Day: 19 November 2012

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.

E1CC parachuteWe 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.

E1CC gardenWhat 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 BakerJonny 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.