http://davemale.typepad.com/churchunplugged/
www.centreforpioneerlearning.org.uk
www.grovebooks.co.uk
Fresh Expressions of Church
2004
30,000 copies sold
Unanimous approval at
General Synod
Discussed and
implemented in
Dioceses
Influence in UK
Ecumenical
Worldwide influence
A fresh expression
is a form of church for our changing culture
established primarily for the
benefit of people who are
not yet members of any church.
It will come into being through principles of listening, service,
incarnational mission and making disciples.
It will have the potential to become a mature expression of
church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church
and for its cultural context.
A fresh expression is a church plant or a new
congregation. It is not a new way to reach people
and add them to an existing congregation. It is not
an old outreach with a new name. (rebrand) Nor is
it a half way house, which people belong to for a
while, on their way into Christian faith, before
crossing over to ‘proper church.’
This is proper church.’
Graham Cray. An Introduction to fresh expressions
Recent research in the UK.
Across 10 CofE Dioceses in England………..
On average 10% of church attendance
15% of church communities.
In 7 out of 10 dioceses it reversed the decline
in church attendance
20 different models of FX & across socio-economic
groups.
Starting team 3-12 people. Average size 44.
52% leaders lay ( 2/3 female)
77% people outside church, 44% unchurched,
33% dechurched
1,500 Methodist FXs
www.churcharmy.org.uk/fxcresearch
Today’s changed world calls for local congregations
to take new initiatives .For example in
the secularising global North, new forms of
contextual mission such as “new monasticism”,
“emerging church,” and “ fresh expressions”
have redefined and revitalised churches.
Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes.
World Council of Churches
Affirmation on Mission and Evangelism,2012.
Available at International Review of Mission
• National Fresh Expressions
• Lay training- MSM
• Ordained Pioneer Ministers
• Bishop Mission Orders
• Extra mission funding
• Mixed economy
The Mixed Economy
both-and
continue to grow and develop
the church as it is
establish fresh expressions
of church
This is not
new but fresh
"Your Lordship has received the charge of of an
immense Diocese containing hundreds and thousands of
unconverted souls. We in humility offer to do what God in his
goodness may enable us, for a few thousand of these. We
desire to do it as the Holy Spirit leads us in the Church's
way. We neither hinder nor judge those who might be led to
try some other way. We do not ask your Lordship to commit
yourself to any principals of which you may disapprove, but
merely to permit an experiment, allowed by the church,
to be carried out by people who have a heart to do it. Surely
in such a Diocese and such a work there is room for us all
without hindering one another. Evidently something more
elastic and energetic is needed than the old Parochial
System."
Fr Charles Lowder SSC writing in 1857
quoted in Charles Lowder by L.E.Ellsworth (London, DLT 1982) p.43
any thoughts?
Any other interesting quotes?
This is about
being……….
Contextual
‘ To the Jews I became like a Jew, to
win the Jews………..
I have become all things to all people,
so that I might by any means save some.
I do it all for the sake of the gospel,
so that I may share in its blessings.’
1 Corinthians 9;16f
‘ The Theology of the West, was itself a limited,
contextual product of a particular set of experiences.’
Every time and every culture has to reflect
on faith on its own terms.
The Christian faith needs to engage a context
authentically as a missiological imperative.’
Prophetic Dialogue.
Stephen Bevans & Roger Schroeder
Shaped by the constants of the faith
and the context of the mission.
How is faith experienced and
embodied now?
•Incarnation- a world to enter
•Cross- a world to counter
•Resurrection- a world to anticipate
‘ It is important to remember that
what counted as an appropriate
response to God in one generation
and culture will be very different in
another.’
Abbot Stuart Burns, Mucknell Abbey
“Each of us promises in the Anglican formularies
to proclaim the faith fresh in every generation by
the grace of the Living God at work within us. To
do this well in our own day involves a willingness
to go to every part of our changing culture, and
often, to work with the Spirit to form new
communities of word and sacrament in fresh
and imaginative ways.”
•
‘…do not try to call them back to
where they were, and do not try to
call them to where you are,
beautiful as that place may seem to
you. You must have the courage to
go with them to a place that neither
you nor they have been before.’
Vincent Donovan
‘not leaving the tradition
but driving to it’s heart’
Gerald Arbuckle, Refounding the Church
Missional
‘ the church is missionary
by it’s very nature…….
the church does not have
a mission
but the mission has
a church.’
Prophetic Dialogue.
Bevans and Scroeder
• "The church is not the sender but the one sent.
Its mission (its "being sent") is not secondary to
its being; the church exists in being sent and in
building up itself for the sake of its mission.“
• “Our mission has not life of its own: only in the
hands of the sending God can it truly be called
mission. Not least since the missionary initiative
comes from God alone.”
• David Bosch, Transforming Mission.
“ we understood mission one
way and organised life to
accomplish it. We have
awakened to find out the
mission moved on us. To
keep focusing on mission, we
have to turn the furniture
around and face a different
direction. We may even have
to move into another room.”
Loren Mead. The Once and Future Church
‘Mission is often described as if it were
a planned extension of an old building.
But it fact it has usually been more like
an unexpected explosion.’
John V Taylor
Formational
The glory of God is
the human person fully alive
Irenaeus of Lyon
The details of the
shape of
Christian living
•How we see God
•How we see ourselves and others
•How we see our community
•How we see creation and society
“ If not part of a mutually
discipling community the
culture will disciple you.”
Graham Cray
What kind of people are we called to be?
What kind of community is capable of
raising people like that?
‘We would intend to make disciples
and let converts
happen rather than intending
to make converts
and let disciples happen.’
The Divine Conspiracy, p334.
Ecclesial
The point of Fresh Expressions is the point
of the Church itself, that is to provide a
place where Christ is set free in our midst,
if one can use such an expression……..
So you’re going to hear something now
about being the Church, and being the
Church of England, not about something
marginal, something eccentric, but about
the very life blood of who we are and what
we are”.
“ And so from the start , where Jesus is,
there is the church, the church is the
assembly of those who are finding their
relationships, their lives transformed
by the presence of Jesus.”
“every expression of the church is, in it’s
own way, another worked example of what
the encounter with Christ looks
like in the life of a particular community.”
“how to manage the crossover from what
we do to what God does…..with the sacramental
life flowing through as a sign and channel
of God’s action.
We might need to sit light to a lot of the externals,
to break the mould and concentrate on what
sort of environment allows God the space to be
God,actively and transformingly.”
Concrete Church
‘ The identity of the concrete church is not simply
given, it is constructed and ever reconstructed
by the grace enabled activities of its members
as they embody the church practices, beliefs
and values.’
Nicholas Healy
Church as a place where certain things take place
to
a body of people sent on a mission
•Community gathered by a common calling & vocation
to be a sent people
•God centred mission rather than church centred
•church as missional with calling and sending action of
God forming its identity
Church as four sets of relationships.
up
of
out
in
Moynagh, Church for Every Context p 106.
“ the theological doctrine of the church
cannot be simply expressed in abstract terms
about the churches timeless nature. It will
have to provide points of departure for
reforming the church, for giving it a more
authentic form. Faithfulness and the fresh
start are not antitheses in
the history of the Spirit.”
Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit
“This seems to be a mandate for some
reinterpretation, re-expression and making
the faith relevant, provided that this exercise,
imperative as it is, remains faithful to the
Scriptures and the creeds.”
“ one that is full of vitality and manoeuvrability
and which has the flexibility to make
contact with the contexts of our pluralistic world.
Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism, T&T Clark,2007
“what we need is the patience and nerve
to start telling the story again and
let the God of Mission recreate his church.”
+Stephen Cottrell
Eight criteria for ‘proper’ Church.
p181
1. Community of people called by God
2. Regularly worships and is sent out in mission
3. Gospel is proclaimed
4. Scripture preached and taught
5. Baptism
6. Holy Communion
7. Authorised ministry for Lords Supper
8. Connected to wider church through various ways
Unity and diversity
Unity
‘ Diversity is part of God’s gracious purpose but
separation and mutual recognition is not.’
‘ There must be new ‘forms’ of church, outside the walls
of the existing church and distinct from the
community from which it came. Separation there
must be- for the sake of mission but equally separation
cannot be the last word for the gospel is about Gods
purpose to unite all things in Christ.’
Ecumenical Review 29
“The real voyage of discovery consists
not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust
‘In a situation of rapid discontinuous change,
leaders must understand and develop skills &
competencies to lead congregations & denominations
in a context that is missional rather than pastoral.
A congregation must become a place where members
learn to function like cross cultural missionaries
rather than a gathering place where people come
to receive religious goods and services.’
Alan Roxburgh, The Missional Leader, p13.
www.freshexpressions.org.uk
www.centreforpioneerlearnng.org.uk
www.messychurch.org.uk
(and on Facebook Messy Church Australia)
Mission Shaped Ministry Course MSM
Mission Shaped Introduction MSI
•Who is the mission for?
•Who is the mission by?
•Who is the mission with?
1. Be Trinitarian
Mission-shaped
Church DNA will ..
–
Understand Church primarily as communityin-mission
2. Be relational
–
Rather than see Church as structure, history
or external practices
3. Be Incarnational like Jesus
–
Laying aside our status and preferences [Phil
2]
4. Be disciplers, like Jesus
–
Growing communities of those who follow him
and draw others to him
5. Be Transformational, like the work of the
Trinity
–
Looking beyond themselves to a kingdom
centred, counter-cultural affect upon society