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
Fresh expressions challenge Christians to
think of church in new ways. Many church members
have heard regularly that they should be involved with mission, but
often little seems to happen.
Could this partly be because Christians can't imagine how church could be different? Existing forms of church are so deeply ingrained that congregations cannot conceive of anything else.
Yet different and more varied ways of being church are central to fresh expressions. Thinking afresh about church is a mission priority.
To re-imagine church requires a clear picture of what church is. What can change and what has to stay the same? It may be helpful to ask:
What is at the heart of church? The simple answer is Jesus. The question is not what is at the heart of church, but who?
Archbishop Rowan Williams has described church as 'what happens when people encounter the Risen Jesus and commit themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their encounter with each other' (Mission-shaped Church, Church House Publishing, 2004, p. vii).
Church is what goes on when people meet Jesus, meet each other and meet Jesus in each other. Church happens when people gather regularly round Jesus.
The essence of church is discussed further...
What must always happen 'in' church? It is not quite enough to say that church is what happens when people encounter Jesus and one another. Are there things that we should expect always to happen when these encounters take place?
Over the years Christians have said 'yes', though they have not always agreed on what these essential 'happenings' are. The Methodist Church in Britain, for example, describes church as worship, learning and caring, service and evangelism. These are what you can expect to occur when people gather round Jesus.
A more traditional answer is contained in the Nicene Creed, which affirms Christian belief in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic marks of the church. These are four essential aspects of what it means to be church. If Christians are really meeting Jesus together, these four dimensions of church will always be present.
They are sometimes re-expressed in today's language as follows. Church has:
These dimensions overlap and reinforce each other. Christians may connect with God and have fellowship with each other as they serve people in mission, which may be undertaken with other groups of Christians.
UP, IN, OUT and OF are channels of grace and means for individuals to grow closer to God. All four dimensions need to be present for a Christian community to be truly church.
What can change? UP, IN, OUT and OF are a skeleton to support the flesh and blood of church. How each dimension is expressed will vary between denominations, and from one church to another within a denomination.
Christians continue
to debate what form these dimensions should take. Some churches think
communion should be celebrated every week, for example; others once a
month - while the Salvation Army doesn't celebrate communion at
all.
Inevitably, some of these wider debates will be reflected in fresh expressions, as they seek to become churches that both fit the culture of people who take part and remain true to Scripture and the Christian tradition.
We give some examples of what can change in A different approach to church.
How can we preserve our identity? Remaining true to our particular inheritance is getting tricky as local churches become more diverse, due in part to fresh expressions.
'All these churches are so different, what makes them specifically Methodist?' 'What will make this fresh expression Church of England?'
Five values that tie Church of England churches together have been suggested by Steven Croft.
(Steven Croft, 'Conclusion' in Steven Croft [ed.], The Future of the Parish System, Church House Publishing, 2006, pp. 178-182.)
Three values that might be at the heart of contemporary Methodism have been suggested (in conversations) by former Principal of the Methodist Cliff College, Howard Mellor:
Might these be helpful guides to whether a fresh expression is truly Church of England or Methodist? What would be the equivalent for other denominations and 'streams'?
We would offer three bits of advice to churches
planning a fresh expression:
Be clear about your identity - about what you think is vital to express the UP, IN, OUT and OF dimensions of church. How important, for instance, is weekly communion, gathering round the word of God, ministering in the Spirit, campaigning for social justice or eating together?
Will you be working within a catholic, evangelical or liberal tradition? It would be asking a lot of many congregations to support a fresh expression that had a radically different theological stance to them. So being clear at the outset about what is negotiable and what is not could well avoid tensions later on.
Leave as much room as possible for exploration. The Spirit is constantly bringing new insights into the church. A fresh expression will need the freedom prayerfully to experiment with different approaches to mission, building community, worship and discipleship.
God has built experimentation into creation, and so experimentation should be part of the church's life. God believes in creative experimentation.
Be generous to churches that define 'up', 'in', 'out' and 'of' differently. Robust debate about an aspect of church can easily slide into judgemental attitudes that impair fellowship and undermine the 'of' dimension of Christ's body.
As one person said, only the whole church can know the whole truth.
Comments
Eucharist
Posted by Gordon Banks on 16 August 2010 - 17:48
I would like to hear more about creative ways an F.E. can embrace the sacraments as part of the Church's movement to maturity when it is a lay led community and therefore 'the leader' is debarred from offering this aspect of the Church's life. My own suggestion is an 'Order of Companiable Priest' walking alongside the F.E. This also helps to introduce the idea of the catholicity of the Church. F.E.'s always run the danger of thinking they are the Church!
Posted by Pam Smith on 17 August 2010 - 14:28
It seems to me that there is a huge tension between the pattern of weekly Eucharists being the expected norm - which is what the C of E has largely come to expect - and the need for flexibility both in new groups and in established trad churches where there is no longer the money to pay one person per church.
I'm sure that many ordained people would be more than happy to take the role that David describes and let someone else worry about the day to day practicalities of arranging meetings, keeping rotas going and (last but by no means least) ensuring financial stability since even the most basic group will incur costs over time.
I think it is hugely important that we acknowledge leaders within communities may be lay or ordained rather than forcing people into the ordained mould.
At the same time, I do worry that there is an underlying expectation that ordained people end up just being there to fulfil the sort of boundary setting role that David describes rather than to use all their gifts fully.
Boundary setting is a really important part of pastoral care but the worst case scenario is that the ordained person ends up as the 'parent' - and hey presto, there we are right back to 'Father knows best!'
Andrew's point that there are other church traditions to draw on is well made and I hope that discussions about how fresh expressions might develop will draw on the experiences of the whole church tradition.
Posted by David Muir on 18 August 2010 - 17:28
Pam: I don't see the need for a priest to 'use all their gifts fully' in each situation. We are there to serve, and to draw on our gifts appropriately for each setting we serve. I think paid 'professional' priests will increasingly be 'mentors' to a number of small Christian communities, and they must resist the idea that they must find outlets for all their great and amazing gifts...
With my role with the Alternative Worship group, it was definitely not 'father knows best'. They frequently ignored my advice and suggestions, and it was important that I allowed them to do so. In a sense that is precisely a 'parent' role in relation to our older children/young adults, knowing that they know the situation better than we do and we can only help them make their own wise choices, not tell them what to do -- because really we don't know. But we owe to them to offer our best judgment, and we owe it to the whole Church to make our best judgment about whether we need to distance ourselves publicly from this particular group because it is seems to be going off the rails. We might even be wrong about that, but again our best judgment is as good as it gets.
Posted by David Muir on 17 August 2010 - 12:54
Gordon: I think you are on the right track here. I think the churches that St Paul planted were led by the natural leaders in the community, largely the richer and more educated folk. And in a highly structured society, I suppose no-one would have questioned that much. St Paul was the evangelist and the key teacher of the faith – but not the leader or the pastor. Today we roll up leadership and teaching into one (priestly) role. Perhaps that is part of the problem for emerging FXs. What if we separate these roles, so that fresh expressions have ‘natural’ leaders but the key teaching role is taken by a resource person, drawing on the OT prophetic (rather than priestly) model? And this same person could be a trained priest within the wider church, and thus able to administer the sacraments of the wider church too.
When I was in Derby diocese I was the ‘attached priest’ to an Alternative Worship community there; and my role in part to be an advisor to the young adults who led and developed that community (whether or not they take the advice…) and in part and in the last resort to be the whistle-blower (that was in the wake of the Sheffield Nine O’Clock Service and all that). Maybe the best model for FXs is to have attached teacher/priests who don’t lead the FX but who are enough involved to know what is going on, have prophetic input into it, administer the sacraments, help to shape and form disciples – and blow a whistle to the wider church if everything seems to be going pear-shaped?
Posted by Gordon Banks on 17 August 2010 - 20:54
Thank you David - this does my heart good. I have 'struggled' as a lay minister in the Church of England for 30 years and it 'feels' always that I am 'second class' and not quite made it to 'proper' ministry. I have often asked the same question - why is it axiomatic that the priest (sarcedotal church) is also designated the leader? So, I would say a big yes to any FX's having a critical friend, a priest, a mission accompanier who walk alongside and offer whatever support may be needed. Also that leadership of any expression of Church is given to those with the qualities of a leader, which may or may not lie with a priest.I would add that I am not in anyway anti-priest and have a high view of the priesthood, but have seen so many whose priestly ministry is frustrated by also being the catch all leader, teacher, pastor, evangelist, children's worker, etc.etc.etc. Let us find a way to free priest to be priest.
Posted by Andrew Wooding on 17 August 2010 - 10:47
Hello Gordon,
I presume you mean the Church of England when you say 'the Church'. This isn't necessarily an issue in other parts of God's church, and fresh expressions of church are seen in many denominations, not just the Church of England.
Sorry about this. I admit I often get confused when people refer to 'the Church' when they possibly mean just 'part of the church'.
Andrew
Posted by Gordon Banks on 17 August 2010 - 20:39
Thank you Andrew for the 'tap on the wrist' - I suppose having been involved with a sarcedotal expression of the Church for over 30 years I sometimes forget that other expressions of the Church do not follow the same line!
what Rowan says
Posted by Laurence Keith on 17 October 2007 - 15:43
its encouraging to hear what Rowan says, as it would aptly describe what we're doing.
the thing i particularly like is that is doesn't say anything about banning homogeneous groups! we're often asked how we can think of ourselves as church and be homogeneous, to which our reply is always that we are a very young fresh expression, you have to start somewhere!!
i think Rowan's definition is releasing and helpful as it doesn't start to put unhelful social boundaries in too early on. nice one, Arch Bish.
laul