Month: April 2013
Shaping vicars: a ‘game of unreality’ (Tim Thornton)
Tim Thornton discusses how we shape vicars.
Anglicans live – and always have lived – with compromise and blurring of boundaries. There is definitely a theological conversation to be had about the place of compromise within the church and the world, especially at a time when individualism is rampant and each person appears to be the centre of their own universe, a place where rights rule and there is little or no talk of responsibilities.
There is no obvious way to mark the 'before' and 'after' of such prevalent ideas or trace where such ways of thinking come from – though it is often the case that several people in varying contexts come up with something very similar almost simultaneously.
But I think we have now reached a demarcation line. We have come to the end of an era – an era when we held a common understanding of the role and nature of the professional clergyperson. For the past century or so, there has been an implicit and tacit agreement that we have understood the nature and role of the profession we call 'clergy' and that the priorities and dominant characteristics were accepted by most people.
So it is that whether training to be stipendiary or self-supporting in the Church of England, in reality we have been shaping vicars. That is what we have understood ourselves to be doing and what the world, in turn, understands and expects us to provide.
But, in what is a long overdue move, I believe it's essential for us to deconstruct the understanding or definition of a vicar. Instead we need to reconstruct and permit new models of being deacons and priests so that they can be made 'real' and gain acceptance in the wider church and world.
At present we all participate in a game of unreality. We go through a process of discernment of vocation which is for the order of deacon and priest but, in fact, everyone really knows we are trying to find people who can be leaders of our churches. We are looking for vicars. If that is not the case then we ought to be honest and say so and challenge the perceptions of those in our churches for whom it does seem to be the case.
The confusion is now even greater than this due to the fact that many dioceses are struggling to create and allow new ways of leading churches and ministering to fresh expressions of church – as well as to inherited models of church. Yet there is no clarity about models of ministry so that theological institutions are left in a dilemma about what they should be doing and how they can best shape and form people for the ministry that lies ahead.
The Anchor – update Apr13
Hayley Matthews, chaplain for MediaCityUK at Salford Quays, has been appointed Rector of Holy Innocents, Fallowfield. She tells of how things have developed during her three years as coordinator of The Anchor, the chaplaincy's on site base.
I'm very much looking forward to serving at Holy Innocents but there's no doubt it will be very different to what I've become accustomed to at MediaCityUK.
At the moment it is unclear as to whether The Anchor will continue in the same way or if it will be time for something new there. I have been very fortunate in starting to form community in this place and I will take with me many happy memories of the people of Salford; the parishioners at St Clement's Church, Ordsall; my small army of volunteers; staff at the Holiday Inn who helped with many a gathering at the hotel; and the countless people I got to know at the BBC North – particularly those at Radio Manchester, Religion and Ethics, and Outreach who I worked very closely with.
A true sense of community has developed around our regular Big Business Breakfasts as people got together to support and encourage each other. We also saw the building up of our community gospel choir and the impact of our Church Urban Fund volunteer programme, which enabled people to gain qualifications, work experience – and most of all confidence to know that MediaCityUK was a place for them, too.
I would have loved a fresh expression of church to develop on site but the role was specifically missional as opposed to proselytising, with the aim of encouraging people into their own local faith communities rather than drawing them away. This has taught me to be more creative about sharing my faith in a way that is hopefully more 'parabolic' i.e. giving food for thought in the longer term rather than fully formed doctrinal answers to questions that haven't yet been asked.
In a way, BBC Radio Manchester and Radio 2's Pause for Thought/Thought for the Day became my 'pulpit' as I took part in their programming on a regular basis. I was in a very privileged position with that but, on the whole, I discovered that it was important to be able to adjust to whatever the context and culture did – or didn't – provide.
I found it encouraging when people began to realise that we didn't need a church building to be church. A lot of non-Christians along the way have asked me, 'But where is your church?' I would say to them that we are all 'bricks' of the church and that we needed to move away from the idea of the one building where everything is in the same place. The Anchor has certainly made me think a lot more about incarnating 'the Church' through people rather than it simply being seen as a place to 'go to'.
There is something about being a chaplain that's like a game of 'tag' because you meet some many people from different networks and situations and, with God's help, reach out to them all in some way that will enable them to pass on God's love and grace, too. Social media was very important for this, some people would want to come to the Daily Prayer or Holy Communion every week but others – due to work patterns or commitments at home – would follow our prayer schedule on Twitter or use my blog as a mini-homily. I've been amazed at the 'secular' community activities that have provoked conversations around faith and spirituality, let alone the meaning of life, that simply being alongside people as a priest has given the opportunity for.
During my time at The Anchor, I have been a spiritual companion to a number of people who would not otherwise have gone to church; others have been with me for a while and then wanted to find a church for themselves. My aim was always to encourage people to be independent in their spirituality; it wasn't my role to make them 'do' or 'be' any one thing – that was to be between them and God. The irony is that this encouraged people to ask more questions and feel more able to explore what they saw in a faith that wasn’t being imposed, just lived out through another ordinary human being experiencing similar everyday issues.
I have really contemplated the parables of the yeast and salt here and there's no doubt that the volunteers offer that salt and light. I believe they have grown in their faith and I think that is something which is a challenge to those in inherited church who can be somewhat parochial. Of course it's important to promote evangelism but I think we can become so intent on preaching the gospel that we forget what it is to be missional.
There is a profound similarity between chaplaincy and those involved in fresh expressions of church in a sense of being:
- a Christian presence;
- pastoral;
- engaged in social action and healing.
The difference is that in standard chaplaincy we are missing the worshipping, ecclesial community. It can be like working in a desert but isn't that where the water's most needed?
Note: At the time of writing, we do not know about the future of The Anchor which is a Churches Together initiative backed by the Church of England. The chaplain is employed by the Diocese of Manchester.
Exeter’s ‘Heineken’ church – five years on
Exeter Network Church made history in November 2009 when the Church of England’s first ever Bishop's Mission Order officially authorised ENC as a new form of church. Jon Soper, one of ENC's leadership team, says it gives them a 'mandate to be missional'.
It's generally business as usual but, in saying that, I do feel a little bit different because the BMO does explain us to the rest of the Christian community. We are recognised as being part of the Church of England but not within the parish system; and by not being geographically set in one place, we do have a licence to roam, to experiment.
On the day that we became a BMO, the Bishop of Exeter, Rt Revd Michael Langrish, spoke about us being a Heineken church reaching the parts that the others don't necessarily reach. It's certainly a real bonus to have the weight of something bigger than ourselves mandating what we’re doing.
We celebrate our fifth birthday this year, and it will be a real year of change. One of the biggest of those may be to make use of St Matthew's Anglican church and hall in the city.
Currently we meet in a private girls' school but now some things could possibly operate from more of an established regional centre. The Maynard School is in its own grounds so people don't walk past the building. Previously we met on the quay and we built up strong relationships with people coming in from near and far. We need to get back to making those sorts of connections.
Also our core gathering on the second Sunday of the month at the school can involve up to 250 people so the hall gets pretty full. Some people may question us going into what is recognisably a church building. I would say that as we move forward into different premises, we should hold firm to the mission and vision that God has given us wherever we are. Where we go next will be our third place, but we are going to call it a base or a tent – not a home. Having everyone move from one venue to another means that it will be important to keep focused on what God is doing in Exeter.
We have to look at making it a really great place without becoming vain about it; being streetwise but also gracious and humble and using the buildings as a tool. There is a small congregation at St Matthew's and they are offering a long lease on the church and hall for us to use as we like though we will keep a small area in the church where the congregation will continue to meet for their own services.
We will develop some new things too. One of the most recent initiatives has seen us partner with Christians Against Poverty to open a CAP Centre in Exeter. We’re already seeing God bring some interested people to our door and we want to see change in people’s lives. We have offices in the town but the work also goes on in people’s houses. There are enormous problems of debt and the stories that we hear are heartbreaking.
ENC has become quite a different thing to what it was even a couple of years ago – changing from one size to another means it changes how people connect with each other and to those around them. In our early days, everybody used to pitch in and do everything together; now it's so big that you can't possibly know everyone.
Whatever the size of the ENC and its challenges, it's good to celebrate what God has done. Our fifth birthday will see the whole church, about 250 people, go away for a weekend to Fistral Bay, Newquay at the beginning of March. Revd Mark Bailey from Trinity Cheltenham, is our guest speaker, and we will also have worship, surfing, and a party with a band on the Saturday night.
Networking in all sorts of ways is important to ENC; and we have various groups which meet in venues across the city. Some of the networks are more evangelistic while others are created to build up faith; the networks range from a large group for 18 to 25-year-olds called Essence to social activities with Women of a Certain Age!
Pioneers on leadership
Heathfield cafechurch
Plans for a cafechurch came about through Churches Together in Heathfield and District, East Sussex. Follow their journey as they prepare for 'opening night' on Friday 26th April 2013.
It was a coming together of ideas when a Costa Coffee shop opened in Heathfield High Street and cafechurch network advertised a training day in the area.
Members of the 12 churches represented in Churches Together in Heathfield and District wanted to find out more about what might be possible as a result of these two 'coincidental' events. Three people attended the Network's training day last year and were inspired to look at building on what had already been happening in the community.
Five years previously, Churches Together in Heathfield and District had set up a Street Pastors initiative under the auspices of the Ascension Trust which initiated the national Street Pastor movement. The small town does not have late night bars or clubs but it was suffering increased levels of vandalism. Street Pastors started to be available in and around the town's car parks, skate park, playgrounds and streets from early evenings on Fridays. They built up good relationships with the teenagers and young adults they came across and started to ask, 'but what happens next? How can we reach these people we wouldn't normally reach from our own church settings?'
The cafechurch is now seen as the next move in these ongoing relationships with individuals – and the wider community.
In November 2012, 130 people attended a Churches Together supper at the Beehive pub, Heathfield, when Sue Mumford – one of the cafechurch planning group – spoke about the vision surrounding its launch. More than 20 people signed up to be involved.
The cafechurch is focusing on attracting 18 to 35-year-olds though all ages will be welcome if they are looking to engage with a new form of church.
Sue Mumford says,
Heathfield is a lovely town but there is very little for teenagers to do here and our churches are sadly lacking in young people. We realised that it was right to try and go to them rather than sit back and hope they would come to us. We have listened to what they have told us and – through prayer – we believe it's right for us to step out in faith in this way.
We have no idea what will happen but we just have to make a start.
Keith Miller, another of the planning group, adds,
If you have never been involved in church, going into a church building is quite an ordeal. A coffee shop, on the other hand, is a very familiar, very safe, very relaxed environment. This may provide a step towards church – or it may not. It may lead to a new way of doing church or it may fade away. We'll have to wait and see.
We are fortunate to have several, very good independent coffee shops in the town,
comments George Dearsley, Vice-Moderator of Churches Together in Heathfield and District,
but they were a little too small for what was needed to get this off the ground. We have already seen that the teenagers and young adults are accustomed to going to Costa – but, personally, we'll certainly continue to make good use of all of the coffee shops in Heathfield.
A coordinator provides prayer backing, both in the development of prayer partners in each of the link churches involved and on site. A 'dress rehearsal' for young people from local churches was held last week in order to give the planning group an idea of timings and practicalities.
Friday's session will run from 7pm (for 7.30pm start) until 9pm. Watch this space…
Garden-City
Tim Nash is a pioneer minister with the Methodist Church's VentureFX pioneering ministries scheme. He, and his wife Hannah, have been developing a community called Garden-City for the past 18 months.
I started with VentureFX in September 2011 and am based in Sherwood, just north of Nottingham city centre. The first few months were a frustrating time as I was keen to do something; an event, a project, anything! Instead we sensed God calling us to let go of all our ideas, agendas and dreams and pray and discern what he was already doing in the area. So we prayer walked (and cycled) every street in the area a number of times, keeping our eyes and ears open to what God might be up to.
We slowly began to develop a picture of a place that was very open to spirituality, but one that at the same time was very suspicious of anything formal, organised, and in particular anything that appeared religious.
We then began to sense God giving us a way into this community. We felt God telling us to 'love your neighbour'. This took us by surprise a bit as it seemed so obvious, but we came to appreciate that there was something inauthentic about going out and about 'doing' mission in the area if we didn't even know the people we lived next door to. As a result we began to organise street parties and house parties for Christmas, Easter, the Jubilee or anything other excuse we could come up with. Then slowly we began to invite people round to explore spirituality in informal and creative ways.
Another thing we sensed quite strongly was the need to embody the gospel. Again we knew we were meant to do this, but we began to realise that in order to do this authentically we needed to open up our lives to the people around us. Although by nature, me and my wife are quite introverted and like our own space, we began to open ourselves up by making sure that at least three or four times a week we'd eat with other people, invite people to join us on holidays, invite people round for Christmas or to simply join in with whatever we were doing. We also learnt the importance of not trying to put a gloss on our lives, but to allow people to be a part of our struggles; our mourning as well as our celebrations. That's when people really seemed to be looking at what difference our faith made.
We also came to realise that in our particular context what we offered people needed to be experiential. As I spoke to people involved in the New Spiritualities, it was clear they were involved because of a spiritual encounter of some sort. I also met a number of people who had left the church to explore the New Spiritualities because they hadn't found a sense of an authentic, experiential spiritual journey in the church. So we began to create spaces for people to experience Jesus, regularly putting on creative, meditative evenings in our home, community centre and the pub. We've seen God use these spaces to touch people in really deep ways, even if their initial experience wasn't a positive one.
At one of our gatherings, for example, we took a small group of people through a guided meditation that ended by encouraging them to engage in a conversation with Jesus. One man, who had been brought along by his partner, began to experience a deep sense of darkness and fear. Rather than putting him off, however, this encounter with (what he described as) evil convinced him there must be something good and loving out there. All his previous intellectual objections to the faith disappeared and he began to pursue Jesus. We recently baptised him – just four months after that initial encounter.
We also quickly realised that we had to offer an holistic faith. Any hint of a sacred/secular divide was a big turn off for people. As we reflected on this we felt God draw our attention to Jesus's summary of the law as a framework for our faith journey – to love God (Father, Son and Spirit), to love ourselves (mind, body and spirit) and to love our neighbour (humans, animals and the Earth).
One of the many ways we've gone about expressing this is through sharing an allotment. Every weekend a group of us can be found there digging, weeding and planting, as we explore what it means to live more in tune with the seasons. The local allotment association has been so impressed with what we've been up to they're allowing us to turn another plot into a community garden to create a sense of community among the other allotment holders.
This journey has led to the formation of a community called Garden-City. We chose the name because humanity is said to have originated in a garden (Eden) and will find its fulfilment in a city (the New Jerusalem). We live in the 'in-between' time, the hyphen of Garden-City. It also seemed quite apt as our community lives in a city but we spent a lot of our free time in our garden/allotment.
There are 15 of us, plus children (and a small group of people still on the fringes checking us out). Although we're increasingly exploring the idea of mission as a community, our present growth seems to be happening through 'attractive discipleship', as people in our social networks show an interest in the lifestyle we're committing ourselves to.
We recently celebrated Garden-City's first birthday by going on a retreat for the day. To help us reflect on the journey we'd been on we made a timeline on which everyone wrote something about what being part of the community has meant to them. One of the main themes that emerged was people's thankfulness for the sense of family they've found in Garden-City. That was a sign to me that we are seeing a 'church' emerge – a Jesus-centred, spiritual family.
Although relationships are at the heart of Garden-City, a pattern of gatherings has emerged to help us on our discipleship journey.
On the first Monday of the month we all meet together in a pub function room to explore the life of Jesus. This is a very informal, discussion-based evening, where we look at an aspect of Jesus's life, and then commit ourselves to living it.
On the second Monday we meet in groups of twos or threes. This is where we get deeper into each other's lives, and hold each other accountable to loving God, loving ourselves and loving our neighbours.
On the third Monday we're all together again in the pub function room where we explore creative prayer and meditation. We've found this to be a good place to bring new people who are interested in exploring spirituality.
On the fourth Monday we meet in two groups to simply catch up, share how our journey is going, or to go deeper into any issues that have emerged at the previous gatherings.
We also all meet together one Sunday afternoon a month to share a meal.
What really strikes me as I look back over the last 18 months is that it is Jesus who is building this church. All we've done is commit ourselves to prayer and to giving ourselves to the people we've come into contact with, and sharing with them what Jesus has done for us. Out of this, Garden-City has emerged. That's not to say it hasn't been really hard work or that everything has been easy, we've certainly had our challenges, but there has been a very real sense that Jesus is going ahead of us, and we're simply trying to keep up!
Relic of the past or renewal for the future – what is church?
Stephen Lindridge, Fresh Expressions Connexional Missioner for the Methodist Church, asks whether church is a relic of the past or renewal for the future.
What do we really mean by church? Is it something with a spire or a tower or a font – a place for those all-important hatches, matches and dispatches of baptisms, weddings and funerals? I recently came across two very different interpretations.
A snowy day in Newcastle and I was teaching on the Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry course where we were looking at 'what is Church?' Cue 20 Christians, from differing backgrounds and traditions, getting very excited about the nature and relationships that form the backdrop to this word church.
Twenty four hours later and a BBC news report from the Middlesbrough area told of how a 900-year-old church building – once vandalized and almost destroyed – had been moved brick by brick and rebuilt in the Beamish Museum, adding to their 'growing collection of historic buildings of the past'.
I must admit to feeling demoralised to hear, in this news bulletin at least, that 'church' very much equals 'building'; all the more so as I had witnessed something very different in the name of church just a day earlier. This was compounded by the fact that, for years, I have taught passionately that church – in its essence – is made up of three things:
- people – important because 'we don't do it on our own';
- focused on God – the Divine Trinity;
- purpose – a rhythm of mission and worship.
As a result, two things struck me as if for the first time:
- our western culture has placed its own meaning and understanding on the word church;
- the meaning of that word can be understood in a positive or negative way and that understanding has a profound impact on those seeking to engage in relevant mission with contemporary society.
Positive
Church is a place where people gather to help each other learn more about living their lives like Jesus. They pray, worship, share, care and encourage one-another in their respective outward mission. Living everyday life in a way that more people would come to know the remarkable and transforming love of God in Christ.
This is something that certainly came true for Matt, who attends the Café Lite fresh expression of church in Droxford village hall, Hampshire. He says,
I have spent many adult years in prison and a lot of years on class A drugs but I have been clean for a year in recovery. I go to Café Lite because I find it an enjoyable time which helps me interact with people I don't usually interact with. I find it inspiring; people are so happy there and show me that a clean life is possible.
There are countless others with similar transformational stories, including Star – baptised and confirmed at the Upper Room community, Cirencester:
I can't connect easily with people in church; there's no space. Here there is space to be real, and to pour your heart out if you need to. It feels like home. It's a place that brings church and community together.
Linda of New Song Network, Warrington, adds,
New Song is my oasis. It is my time to worship God in a way that draws me closer. It's the natural, relaxed, non-threatening, welcoming, Jesus-filled night of my month and it has helped me to deepen my faith and serve others.
These fresh expressions of church often find homes in cafés, pubs, schools or in the workplace. Some meet in traditional church buildings but most do not resemble what would have been familiar to the Beamish museum piece of a church – though they are, most definitely, church.
Negative
A great deal of research has gone into why nearly all the main denominations in Britain are declining rapidly and have been for the last 60 years. The research has given us a new piece of jargon, 'the de-churched' – people who once went to church but don't go any more. Some have left for inert reasons; moving job or home and getting out of the habit of going or not having time to find a new church in a busy life, etc.
However more than 50% of those researched all left for very negative reasons, from the trivial – a disagreement over what colour the woodwork was to be repainted – I kid you not – to the very serious in nature. This may have involved hurt and fall-out from the classic sins around money, sex and power. These abuses, in all their forms, irrevocably damage peoples' relationships with each other and consequently, often their faith in God.
Between these positive and negative ends of the spectrum are the very reasonable responses that the church leadership or the loudest voices will not respond to the growing needs of our time and change to meet such needs. Therefore people leave to find a community of Christians which is looking to do what it says on the tin, namely 'make disciples of Christ' instead of 'this pleases us, therefore it stays as it is'.
Bishop Graham Cray, leader of the Fresh Expressions team, often quotes an Australian bishop who says, 'more of the same means less of the same'. So why is that?
Jesus said he would build his church and, in the Acts of the Apostles (2:47), we read – as those first believers started to gather in Resurrection hope and the Spirit's power – that it was God who added to their number daily. Many would ask, then why isn't God growing his church today? Well, some would say that he is. Newer churches in Britain are experiencing that growth in size with the worldwide church in Africa, South America and Asia seeing amazing things as God helps them to draw many people into faith.
It's not a picture that could be used to describe many Methodist or Anglican churches in Britain. Surely it can't be that they are such bad wicked places, full of judgement and holier-than-thou attitudes? Speaking as someone who has visited more than their fair share of churches down the years, no they are not bad. On the whole they are full of lovely, well-meaning people who are doing the best with what they have been brought up to believe that church is what you do on Sunday to help you through the week.
We've all heard of that weekly pattern which, in some cases, is generations old. It's along the lines of, 'Turn up, sing up, pay up, shut up (during the sermon) and go home, knowing only a handful of names of the people sitting anywhere near you'.
The New Testament view seems a little different.
Consider for a moment the picture in Acts. We see on many occasions the community of believers responding to those who are in need. How did they know they were in need? Maybe those in need asked for help? The broader picture shows that the believers were all together and devoted to specific things, like 'the fellowship'.
This 'fellowship' is much stronger a word than the one we tend to bandy around when describing a general gathering at church, such as 'the men's or women's fellowship'. This is a word which many seem like a stranger in our culture; the word embodies commitment.
These earlier disciples were so committed to each other that they would give up 'stuff' and sell it to help the next person. They wanted to meet with each other on a daily basis; sharing food, praying together and learning more about Jesus.
These days, when we go somewhere different and try to establish new relationships, meeting people over food is still one of the best ways to get to know one another. Breaking down the barriers and getting to know more than someone's name is a basic human social skill in forming rich community – the sort of community that's a good place in which we can thrive.
If we proclaim the message, 'we are made in God’s image', the very essence of that is community. The Godhead three in one and one in three, the blessed Trinity is the source of relationship, love and community; we are made as social beings to dwell in community.
The sad reality is many people may be part of a crowd but no one knows their name or misses them if they disappear from sight. How many so-called 'churches' are like this? We go in anonymous to most of the others present and come out as unknown as we went in. The pains or joys of the past or coming week are untouched, not shared or prayed for by the wider group gathered on Sundays.
Ask yourself, how many people do you know by name at your church? How many don't you know? If we are not aware of people's names how are we going to pretend that we are building community?
Why does that matter? Look to verse 47 of Acts Chapter 2 for an answer.
Daily God added to their number… those who were being saved
Who added? Peter's preaching? The kindness of the disciples? Their organizational skills? No! The Lord added. We have preached and teached for hundreds of years that faith is God's gift to give by grace.
How can we envisage God gifting anyone new to faith into a place were they cannot grow and be nurtured into maturity? Here are four things that are key for the healthy, whole life of the community of believers – and newcomers to that community:
- learning practically about Jesus and all he taught, in ways that are relevant in today's cultures;
- being part of a nurturing community that is committed enough to know so much more than your name. A place to be part of and contribute to;
- eating together, share meals regularly, build the opportunities for deepening discipleship, the substance for encouraging a rhythm of mission and worship;
- praying together, cutting through all difference and minister to each other, the source of equipping for daily life.
Why are we in decline? Is it because most of the things we call church are not church at all? Over the years the building has taken on a name but the values that earn the title are sadly missing.
Why did 59% of the British population self-select Christian in the recent census yet less than 8% regular attend (at least monthly) something called church? Is it the 51% don't find what they are looking for?
What a task is before us. We need to encourage the church to be the church – not just in name (i.e. the gathered) but also in values, vision and purpose. Imagine…what if church existed in a 1000 more varieties than it currently does? What if we could find ways of creating the kind of communities in which those who called themselves Christian in the census would want to belong to and be an active, committed participant of? What if these communities of all sizes start doing the Acts stuff because they know and care for those about them? What if that really makes a difference and provides the Lord with a place to plant new believers?
Will that mean the word 'church' starts to signify something a little different than a building in a museum?
Shaping disciples in fresh expressions
Bishop Graham Cray looks at discipleship, in an article written for the Church of England Newspaper.
The ultimate test of any local church's ministry, whether in 'inherited' mode or a fresh expression, is 'what sorts of disciples are being made?' To what extent is that expression of church shaping people to be like Jesus? How effectively does it help those who belong to it to live their daily lives as Jesus would live their lives? Are they a community whose life together shows the wider community a better way of living?
At the heart of the fresh expressions' praxis is discernment, listening to God in context, learning how to engage with local issues, serving appropriately and planting a new indigenous community rather than cloning from another context. Accordingly, Christian discipleship must take local shape.
Those who are moving into a new context know that they need to follow this process because they are aware that they don't know their new community but those who are planting a fresh expression in their own well-loved home community need to follow it as well. Many of our assumptions about local community prove to be misleading once we have done some prayerful listening.
But how do you get started? The key is to identify the issues which most concern those you are wishing or trying to serve while, at the same time, prayerfully 'reading' the local context to identify the bigger issues which the gospel needs to address. This should not be a negative exercise; you are not looking for things to condemn. Often you will be looking for healthy longings and aspirations, things that are causes for hope.
It is this listening and looking which is vital. Once the key local issues, or the primary issues for the network you are creating or engaging have been identified, it is not hard to work relationally towards a local light touch rule of life – focusing the community and worship life of a fresh expression around these first priorities in partnership with local people.
I recommend two prayer-soaked approaches:
- conversation: you need to build relationships so ask people about their community, their pressures and their aspirations as a way of getting to know them. Test out how your understanding of the gospel translates in ways that make sense to them.
- 'Participant observation': this has a greater degree of analysis, a more detached and intentional approach, which tries to identify the main features of a culture by trying to get an insiders' view of it. It is a way of looking for shared patterns of behaviour, not just knowledge of particular people.
Set out to create community from the very beginning rather than at a later stage. If the fresh expression has developed from listening to serving to forming community, then you have a community before you have a worship event. If fresh expressions of church are going to equip new Christians for whole-life discipleship, then these new communities of faith have to be more than a Sunday or weekday event. Context will shape your precise planning but there are all sorts of patterns of smaller meetings which could help. You might consider:
- regular cells;
- prayer triplets;
- a Messy Church, or other all-age approach, can develop materials for 'church in the home';
- occasional courses – on anything from parenting to self-worth – give people the opportunity to have time together. As long as the content is relevant it really doesn't matter what the topic is because it all creates an opportunity to build relationships;
- a locally appropriate rule or rhythm of life, built around the issues, habits or Christian practices most pertinent but most challenging in that context. This can easily be supported by daily texts or emails. Social media allows us to support one another when our community is dispersed and keep us in touch until the next time we gather.
Getting together in occasional gatherings of whatever shape and size offer a starting point, not the destination because the essence of Church is it being a community. The chief Biblical metaphors are corporate: the body of Christ, the family or household of God, the people of God, and so on. It's worth remembering that the term 'one another' appears more than 50 times – primarily in Paul's letters and John's gospel or letters.
All of this leads us to ask how the participants in a fresh expression can grow together as a community in order to develop personally and communally in discipleship. Remember too that such discipleship must be 'glocal' – both global and local:
- global – recognisable as an embodiment of the historic Christian faith as it is lived across the world. All Christians are to live the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount and our faith must engage with the shared features of Western culture. Consumerism shapes our lives in the UK so we need to engage with it wherever we are.
- local or contextual – because the gospel is not detached from ordinary life but is the power of God to transform local living.
And finally, here are a couple of 'health' warnings. We are seeking to grow warm communities which are easy to join so don't let the depth of existing relationships act as a wall which keeps new people on the outside. We are to grow together as we grow in numbers.
Pay more attention to how people live than what they claim to believe or disbelieve. Christian character is as important as doctrinal belief and our logic about the way in which the Holy Spirit should engage with a person – or a community's life – is not necessarily the same as the way the Holy Spirit will choose to work. Once again we need to see what God is doing and join in!