Day: 7 February 2011

Fresh Expressions is a ‘catalyst for renewed missional thinking’

Two leading theologians have described the Fresh Expressions initiative as:

one of the most significant missional movements in the recent history of Christianity in these islands.

The statement comes in a report to the Church of Scotland written by Professor John Drane and Olive Fleming Drane. Reformed, Reforming, Emerging and Experimenting is a study in contextual theology reflecting the experiences of initiatives in emerging ministry being funded by the Church of Scotland.

The research – conducted on behalf of a Joint Working Party from the Church of Scotland's Ministries Council and its Mission and Discipleship Council – found that many emerging communities feel they are 'in the Church but not of it' with missional activists working more on the fringes of traditional church life than they would wish.

The research states that most of those involved in such missional expressions would value recognition of their work – and particularly a practical demonstration of a mixed economy church in which they could take their place as legitimate expressions of 'real' church alongside existing traditional parishes.

In discussing the ongoing impact of Fresh Expressions, the report says, 'Now, some six years after the publication of mission-shaped church and the establishment of Fresh Expressions… the second phase of this initiative has every appearance of being one of the most significant missional movements in the recent history of Christianity in these islands.'

Reformed, Reforming, Emerging and Experimenting highlights the take-up and development of the mission shaped ministry course with many of the 2,000 msm participants to date being clergy 'eager to be quipped to meet the challenges of the new missional imperative.'

The authors add, 'In 2010, seventy enrolled in Scottish pilots of this course in Glasgow and Inverness, and have shown the same enthusiasm for it as Christians in England, Wales and Ireland. Moreover, Fresh Expressions has become a catalyst for renewed missional thinking in other mainline denominations worldwide.'

Among final recommendations as to future steps the church might take in response to the findings, the report issues a challenge, 'A radical reimagination of what it means to follow Jesus in today's rapidly changing culture has been embraced by the Church of England – following the Archbishop of Canterbury's lead. A similarly inspirational leadership will be necessary if emerging initiatives are to be fully embraced by the Church of Scotland.'

In May, the report will be submitted to the Church of Scotland for further study and reflection.

Based in Aberdeenshire, John and Olive have an extensive ministry worldwide. John taught Religious Studies at Stirling University (1977-1998) and Practical Theology at Aberdeen University (1998-2004). The Dranes are Fellows of St John's College in the University of Durham as well as being adjunct professors in the School of Theology at Fuller Seminary, California. John serves on the Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry Board and Olive has been involved in developing new material for the course.

Goth Church, Coventry – update Feb11

Goth Church in Coventry began when Diocesan Youth Officer Greg Bartlem and Cathedral Youth Minister Keith Parr started to walk around the city and discovered a group of Gothic young people who met together in one particular area. Greg explains what happened next.

I began to go and join the young people regularly to chat and get to know them better. After a time I invited them to church and other youth activities going on in the area but soon discovered this approach didn't really work because they had no concept of 'church' as such.

Goth church - Coventry cathedralWe then decided to run a Youth Alpha course (with pizza!) for them at Bardsley House (Cathedral Youth Centre). This was well attended for the first few weeks but it was soon clear that although the newcomers were enjoying the food, they weren't connecting with the course. We were answering questions that they weren't asking and they weren't listening to what the talks were about.

We could see that the young people were responding to the love and respect being shown them and that they wanted to be there. However we also recognised a need to develop something different that fitted the culture of the young people and didn't try to 'shoehorn' them into a familiar shape of church.

So for a while we just offered space and a listening ear, realising that many of the young people were facing difficult situations at home which we began to help them with when we could. It was then that Jill Tucker, an ordinand from a more catholic tradition came to join us, and she noticed that the young people liked writing poetry and having candles and incense around them. She suggested we try the short service of Compline at the end of our meeting times.

This simple form of worship turned out to be far more culturally accessible to these young people and they responded well to it. This time developed into a great space for a new community where they could share and pray for one another. Slowly, after five years of working with this same group, the young people themselves are now the leaders of this Community time and the work has begun to take the shape of a cell church with the cells led by young people who have been discipled there.

Goth church - snow

The young people that began in the group are now young adults and so the church has developed into a mix of youth cells and young adult cells.

In 2008 we realised that as the age of the original group rose there was a lack of new young people coming to Bardsley House. So together I and the Cathedral Youth Worker decided to go back out into the city to find out where 'a new generation' of young people were gathering.

We asked local police and the City Centre Management Company for their help and they told us that there was an area close to our youth centre where a group were meeting regularly – sometimes in a very anti-social way which had caused problems.

We went to meet them on their own patch, offering cans of Coke and taking away their prayer requests each week. Slowly the conversation developed and we started to discuss issues of God and faith. We did this for 10 months. In the summer of 2009 we hosted a large barbecue; 60 young people came and they enjoyed it so much they asked us to host a party for one of their group.

The party went ahead and we issued an invitation to the youth centre. Twelve months later there were 500 young people on the books, most of whom now attend regularly. Goths no longer make up the majority of the crowd – instead there's an eclectic mix. The centre is open five nights a week and we always end the session with conversation and prayer; about half of the group stays on for that. The diocese is now actively exploring how to recognise this as a fresh expression of church with me having trained to become a Pioneer Minister.

(Images courtesy of CV One)

Goth Church, Coventry

The development and understanding of what we mean by mixed economy of church is seen perfectly in Coventry cathedral and how it has been dealing with its duty of care and mission in the 21st century.

Goth Church Coventry

It does, of course have a pastoral duty to a wide variety of audiences. We could call them those who tend toward inherited expressions. But there will still be many semi-regular visitors to whom a fresh expression is their best route into the Christian paradigm. Two groups, two labels, have found a place in the flock at Coventry through fresh expressions: Goths and Hoodies. The results have defied the preconceptions attached to the demographic labels.

When it became apparent that groups of Goths (young people who listen to heavy metal music and wear dark clothing) were congregating in the city centre for want of anywhere safe to go, the Cathedral moved and found a fertile soil for evangelism.

The context might seem unlikely, but a survey of the Cambridge Gothic community suggested anywhere up to a third of 'Goths' considered themselves in some sense Christian, and as one journalist put it:

…church services are all about a misunderstood man who got nailed to a cross. They are held in a looming, bell-towered, candle-lit edifice in the middle of a graveyard. Indeed if you go catholic, you get to burn incense and drink blood, as well. By contrast, playing a bit of Rasmus looks a bit, well, townie.

At first, the cathedral was providing a place for Goths to hang out in safety; but it was soon observed that many of those taking refuge were also beginning to take an interest in church services and the church building, without really connecting. And so now, Wednesday nights, 7.45pm, they come and gather for the ancient Office of Compline, introduced in this form for their use – candles, prayer, silence, the Peace.

Utterly orthodox in its liturgy and theology, but utterly tailored in its specificity and missional context, the Goth Compline is a nuanced mixed internal economy within an expression of church.

Of more recent advent is work with 'Urban' youth, aka 'Hoodies'. Both are horridly misleading labels in themselves: to identify the young people of inner cities as characteristically angry, violent and antisocial is to misrepresent and disenfranchise them; and to associate those qualities with an item of clothing is even more bizarre and tragicomic. (As the owner of several hooded sweatshirts, perhaps I have an interest here!)

But all labels have a root: in this case, one can specially identify those from deprived inner-city areas, affected by family breakup, poorly financed education, and a fractured, crime-plagued community.

So, it seems to me, there can be nothing more in the spirit of the 2,000-year-old, adaptable Body of Christ than for it to find a place for 'Hoodies', armed with permanent markers, sketching scenes from the Gospel and writing 'Jesus Wept!' on the wall of their place at the Cathedral, before returning to a game of pool or sitting down and talking with their companions in this new community – as, perhaps, the great cathedral bells ring out as they have done in one form or another in this place for nearly a thousand years.

This story, written by Owen Edwards, was originally published in mixed economy, Autumn/Winter 2008/09.