September 2012 - FX ARCHIVE...

Let’s get rid of ‘unchurched’, ‘dechurched’ and ‘churched’ (Andrew Roberts)

Andrew Roberts suggest we get rid of 'unchurched', 'dechurched' and 'churched'.

When I was a young minister in Doncaster a new mum came with her baby at the behest of her own insistent mother saying she needed to be churched. Unfamiliar with this medieval practice of purification I explained that she was very welcome and prayed prayers of thanks with her for the gift of her new child. That seemed to do the trick and she went away happy, returning a few weeks later to have the child baptised.

I admit to having felt uncomfortable then with the 'churched' phraseology and admit now to being uncomfortable with talk of the churched, dechurched, unchurched and never churched in a very different context – namely the world of fresh expressions. The language is used a lot; especially when writers are quantifying the missional effectiveness of newly forming churches. But is it good language?

I have two particular problems with it. The first is that it risks turning people into ecclesiastical 'widgets' or commodities. Categorising or defining people in a way that allows them to be quantified is helpful for particular pieces of analysis but risks depersonalising human beings made in the image of God. It also feels very institutional.

The second problem I have is that we may well end up falling into the same trap that has blighted many an inherited church, namely putting attendance or association before discipleship. Are we looking to 'church' people or make disciples of Jesus? As Martyn Atkins is fond of pointing out, Jesus says, 'I will build my church, you go and make disciples'.

I submit a plea for some more helpful, human and Christlike language. I recognise that discipleship is communal as well as personal so in seeking to denote who is part of fresh expressions might we be better to talk of newcomers (unchurched or never churched), returners (dechurched) and regulars (churched). We talk about people in this way at my local pub and it feels a lot warmer.

I'm sure there must be better suggestions out there. What do you think?

city:base

city:base – along with St Thomas' Philadelphia and King's Centre – form Network Church Sheffield. Matt Broughton tells how city:base became a Bishop's Mission Order.

Network Church Sheffield is one church in three different local bases across the city; reflecting its diverse Anglican, Baptist and House Church heritage. It was just over three years ago that city:base got off the ground when Toby Bassford of St Thomas' Philadelphia was given the go-ahead to experiment with new ways of doing mission.

He called a team together and put in place some vision and values for a community passionate about prayer and passionate about mission. In following those two callings, the community was to see where God was on the move, always with a view to be pioneering as possible in our mission – particularly to the urban poor, students and young adults.

For the next 18 months, when there were then about 20 members, city:base met in people's homes. As numbers grew, we then started renting function rooms. Without a permanent home, it was a real defining season for us – a sort of a nomadic time – which served to make clear what we were about. It made us realise that we had to go through the hard times to seek what God was really equipping and calling us for. We experienced quite a lot of growth, not in terms of people being saved, but through a lot of people growing together. We had reached about 60 by then.

In January 2012 we finally moved into our own building – a house in one of the streets immediately behind the cathedral. It is thought of as a mission base; a place for training, discipleship, prayer and mission. We also bring the whole community together once a month in a celebration gathering. These gatherings are important but we see the primary place of church in cluster, household-sized Simple Churches of 10 to 20 people.

For the gatherings we use the Tulip Lounge, a venue just two doors down from us where we have a really good relationship with the staff. It was there that we had a small celebration in June when Bishop Steven Croft signed the Bishop's Mission Order for city:base.

We had a real sense of unity because our gathering place is a stone's throw from Sheffield Cathedral, less than 100m away. We're not just in their parish; we're right on their patch! That's why it was so special to have members of the cathedral team there, just to affirm it. It felt really significant for us as a team to put a marker in the sand and get the institutional backing of a BMO.

We have quite a large team, mainly lay. The two church leaders are Toby who is doing his ordination training at the moment, and Diane who has just been priested. We also have a paid manager who makes sure everything runs smoothly in gatherings though the role has more to do with the life of the mission base rather than a purely administrative function.

There's another 10 to 12 people who devote varying amounts of time to different tasks. I lead our internship scheme and I devote a day a week to it. Others do coaching and mentoring, pastoral care, student work or helping to build a house of prayer.

city:base has a foundation of a volunteer culture, one in which quite a large team of people each has its own area of responsibility or oversight. In essence we want to be involved in one another's lives and the way the base functions is just part of this. We try to act more like an extended family than an institution with staff and volunteers.

We have about 100 people connected with city:base, my guess is that all of them are either young adults or young families between the ages of 18 and 40. We ask everyone to look at what they are doing to encourage the life of City Base and their own Simple Church.

We are aware that we don't want to do something that's insular and exclusive; instead we want to create something that's really reflective of our experience of Jesus and the authenticity of that experience.

I suppose we are quite hard to get to know and connect with because we are only meeting once a month. What is slightly different from the classic fresh expressions approach – namely that fresh expressions are for people who don't normally come to church – is that our gatherings are very churchy in style but we see the primary place of 'belonging' as Simple Church.

In terms of accountability, we are still very much part of our sending church and Paul Maconochie – as a leader of Network Church Sheffield – is still our overall leader here. Also, a good percentage of our leadership team is part of The Order of Mission (a global, dispersed community of pioneering leaders called to lead and influence within whatever context and culture they live and work) so that's another level of accountability.

I think this balance we are trying to strike between the 'centre' and the 'edge' is an interesting one; we have our gathering once a month and Simple Church throughout the week to encourage the life of these simple missional churches to grow the life of our prayer and mission base at the centre.

I'm keen that we don't just become another 'big church with flashing lights', it's the relationship between these two sides of the continuum that move us forward.

LINK

A waterfront café in Ipswich has become home to a community of people keen to develop faith and friendship. One of LINK's organisers, Roger Eyre, explains more.

I wasn't around at the beginning – about four years ago – but LINK founders Dan Jolley and Scott Huntly had a vision to do some sort of cafe project. They wanted to reach out into the community and be very relationship and community focused, providing a place where non-Christians would feel very welcome.

I got involved when Heart for Ipswich contacted me. This group aims to link Christians from many different churches to work together more closely to help meet the social and spiritual needs of the people of Ipswich. It is run on a voluntary basis by a small team of lay people. Heart For Ipswich got in touch to tell me about this new café project idea. My vision had been about putting music into cafés and using it as a way of outreach. In spite of living in the same town, I didn't know the other guys at all so it was important to hear from an organisation who had an overview of everything that was happening. We spent three or four months getting to know each other; we became friends and spent a lot of time together after which it became clear that we very much wanted to develop a Christian project based on relationship.

At first we thought it might be a stepping stone for people moving on to church but we quickly realised that the sort of church our community now called LINK would be prepared to go to didn't really exist. For a handful of people I'd say that LINK is their only contact with Christians and they consider it as a place where you can discuss all sorts of things; however they probably wouldn't describe it as church.

We are not trying to do church in a café as such but two people have come to faith through a journey which included LINK. There are others who have definitely made enquiries and are searching. The good thing is that LINK has reached deep into people's lives and relationships have been sustained over three years.

The experience brought by people to the team is very important. There's a wide variety, such as people who have led youth work in churches and a teacher – while I've done a lot of music events and gigging. Some of us have been brought up in church and had a very purposeful vision for what we are doing; namely reaching people who felt they could not walk into a church building and also providing a place for Christians who had been hurt by church in the past. They still had belief but did not want to be part of religion.

We started to form connections with people and things have just grown organically. We usually plan no more than 2-3 meetings ahead and our LINK nights are primarily music-focused with opportunities for discussion. One of the key things that we have is unity across denominations in the team and those that attend. This is also how we draw our governance, from a group of wiser Christians from different church traditions. They are also people who have held a lot of responsibility either in church or in business.

LINK is widely known in Christian circles in the town. We did operate weekly for about two and a half years but there is only so much a small team can do. We now run from 7pm to 9pm on the first Monday of the month, at Coffeelink café on the Ipswich Waterfront. It has been quite a roller coaster ride along the way. People will turn up at any time between 7 and 7.30pm, then we have some light music or it may be a full gig night. Otherwise we might have a talk or some sort of 'interview' with different contributors. We also do practical stuff as well; a local charity might come in and give a talk on their work or a particular challenge they're facing and we will give them some ideas. The networking side of things is important as well. There is always more than one thing going on; we don’t want to just put on music events.

We were also looking at ways of anonymously requesting prayer or asking questions. We'd seen the Post It idea done many times in other organisations when people come up with ideas by sticking the notes all over a wall so we did it at LINK and it was a great way for people to find out more or ask for support without putting themselves in the spotlight.

We have had about 50-60 people, on a few occasions nearly 100 people turn up. Now we have anywhere between 10 and 50 depending on the night; we had a massive peak of initial interest, then things tailed off before climbing back again to reach the plateau where we are now.

Our age range is anywhere between 18 and 60-65 though primarily it's people in their 20s and 30s. It's a blessing to us but we don't pitch it for a particular age group. We don't particularly want under-18s to come because most churches are well equipped with groups for that age.

We are right in town next to the new University Campus Suffolk. We now have pioneer minister Tim Yau working with us, the only ordained person on the team, and we're hoping he will be able to get to know people at the university and develop contacts.

Apart from Tim, we are all lay people with full-time jobs. We have all held, or hold, responsibility within church but not as a pastor or elder. LINK is not led by ordained leadership and we do not affiliate to any one Christian denomination.

I know lots of people who lead but they are not paid pastors; they have full time jobs and they still do church and that's a great model. If someone has worked recently then they are 'real', they understand the current job market and the pain and the politics of work. I think that's a good thing and should be encouraged.

One of the biggest things for the future is for churches to learn to put aside differences and work together. In some cases they have to be prepared to sacrifice their own personal goals for a joint goal. Sadly there are some people who still want to do their own thing; they want to have their church brand on it and not work across churches.

But when you are prepared to take a risk together it can lead to wonderful things. We had a community waterfront festival in Ipswich near the beginning of LINK, three years ago, when we wanted to make LINK known a little more. We thought, 'Why don't we go there and take our lounge out to the people instead of waiting for them to come to us?' So we took our sofas, a lamp, table, and boxes of pizza and cake down to the waterfront. It was great.

The café where we meet is run by a guy who is from a Muslim background who is open-minded about faith and providing a forum for its exploration. He lets us use the venue for free and he only gets coffee money out of it. The important thing is to find people who can broker these sorts of relationships with people in the community; we need these people because they are catalysts for change.

Following the missionary Spirit

Following the missionary Spirit: going forward with fresh expressions

A national event to review the fresh expressions movement so far and to look to the future.

Material from the day

You can read the 'three most important next steps' suggested by participants in the day, plus our responses to them.

Watch, listen to, download or read the transcripts of the clips from the day using the links below.

Rowan Williams' address

Martyn Atkins' address

Graham Cray's address

Annie Kirke and Gavin Mart

Panel Q&A with Rowan, Martyn and Graham

Fresh expressions: the story so far

Church: a negative term or a Kingdom force? (Janet Sutton Webb)

Janet Sutton Webb asks whether 'church' is a negative term or a Kingdom force.

In emerging church circles, use of Kingdom language is common. But sometimes, in the past, there has been a reluctance to label what is emerging in the name of Jesus Christ as 'Church' at all.

So what is being implied by pioneers who reject the word Church or use it only in negative terms? Is it not saying less about the Church as a Kingdom force in the world and more about their personal experience of the Church? I would like to suggest that what emerges through fresh expressions is both authentically Church and Kingdom shaped.

What we mean when we use the term 'Church' is shaped at least in part by tradition and experience, elements of which we will either hold dear or rebel against in our attempts to reshape our ecclesial communities for today's world. These constants, as Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder label them; have provided the backbone of the Church through the ages. The way we define these constants will differ according to our context and may well change as we walk our path of faith alongside others. And if what emerges from our work is a version of Church which fires and inspires us, this contingency applies not only to us, but to that which results from our call to mission.

It is impossible to step entirely outside all our Church traditions as missioners; nor should we attempt to. How would we be accountable otherwise? Yet moving away from what Catholic theologian Avery Dulles would describe as an institutional model of Church towards that which is, in varying amounts, mystical communion, herald, servant, and sacrament is a recognition that the raison d'être of the Church is not the maintenance of structures or traditions, but to bring alive in people the reality of the faith, hope, joy and love that only a relationship with Christ can give.

This we can only really achieve through encounter: with real people in their everyday lives. Just as our Trinitarian God works creatively, incarnationally and powerfully beyond the realm of the institutional church, so should we who are the Church. In everything we do and say, in everyone whom we meet and every conversation we have, we should be prepared to see God at work. All of our encounters should be Kingdom encounters.

Following this principle has implications for how we do mission. In mid-Devon it has meant abandoning the idea of starting projects or communities of our own and falling into step with others as they begin theirs. We do not do Church, we are Church. We follow the way of Christ in everything and then allow the Holy Spirit to do the rest.

As Bishop Graham Cray would say, we listen to God and listen to our community. As we see God at work in others we join with those whose ideas they are, turning community encounters into Kingdom encounters. Which church model will eventually emerge from this context remains to be seen. One thing of which we are sure: it's going to be Church and it's going to be Kingdom shaped.

Is there a theology for pioneering?

Graham Cray asks whether there is a theology for pioneering.

I chair the Church of England's Pioneer Panel, which interviews potential candidates for Ordained Pioneer Ministry. The language of pioneering is in frequent use in some parts of the church but has it any theological justification?

Unless we are to believe that our context, and so our mission field, never changes, it is more difficult to justify non-pioneering activity than pioneering. Helmut Thielike (German theologian of the 1950s) said,

The Gospel must be constantly forwarded to a new address because its recipient is repeatedly changing his place of residence.

We live at a time when our culture has changed radically from the one for which most traditional churches were designed so a capacity for pioneering is indispensable today.

One of its main theological roots lies in the incarnation. In his final public sermon, on Christlikeness, John Stott said,

As Christ had entered our world, so we are to enter other people's worlds. We are to be like Christ in his mission.

'Entering other people's worlds' involves pioneering.

It is the Holy Spirit who is foundational for any theology of pioneering. The gift of Pentecost was a pioneering gift. According to the book of Acts, the primary gift at Pentecost is not just 'empowered witness' but empowered witness for cross cultural mission. The disciples would be empowered to faithfully bear the gospel across cultural barriers, and from context to context – 'Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.' This promise is not theoretical. It is fulfilled as the story of Acts unfolds, culminating in Rome, which for any Jew, who knew that Jerusalem was the centre of the world, was indeed 'the ends of the earth'.

Pioneering is also about being a sign and agent of God's future kingdom as it breaks into the present. Pentecost was a harvest festival, the 'feast of weeks'. It was the first day when the 'first fruits' of the harvest could be presented in the Temple. This was in anticipation of the full harvest celebrated at the Feast of Tabernacles. In the same way the gift of the Spirit is the first fruits (Romans 8:23) and the taste of 'the powers of the age to come' (Hebrews 6:5). In the gift of the Holy Spirit, the future secured by Christ, breaks into the present.

Christians are not just stewards of the gifts of God from the past; they are 'future in advance' people – pioneers whose ministry is an anticipation of the great age to come. We live towards the future in the power of the Holy Spirit. As Bishop Lesslie Newbigin wrote,

The Church is the pilgrim (pioneering!) people of God. It is on the move – hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one.

This is made possible by the power of the Spirit.

This empowering is no longer just for special leaders or special times but for the whole people of God regardless of age, gender or status.

In the last days,

God says,

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.

Acts 2:17-18

The gift was not merely one of power to be a witness, but of revelation, of wisdom as to the form that witness should take. As they moved (reluctantly at first) from church as they knew it in Jerusalem, to Judea, then Samaria and to the Gentile ends of the earth, they needed the revelation of the Spirit through the dreams, visions and prophecies promised by Joel, and fulfilled at Pentecost.

Through the Holy Spirit, the church is a pioneering missionary community but within the Spirit's gifts there is a particular calling to a 'boundary crossing' or apostolic ministry. Certain people in Acts, some named (e.g. Peter and Paul) and some anonymous (Acts 11:20), pioneered the way for others to follow. A pioneering church needs its pioneers and needs them today.

The Valley Network

Levi Santana is a pioneer ordinand at St Mellitus College. He also leads a small missional community in High Wycombe called The Valley Network.

I have been in the area for seven years as youth worker at St Birinus and St John's Church, High Wycombe. When I started thinking about getting involved in a fresh expression, the Diocese of Oxford was very keen to see how a local person could start a local ministry via the mixed mode training and stay locally for curacy.

As a result, since starting The Valley, we have had a lot of support from the Deanery which has made our work possible. They give us lots of freedom and even help pay my salary, showing their commitment to pioneer ministry. When I am ordained in 2013, I will also be able to do my curacy here which secures the next four years in the life of the Network.

When I sensed a feeling that God was calling me into pioneer ministry I had to ask myself,

What is God saying? What is the need? What does High Wycombe need as a fresh expression of church?

We decided to focus on people who live in and around the town centre in what is an Urban Priority Area and also students.

We have almost doubled our numbers since Christmas and at the moment we have around 40 people involved in our network which meets in local coffee shops for discussion groups and Bible study, and in a local Anglican church that lets us use their building for worship events. We also meet in homes, and much of our work is based at the local YMCA and University where I am a chaplain.

There is a mix of people, some were already Christians when they joined us and some are completely unchurched (although a number are dechurched).

They come from all backgrounds and nationalities – including white British, Brazilians, and West Indians. I come from a Brazilian background and one thing that's very much on my heart is the international community, I would love to see more racial interaction. I think people from an ethnic background might have felt more comfortable about coming in to the group because I look 'different' and don't fit the traditional image of a church minister. The average age of those coming along is about 25 but we have some older and younger people in the mix – we also have a few people with small children.

It all started because St Birinus and St John's had been involved in the work of the YMCA locally for a number of years. Suddenly the person that led that work left and I found myself in charge. So we went into the YMCA and offered to continue to run the games evening.

We then decided to do something on a Sunday evening and we invited the guys from the YMCA and young adults within the network of the church. It was a hit so we started welcoming people into the church building. By January 2011, we had 25-30 people coming twice a month.

It was trial and error, we didn't know what to do next but then we started to throw some worship into the mix. In the end, we did it for six months and reflected that we were trying to do too much, we couldn't do worship with non- Christians and couldn't disciple Christians by just doing social activities.

We took time to take stock and to pray and decided that we should concentrate on the unchurched and dechurched rather than Christians wanting to do something a little differently.

We started meeting in a local coffee shop, firstly inviting people from the games night. We don't use any set material but I always make it clear that I'm a Christian though people have to be free to share their opinion – whatever it is. We always start with people talking about the lowlight and the highlight of the past week. One of the girls who comes to the group is going through a sex change process so she came in and said,

The highlight of my week is that I'm going to be a boy.

She had a letter for an appointment in London to see a specialist and what struck me was that she felt confident she could share that letter first with us.

I realised then that this community was effective. We had all sorts of plans for events to reach out to students but what God was calling us to do was simply to respect them and value them and give time. As a result we have seen that group develop into a little family.

Alongside our discussion group we also identified a need for us to gather Christians together in a similar sort of setting in order to go deeper into the Bible and mission. We launched a Bible study that starts 90 minutes before the discussion group. The study is basically for Christian students and some of them stay on for the group, some of them don't.

We had also seen the development of a mums and tots cell group. From October this year we are going to open it up to the public and we hope to run it in one of the churches.

Recently we have decided to link up with Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing who are planting the Latimer Minster church in Beaconsfield; this helps to put our network within a wider group of missional communities. When I knew they were moving into the area, we met up to talk about it all because there's no point in us doing something similar or being five miles apart with no relationship. By linking up with Latimer Minster, The Valley Network will use their charity number and bank accounts and public liability insurance – all of which means that we are very independent but also accountable.

It became quite a big thing to explain over and over again what The Valley Network was all about whereas, at Latimer Minster, the church's DNA is missional and it's easier for us to be understood. They will also release things quickly into the mission aspect of the work and I think it will be a good relationship based on friendship, not structure.

We are also still linked with St Birinus and St John's as they have been very supportive of our work over the years and because we are expected to meet traditional criteria and to obey deanery and parish boundaries though, in practice, we don't function in them.

The Valley has no income from any other source other than its members, but we need more resources to fulfil the vision God has given us. For this reason we are trying to find 100 people who will pledge to raise or donate £100 over a year. This will give us £10,000 that we will use to fund our ministry, run our conferences and events, and pay for our running and administration cost.

We have a high number of musicians and artists in the community so we are exploring different styles of worship and recording some of the songs we are writing. Our first CD/EP will be ready soon and our intention is to sell our music to fund some of the work.

From October our hope is to have two Sundays a month where we meet for fellowship for a meal and Communion because I think that's where we truly become a fresh expression of church. At the moment we are clusters of mission but we haven't shared Communion together many times.

There is a lot going on but everything is done very relationally and we have seen a few young people being released into leadership which has been particularly exciting – two of them will give about 20 hours from September!

This autumn will see us host our first Missional Church Conference when we hope to engage local church leaders in conversation about reaching young adults. Debbie Orriss, Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing and Steven Cockram will talk at the October event about how churches can explore different ways of doing things within their contexts. We want to demystify missional communities and fresh expressions to church leaders and to encourage churches not to feel threatened by us because we are not sheep stealing.

It's all very exciting but there are many questions too. How can we honour the opportunities that the Holy Spirit is giving us without spreading ourselves too thinly? What are the real areas of priority and how can we make the most of them?