November 2012 - FX ARCHIVE...

Fresh Expressions looks to the future

Fresh Expressions is to continue its work 'well beyond 2014'. Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the national Fresh Expressions team, confirmed the movement was 'staying in business' during a speech at its national day conference to review progress to date and to look to the future.

Addressing Following the missionary Spirit – going forward with fresh expressions, Graham Cray emphasised an ongoing role for the team:

We will continue to network pioneers, gather learning, publish stories, and provide the training needed. New partners are joining and longer-standing ones identifying the work that is needed well beyond 2014.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spoke of missional opportunity and the importance of belonging:

Why should people still be interested in the church? Because the church is what speaks to us about the possibility that all human beings can belong together by the grace and acceptance of God if they'd only just… turn round, repent and believe, turn round and trust, look to the generosity of the God who created and redeemed you, look into the face of the stranger in a completely new way.

So what we've been looking at and thinking about in terms of fresh expressions (of church) is… belonging being created. People who thought they didn't matter, they weren't welcome, are discovering that they are; suddenly finding there's a challenge about community that only the Christian vision or the Christian community can help them with.

In a poignant moment, Rowan Williams was later prayed for by the President of the Methodist Conference, Mark Wakelin; Moderator of the URC General Assembly, Val Morrison, and a group of young adults from re:generation, a Methodist fresh expression of church in Romford.

Martyn Atkins, General Secretary of the Methodist Church – in looking to the future – said,

Fresh expressions have rescued the church in numerical decline… and the introspection and desperation that come about from that. I don't buy the narrative that fresh expressions is simply a knee jerk reaction to how you get more bums on seats, rather I see it as an impulse of the missionary Spirit that rescues is from the introspection of certain kinds of ecclesial thinking.

He also called for an 'evolving and real theological narrative' for the inherited church – as well as fresh expressions.

We must move in the future, at a level of proper theological engagement, from the approach of some people, that the whole of inherited church is all right, to be defended without question, and anything that is seen in their eyes to detract from that needs to be held up to the light every five minutes or uprooted every two years to see whether or not it is growing. Or indeed, to be knocked around the head to be asked if it can still stand up straight! We do need an evolving and a real theological narrative.

Full video and audio files from all contributors on the day can be found on the Following the missionary Spirit page.

Following the missionary Spirit (Graham Cray)

Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions team, sees the planting of several thousand fresh expressions of church as one of the major achievements of Archbishop Rowan's time in office. As the Archbishop addresses the movement for the final time in that role on November 22 in London, Bishop Graham says it is an ideal moment to take stock of what has been achieved and what lies ahead.

The Fresh Expressions day conference – running from 11am to 4pm on Thursday at HTB – is called 'Following the missionary Spirit', because, in the years since the Mission-shaped Church report was published in 2004, the Holy Spirit has been leading the church in new approaches to mission. It has been an experience of 'seeing what God is doing and joining in'. In effect we have been given a gift of the Holy Spirit, a charism. My predecessor Steven Croft called it 'building ecclesial communities out of contextual mission': the planting of fresh expressions of church, be they new congregations or full church plants, appropriate to their context, to draw into Christian discipleship those who are not active followers of Jesus or part of any church.

That is the purpose of the charism, but what is its nature? What constitutes the gift we are being given?

It is a gift of faith. Ordinary local Christians have been taking small cross-cultural risks, for the sake of Christ. They have been stepping out of their comfort zone, out of familiar patterns of church life to plant something new, for those untouched by these familiar patterns. They have been empowered to take a risk of faith. This lies at the heart of the gift of the Spirit for mission, through which we are empowered as witness beyond our familiar setting (Acts 1.8)

It is an incarnational gift, a gift for contextual mission. We are learning to follow the Spirit as, by his power, Christ's body takes appropriate local shape. It is a gift for contextual mission, a gift for our times and for each locality:

for our times because both our national culture, and the relationship between church and culture have been changing fast;

for each locality because we are taking more seriously the uniqueness and complexity of each context.

It is a gift of discernment and of missional imagination. We learn to listen as we allow the Holy Spirit to direct us. The fresh expression takes shape as we listen and serve. We are unlikely to know what it will finally look like when we begin.

It is a gift of diversity. The Holy Spirit gives varieties of gifts (1 Corinthians 12.4-6). One size does not fit all. A recent study of two dioceses revealed 19 different models of fresh expression in each. Some models appear frequently, as is appropriate for a branded society. The reason for diversity is appropriateness to context, not the uniqueness of the model.

It is a traditioned gift. At its heart is our call to proclaim the gospel afresh in this generation. It is not a rewriting of the claims of Christ to make them more amenable to a consumer age, but a more faithful embodiment of the historic gospel for our times. Fresh expressions are an integral part of the Church's mixed economy approach to mission. It is a gift which honours inherited church approaches for their faithfulness to the gospel and seeks to complement them by equivalent faithfulness.

It is a vocational gift. It cannot be exercised without pioneers, those who take the lead in the small and large cross cultural steps which are the inescapable starting point of any fresh expression. One of the most striking features of this movement has been the number of new leaders it has generated. There are Ordained Pioneer Ministers and Methodist VentureFX Pioneers, but the number of these is dwarfed by the hundreds of lay leaders in expressions who were not in any form of leadership before.

It is an ecumenical gift. This involves the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church, the Congregational Federation and the Church of Scotland, with other conversations taking place. This is a unity which God blesses because it is a unity in weakness, as we all have to learn new approaches to mission in a changing world, and choose to learn together.

It has proved to be an international gift. Requests have come from many parts of the world. The Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry course is now being taught or planned in Australia, Barbados, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA.

Finally it is a gift of hope. It demonstrates the life of the Spirit through the church, showing that the Church in Britain can grow; that it is not condemned to inevitable decline because of the average age of many of its congregations. The Holy Spirit is restoring faith in the power of the gospel here and now!

The future then is a matter of keeping faith with the missionary Spirit and of remaining open to whatever new riches might be revealed in this gift. It is also a call to perseverance as we maintain our commitment to the re-evangelization of our land. To serve the churches, this call and commitment will see the Fresh Expressions team continue to network the pioneers, gather the learning, publish the stories, and provide the training needed.

* 'Following the missionary Spirit – going forward with fresh expressions' will take place at HTB, Brompton Road on 22 November from 11am to 4pm (arrivals from 10am). Contributors include Martyn Atkins (General Secretary, Methodist Church), Val Morrison (Moderator of the General Assembly, United Reformed Church) and Graham Cray. Places cost £15 (including lunch and refreshments).

E1 Community Church (Cable Street)

It began as an Urban Expression church planting team 15 years ago in London's East End but became E1 Community Church (E1CC) after the merger of three Urban Expression church plants (including Cable Street Community Church). Phil Warburton and Alex Alexander are Baptist ministers who lead the church and they explain more.

Things have changed a great deal since the original Cable Street Community Church was featured on expressions: the dvd – 1. E1CC now covers the south west of the Borough of Tower Hamlets and is based in Shadwell and Stepney.

Originally led by Jim and Juliet Kilpin, we were a small team on a steep learning curve made up of a group of people trying to figure out together how to follow Jesus and love our neighbours.

We remain a small church that struggles in many ways with the seeming chaos of life and messiness of church but there is also a lot of joy along the way and much hope for the future. Today E1CC covers the same geographical area and includes Sunday meetings in the homes of two families from the church and Wednesdays at 6pm in the hall of St Mary's Church on Cable Street. Once a month we have celebrations which are all-age, messy church, café-style, with a meal to finish. We have active children's and youth groups too, who bring us much joy and often speak nuggets of truth to us 'grown-ups'! You will rarely hear a sermon here but we hope, pray and trust that people will hear plenty of what God is saying.

Alex Alexander was called to lead the church alongside Phil in July 2009. Along with other churches in Tower Hamlets, we have set up a Mission House initiative to encourage and enable people with a heart for the inner city to live and minister here. Four local churches are part of the Mission House at the moment and each church has a volunteer who joins in with the life of the church and the local community. Rachel Fergusson joined us a year ago as part of this initiative and it is great working with a team of people passionate about the community and church of Shadwell and Stepney.

What are we about? E1 Community Church have five key distinctives. We are a Jesus-centred church; worshipping and following Jesus together in our daily lives. We are a church at the edge, seeking to be a church of people who have too little rather than have too much and of those who often feel marginalized by society and sometimes by the church. We are made up of people who live in the local neighbourhood and our worship, discipleship and decision-making aim to be relevant to the area in which we live. We aim to be multi-voiced in order to discover together what God might be saying to us. We believe passionately in being people of peace and we try to work at this both within church and within our community.

Each year we have a focus on a particular topic and we work on getting funds together for a charity specialising in that particular field. This year we are focusing on the Olympics to highlight issues of justice, inequality, disability and human trafficking. We are using the Baptist Missionary Society's Undefeated resources.

We are also involved with other churches in Tower Hamlets to run a winter Night Shelter and Foodbank based in various locations through Tower Hamlets, as well as youth and children's work both within church and in our neighbourhood. We are really excited about what God is doing in Tower Hamlets and we want to continue to join in with bringing his kingdom here!

Five things I’ve learned (Jonny Baker)

Jonny Baker shares five things he's learned from the first couple of years of developing Pioneer Mission Leadership Training.

It's been an absolute blast – exhausting, exciting and challenging in equal measure. CMS asked me to develop Pioneer Mission Leadership Training as a pathway for equipping both lay and ordained pioneers and we have now just begun the third year – which means all our modules will be up and running. That has included starting an MA and the first intake of those training for ordained pioneer ministry. Here are five things I've learned since it all got off the ground.

1. 'Not fitting in' is a wonderful gift

People who come as pioneers bring an amazing gift. I have come to call it 'the gift of not fitting in'. It's not that people are awkward; it's just that they see something beyond the status quo or business as usual in the church. Every culture or organisation or church needs this if it is to have a future and not get stuck. And every church needs this if it is to be missional and move out of its comfort zone. We have discovered that the gift is multifaceted and each pioneer has a unique shape and calling. Things go best when they develop some self awareness and minister out of who they are rather than someone else's expectation of what a pioneer might be. The gift comes in some combination or remix of apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic in the Ephesians list of ministries. We have also discovered it's not age or gender or culture specific, exclusively lay or ordained – it's simply given and received.

2. 'Why not?' and 'what if?' are at the heart of pioneering

Imagination is essential if we want to discover genuine newness and move in mission to places beyond where we currently are. When we set out I didn't expect that we would talk so much about seeing and about imagination. This seeing involves grief over the way things are and where we have got stuck, and dreaming of new worlds and communities that are possible. It says 'why not?' and 'what if?' rather than 'why?' and 'what for?'.

We have also discovered that seeing differently has a cost. What seems visible and obvious to pioneers is often seen as irritating, troublesome, a pain and something to be resisted by those with vested interests in the way things are. For this reason, pioneering ministry tends to flourish when there is somebody within the structures and systems of the diocese or equivalent who is also able to imagine things differently – who 'gets it'. They are then able to create the space for the new to flourish and interpret it back to others.

3. The church says it wants pioneers but…

This has been the hardest thing to bear. In many places the church is saying loud and clear that we need pioneers, which is great and true and I'm sure it is genuine. Pioneers then respond and often take risks in the process. But it sometimes turns out that perhaps the church didn't quite mean what it said, or there are some big 'buts'. In other places it is clear she's not interested in pioneers at all – some dioceses still don't recognise pioneer ministry or they suggest that everyone is a pioneer and allocate no resources while their DDOs do their best to steer people away from pioneer ministry as a vocation. We have shed tears, expressed frustration, prayed a lot, and reflected that every journey to the new in the bible – and probably elsewhere – involves going through darkness, letting go, or experiencing wilderness on the way. It's unavoidable.

It seems that the kind of pioneering understood most readily by the wider church involves an outcome that looks something like what we have already; namely a community of disciples with worship, singing, preaching and money being paid back into the centre – preferably all happening within a very short space of time.

Of course there is nothing wrong with that as an outcome but there are two things to say about it:

it takes time – five to seven years seems to be the experienced wisdom on this;

part of the challenge the church faces is that the forms of church, or the way we do church is cultural so to pioneer in a new space and community will require an imaginative approach that is able to let go some of the old shape, structure and culture in order to allow something new and indigenous to be born. Outcomes will be important but often this journey in mission involves quite a period of discernment of where God is at work, exploration on the way to the new and surprises. Fruit sometimes comes in places you didn't begin to look.

The pressure that is brought to bear in measurement and counting what's happening too early creates undue and unfair pressure. I genuinely don't know what to do about this challenge. I have wished on many occasions I could fix things for pioneers in incredibly difficult scenarios but I can't – we don't have the power, or the resources. I can't see this going away any time soon and if anyone can offer us wisdom here I would welcome it. There are exceptions to this but the difficult scenarios still far outweigh the good ones. A major part of the issue is resources and I think there's much more thinking and work to be done on how we might resource pioneering mission.

At CMS, we are training pioneers in contextual mission and contextual church. It is how those in mission have thought about this for decades and why the CofE originally asked CMS to get involved – due to our experience in cross cultural mission. It's also become the paradigm within which Fresh Expressions articulates what is going on and what is needed and it was the recommendation for the lens required in Mission-shaped Church.

4. Pioneers thrive in community

The magic in what we have been doing is generated by the people in the room – the learning community of pioneers. It's so fantastic to get people who are pioneering sharing together what they are doing and learning and thinking. I have learned so much from them and been so challenged myself in terms of my own faith and life of mission. We are in a very unique position in this in that our pioneers are not an isolated one or two in a wider community of learners which seems to be the case in many other places. We are all about pioneering mission. The second thing about community that I have become much more strongly convinced of than ever before is that pioneers should connect into a mission community on a long term basis, (a sodality if you like mission jargon).

Mission communities or 'spread out' religious communities such as CMS, the Franciscans, Jesuits, Church Army, the Incarnate Network, etc are those whose charism is prophetic mission. There's a recovery of some old wisdom here in that it's been this structure within the church that has best nurtured and helped this gift of pioneering mission flourish down the centuries.

I honestly think that if I was leading a diocese (don't worry, it's not going to happen!) I would invite the likes of CMS to connect with pioneers in the diocese and link them into a mission community and make a CMS appointment to lead it rather than go for a straight diocesan appointment. This requires a bit of a mind shift – probably in the relationship between sodal and modal (modal is the mission jargon for the local gathered structure like a diocese) and how they could work well together. Amazingly this is exactly the mind shift that our local RTP (Regional Training Partnership) has had in appointing a regional hub co-ordinator for pioneers to be located with us at CMS – and so create a pioneering hub in the region. This has been both a surprise and a great gift in the wider area.

5. We're still only at the start of something

It has been remarkable this year to have three year groups simultaneously filling the CMS café area at lunch time on Tuesdays. There's a real buzz. But we haven't even had a group of students go through the course fully yet so it's very early days for us still. We have a growing sense of excitement that, as we hoped would happen, locating pioneer ministry training within CMS as a mission community will really produce some great fruit: genuine new mission endeavours, contextual Christian churches and communities, and a really supportive context for pioneers in the long term. We shall see!

But I sense that this statement is also true for the wider church – it's early days and we need courage to hold on to the vision of pioneer ministry and to talk and think together creatively and honestly about this gift within the ministries of the church – how we discern, encourage, release, resource and support it into the future. Visit the CMS pioneer website or read the CMS annual report to find out more.

Edinburgh Dreams

VentureFX pioneer Lou Davis tells about the formation and development of a community in Scotland's capital city.

I had been working with the C3 community in Stockport but then applied for VentureFX and was sent to Edinburgh a year ago. At first I spent a lot of time getting to know what was happening in the city, speaking to people and going to different groups. I started by doing Twitter searches for Edinburgh and following people online to see what they were doing in the city.

I have always liked making things; it was a kind of family activity. As a result I always tend to gravitate towards creative people who also make things because it seems a very natural 'fit' for me. At Stockport I went on a pattern cutting course which eventually led to me taking a two year City and Guilds in Fashion and Textiles. At C3 we majored on craft groups but, in Edinburgh, I initially steered clear of doing the same thing so that I could discern what God was calling me to do in a very different situation.

After a while, I felt that making things and being creative was so much a part of me that I couldn't let it go. Things have since moved on and I have got myself a studio at Portobello, the city's seaside! It is great for making friends and building community as a creative hub, a place where people are creating artwork in all sorts of different forms.

At the moment the ministry is developing in three main areas:

I'm developing a new Christian worship community called The Gathering. I'm doing this with other people from the Edinburgh and Forth Circuit and this is designed to help in exploring Christianity and creating a place for developing community. It is a twice monthly act of creative, community-inspired worship in the heart of the city. We start off with tea or coffee, cake and chat at 6.30pm followed by worship half an hour later and a trip to the pub afterwards. We also have a few smaller groups; we meet up twice a month to share a meal, get to know each other as friends and serve others. As a group we have already found ourselves serving the homeless of Edinburgh.

I'm also involved with the YMCA in Edinburgh by helping with the drop-in events there. I attempt to play darts but keep hitting the wall!

I work with different artists and creative types, going to meetings and already established networks. I work with other creatives under the name of Edinburgh Dreams and we have staged events and worked closely with YMCA Edinburgh and the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church. We've got some great plans for the near future, including photography, video, art, fashion and a public art project for Advent.

The concept of Edinburgh Dreams is to build community across the city, inspire creative activity and to build friendships across divides – social, economic and geographic.

I go through phases when I consider how things are developing. Some days it is very exciting and positive – usually when something has gone well – and at other times it seems like I'm just doing endless admin and not getting anywhere at all. But then I may meet someone new, have an amazing conversation about God and it's all worthwhile.

For me it has been really important to keep in contact with the friends I have made in other places. I make sure I don't lose those friendships because I have needed the backing and love of people outside the area I'm working in. Thankfully the Circuit is really interested in what sorts of things I am doing and I'm also grateful for their level of support for me. In the community itself I don't think everyone's totally aware of what I do, at the YMCA for instance I just say, 'I work for the church.' That's usually enough to spark a conversation where deep thoughts about the meaning of life are shared.

My post is initially for five years but it's very encouraging to see how things are already taking hold; whether it be through the friends that I'm making in the artistic community or The Gathering which has been meeting for just a few months now but is finding its feet. We currently get together in a café in the city centre and we do slightly different things each time we meet – music, video, conversation and creative prayer and we always spend time together just chilling out.

Previously I've been part of groups where we wore ourselves out trying to do good things when there were people, or groups in the town, already doing those same things. I didn't want Edinburgh Dreams to fall into the same trap so it has been really good to start slowly, to find out what is already working in the city. It has been really useful to see the work of the YMCA, for instance. That has been a real eye-opener and shows a completely different side to Edinburgh from the tourist city with its tartan shops and castle. There can be a lot of kudos attached to having a project with your name on it in some way but it's vital to look around and see what else is being done and how 'your' own project can best serve the people around you by linking up with others or sharing the load.

Fresh Expressions welcomes Justin Welby as ‘a missionary leader’

Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions team today welcomed news of the appointment of the Bishop of Durham, Justin Welby, as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

He said,

I am delighted with the appointment of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury. Throughout his ministry he has been committed to the growth of the church. In Liverpool he was part of a church deeply committed to fresh expressions. I look forward to working with him. Our church has a missionary leader.

In a wide-ranging interview with Fresh Expressions last year (which you can listen to below), Justin outlined some of the key challenges facing the Church and development of fresh expressions of church:

Need to grow numbers in the Church

I think one of the things that for many years has worried me about churches is when people look for shortcuts to growth and we have to be in the business of growth, by which I mean lots and lots of things and widespread growth, but in this context I mean growing numbers. And the reason we need to grow numbers is that if the Church is to meet the challenges that it's facing in terms of the State withdrawing from large sectors of society we have to have more people on the ground. I mean it's Jesus' thing of praying for people to go out into the harvest; the fields are white for harvest and we haven't got enough people to get out there and start harvesting and that means more people which means more numbers, it's not complicated.

Fresh expressions should not be done 'ad hoc'

Fresh expressions of church are something that need to be calibrated and thought through very carefully rather than just done ad hoc as a sort of knee jerk reaction when we need to have a fresh expression. You need to ask yourself, 'What do I mean by that?', 'Is it genuinely a fresh expression?' 'What's it trying to achieve; in what way does it add to the work of the Church and the Kingdom of God in the area?'

He also warned against inappropriate use of fresh expressions language saying,

Fresh expressions is increasingly a technical phrase and it's a misused one. It's one that's being used so widely that it often becomes meaningless. You end up… where everything is a fresh expression of something and therefore nothing is.

Praise for 'mixed economy' working

He explained why it was so important to him,

I think partly because historically the church has always operated mixed economy when it was at its best. If you go back to the Middle Ages the great growth of the monastic movement was essentially a mixed economy, Benedict was a fresh expression in his day. So there's nothing new about the mixed economy idea. Mixed economy is essential because it gives the balance between what Benedict called stability – a location in place and nature – with the catalyst of an openness to the Spirit of God doing new things. And we need both. Without stability you end up just following fashion, Benedict knew that very well, and without the catalyst of the Spirit you end up just becoming utterly embedded and unable to move in what you've always done.

Reverb

Dave Saunders tells how his faith journey led him from England's south coast to become a VentureFX pioneer in Scotland.

It all goes back to walking along Eastbourne beach with my church leader, pouring my heart out with frustration at the fact that my schoolmates didn't want anything to do with Church. He then asked, 'What would Church look like for young people?'

After going on to help establish a youth church, which flopped after about six months, I decided to take a year out with Youth for Christ. I had no idea where I might be living following my YFC training but I was looking for the sunniest location, preferably near to Eastbourne. When I heard that YFC was working with the Methodist Church to help plant a youth church, I knew that was where I was to go. I then found out they were doing it in Inverness; I put that down to God's sense of humour!

I was 18 when I came to Inverness for my year out. Nine years later I'm still here. I knew when I first arrived that I loved this city and felt called to the young people who don't 'do' church or want anything to do with Christianity. My heart broke for the young people I met and that we had failed, as church, to communicate the great message of hope to them. In some ways I would say I was angry with the church because of that.

I was placed in a Methodist church. This was completely foreign to what I was used to but I was struck by Peter Howson's deep passion, as minister, to help young people engage with God and life in a way they could understand. He wasn't about getting young people into his service; it was about giving young people a chance to meet their creator.

So Revolution youth church was born and after two years I was asked to be its leader (even though I have had no formal theological training). I had gone from feeling hurt and frustrated by Church to being passionate about what it can be: a force for peace and justice, and a family that truly loves God and the communities around it.

We enjoyed four great years as Revolution and then had a radical rethink. As a result we went from being a programme-led Sunday evening service to being a group of people called to serve all the people of Merkinch and Dalneigh in Inverness. Merkinch is known locally as The Ferry, an area which is in the top 3% of deprived areas of Scotland.

We changed our name from 'Revolution' to 'Reverb' because we want to reverberate the love of God in the community around us.

We are now a group of 8 – with about 25 or so in a larger core group – and between us we have many connections with the community; including all the young people, now in their twenties, who I met while working in the school.

We hold a written 'evolving covenant' which we call the 'invisible bond' with each other to help us to be clear that we only exist to serve God and to share His love and justice with the community around us. Every Sunday we check that this remains our priority before we then try to work out together how we can be better at it. The conversation over dinner is about what opportunities God gave us during that week, what scripture says about it and how we can learn from each other's experience of God in the world. It's where faith and life collide.

We have several local expressions of love:

dig your heart out. Local businesses and churches sponsor garden makeovers for deserving local people and we get involved in this practical expression of love for the community;

wash your heart out. This is based on Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet as a way to get to know people. We're willing to be there to get to know people better by saying, 'If you tell us who you are, we'll wash your car';

sing your heart out. This took place last Christmas when we organised a carol service in the football field.

path people. A phone number that anyone disadvantaged can ring over the winter months to ask us to clear their path of snow and ice.

This is all relationship-driven ministry, not personality-driven. Looking to the future, I would say failure would involve everything depending on me and all falling apart if I moved on. It's important not to follow me but to follow Christ.

'Success' would involve inspiring people to love God and love their neighbour the best they can in small pockets of churches, maybe 10 communities of 10 members.

However it shapes up, the crucial thing is to have small groups engaged in conversation and meeting over a meal. You don't need a large group to achieve huge difference. It's easy to engage in the 'attractional model' of large events, it's an entirely different ball game to create missional disciples.

Reverb's mission is to instigate and cause holy mischief and I pray that will continue and grow as we see what God is doing in this area.

The missional life is not easy! But the challenges and opportunities it throws up reminds me of St Paul's words,

We can rejoice when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. For we know how dearly God loves us.

Romans 5.3-4

Fresh expressions: time for a revolution? (Michael Volland)

Michael Volland asks whether it's time for a revolution.

The trailblazing Fresh Expressions initiative coming out of the UK… has generated some wonderfully creative new forms (of church) but it seems to have had only marginal impact on its organisations. Wholesale renewal has not come about through its efforts precisely because it is a skunk works project – operating far from the centre of the organization… Unless these experimental forums are heartily owned by the broader system, their paradigmatic change remains a pipedream.

Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim, The Permament Revolution, Jossey-Bass, 2012, p172

That quote comes from chapter 8 of The Permanent Revolution by Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim. The statement was tucked away at the foot of page 172 but I thought it was worth sharing on a Facebook mission forum. My post – on the page for the Missional Communities, Orders and Project Hub at CMS – generated 67 comments, including several from Hirsch himself. It has since prompted me to provoke further (constructive) thought and discussion around the question of the impact of the Fresh Expressions initiative on the DNA of its partner denominations.

Hirsch and Catchim argue that – after 1700 years of Christendom – the Church needs to re-establish the fivefold ministries of apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. They:

focus especially on the Church's need to recover apostolic imagination and practice;

point out the need for a reformulation of '…the ways that we think about church and the ways that we envision ministry and leadership';

articulate their desire to liberate minds and vocations;

highlight the need to change the game.

They are also unapologetic about their provocative vision and, although their work is scholarly and highly nuanced, no one would expect a book with the word ‘revolution’ in the title to be awash with gentle suggestions or to shy away from confrontation with established institutions.

Hirsch and Catchim's analysis of the missional situation in the West rightly propels their writing forward with the sort of urgency that generates straight talking. 'Straight talking' by human beings can never come from a place of absolute understanding but it is useful when it emerges out of reflection on long experience and it can be just what is needed to generate a serious re-appraisal of a given situation. Few who are concerned about the way in which the UK Church is to engage in the mission of Jesus would dismiss Hirsch and Catchim's straight talking out of hand. Of course, having said all of this, it is still right to question whether their comment about the impact of Fresh Expressions on partner denominations is entirely fair. And we cannot ignore the fact that they are writing from the United States and are therefore not fully immersed in the UK scene. However, the relative fairness of a comment from across the Pond shouldn't keep us from hearing something that might be important!

Some UK-based contributors to the Facebook comment stream viewed Hirsch and Catchim as making an unfair and under-informed critique of the state of play here. They emphasised the huge number of new initiatives that have occurred in the wake of the Mission-shaped Church report (2004) and to evidence of significant changes at the centre that would have been unimaginable a few years ago, including lay and ordained Pioneer Ministry, Bishop's Mission Orders, FEASTs, mission shaped ministry, Pioneer curacies and incumbencies, partnerships with the other denominations and para-church agencies.

Clearly the Fresh Expressions initiative has had a hugely positive impact in the UK and further afield. We can already see significant fruit and there is much more to come as various initiatives grow into maturity and as those who have come to faith via various fresh expressions inhabit their denominations and begin to have a say in shaping them.

Hirsch and Catchim do not contest any of this. In fact they celebrate it (read the quote again!) Rather, their view is that the missional mindset at the heart of the Fresh Expressions initiative does not appear to have been heartily owned across the UK system. This means that the sort of wholesale paradigmatic change that they believe should result from the activities of an apostolic church has not occurred – and indeed will not occur. They say it is all well and good to point to the progress that has been made but there are still significant changes required at the very heart of the denominations. This is not to diminish the work already done or to knock the denominations for the sake of it. It is rather to challenge us to take more seriously the need for a fundamental shift of perception and imagination at the core of the denominations as well as at the cutting edges.

Becoming defensive is one response to Hirsch and Catchim. This might involve pointing to the fundamentally incarnational (and therefore theoretically missional) nature of Anglican ecclesiology or drawing up a long list of success stories. I suggest that defensiveness is a waste of precious time. Challenges like Hirsch and Catchim's are helpful because they provoke us to look beyond our progress (actual or imagined) at what has remained untouched and which might require wise and courageous fresh attention.

Hirsch and Catchim go on to say,

If entrepreneurial effort is only sporadic, then serous systemic missional change is unlikely.

In North East England (I'm aware it may be a very different story elsewhere) an entrepreneurial or apostolic approach to mission has, in my opinion, been sporadic. I know this because I work with clergy and churches across the region. While I love the Church and trust the God who is able to breathe life into barren places, I also see the need for 'experimental forms being heartily owned by the broader system'. In this sense (and in my context) I think Hirsch and Catchim's work is a useful spur to ongoing efforts in the direction of paradigmatic change.