caught nothing all night long, Jesus says, 'Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.' (Luke 5.4) Although he is sceptical, Simon does so and then experiences what it means to trust in the power of God. Perhaps he doesn't really understand why his net is full, but now the way he sees Jesus is changed through taking the risk.

The spirituality of fresh expressions is the spirituality of risk. We can sit on a familiar shoreline and gaze at the shallows where we have grown comfortable with the way things are. But Jesus offers a deeper invitation: to try something different; to see that there may be new ways of reaching people and finding some way to answer the question, 'what might the kingdom of God look like for them?'

As fresh expressions leaders have taken a risk, however, sometimes they find that this didn't work out. But that first step was important. God showed them one path, only for them to find that this leads to something else quite different. Yet, to get there, the first step was vital.

Simon Peter took the risk of 'putting out into deep water'. How might God be asking something similar of you, or your church? Ask him to show you, and to be the power needed for his kingdom come.