Day: 10 December 2013

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

Our society is short on hope. The one thing that truly contextual churches should offer is a glimpse of hope, a glimpse of a believable alternative way of life. The power of any social vision is at its height when it is seen to deliver what it promises.

Our consumer society promised increasing prosperity and happiness but has delivered austerity; it is vulnerable to a better vision. The power of any society is also at its height when it seems inevitable. It may not be delivering what it promised, but what else is there? People may be fatalistic, even cynical, but without a credible alternative nothing changes. Our culture is also suspicious of grand schemes and big stories. For an alternative to be credible, it must be local and visible.

How then can fresh expressions of church offer hope through an alternative vision? For Christians, faith in what Christ has already done is the foundation of our hope for the future. We believe in a future transformed creation, heaven and earth renewed, begun with the resurrection, experienced in anticipation and the ultimate destination of our journey as disciples. We assess the present in the light of that future. We can't live it perfectly now, but we make it our aim. Anything unacceptable in that future world is unacceptable now, even though we can't change it all. We are to be future in advance people. In each context we live for the future which Christ has won and which Christ intends.

As we plan or develop fresh expressions, part of our discernment should be to ask:

• what would hope look like here?
• who is excluded, unloved or powerless here?
• what makes people afraid here?
• how can we be an authentic community here?
• what would be a glimpse of the kingdom of God here?
• what could be transformed by the power of the gospel here?

These are large questions which need specific answers, bringing real transformation.

Hope is demonstrated both by the quality of the fresh expression as a Christian community and by the impact of its service to the wider community. What we are together and what we do for others are the foundations of this ministry of hope. We are not simply trying to cheer people up or make them a little less cynical. We are showing that the only true foundation for hope is Christ and we need to be prepared to say so, at the right time and in the right way. Both deeds and words are needed.

The newly published book Fresh Expressions and the Kingdom of God offers theology, good practice and inspiring stories, to encourage us to share in Christ's ministry of transformation. In this Advent and Christmas season we are reminded where our hope truly lies. Hope in Christ focuses our vision, sustains us for the long patient work to which we have been called and assures us that our work is not in vain.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

As worship – as well as mission – is of the essence of the church, a fresh expression of church will develop a contextually appropriate pattern of prayer, worship and sacramental life. As they mature they will administer the sacraments which Jesus gave the Church – baptism and holy communion.

It is often a mistake to begin a fresh expression by first establishing a public act of worship rather than following a pattern of listening, serving, community formation and disciple making to help shape the worship gathering appropriately. But, like each of the other elements in this fresh expressions journey, such a gathering for worship needs to be the intention from the beginning, not an afterthought.

Most fresh expressions are more informal in ethos than more traditional church services. The worship will often be more interactive and relational. It will be a community experience – more than an event primarily led from the front. Reading and teaching the Bible will provoke questions and discussion within the service, not just afterwards. Prayer stations can provide a diversity of approaches to prayer but I also recommend regular corporate intercessions for the local community, wider world and for the church. This helps:

• to develop a disciplined commitment to pray for more than personal needs;
• the fresh expression to identify and support specific mission or community projects. Simple liturgy is a help with this, making prayer a more corporate call and response experience.

Many fresh expressions begin as a sort of 'catechumenate' group. They are a gathering of people on a journey towards mature Christian discipleship. If the worship is to form them as disciples it needs to have a recognizable pattern. The content may vary but a framework to which people become accustomed frees them to engage with the content of each aspect of the service without always wondering what will come next.

Journeys into committed faith in a Christian community need staging posts along the way. These might include informal acts, like a testimony or an interview, but they lead naturally to baptism, or the renewal of baptismal vows, or confirmation, or whatever way the host denomination marks the entry or return to Christian faith. This should normally be public and take place at the normal time and in the normal venue of the fresh expression. That is unless practicality, or a commitment to more public witness, takes you to the local river or swimming pool! Whatever the location, use a form of baptismal promise that would be recognised by your denomination or stream so that no-one can question the validity of what is done. There is one baptism, whether in inherited church or a fresh expression.

The same applies to holy communion. Some fresh expressions introduce holy communion early; others teach about it and develop an understanding and appetite about it before beginning. Although there is a myth that fresh expressions are not sacramental, recent Church Army research on the dioceses of Liverpool and Canterbury show this is not the case.

Many fresh expressions hold communion services. Each denomination has different regulations about who may lead and how this may be done, with the Methodist Conference making some new provisions this year. The same advice applies as with baptism. Use authorised words from your denomination as an application of the mixed economy.

Fresh expressions which have a rule of life – or which follow a new monastic pattern – may have a public event for members taking the promises which their community has developed.

There is a wonderful creativity about worship within fresh expressions. For more information see chapter 18 of Michael Moynagh's Church for Every Context, tap into the wealth of information in the worship section of the Guide on our site or look at the resources published by Jonny Baker's Proost. Worship in fresh expressions can be profound and transformative as well as informal, hospitable and interactive.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

A major motivation for establishing fresh expressions of church has always been to engage with a society which increasingly forms community via networks as opposed to neighbourhoods. This was a major emphasis in the Mission-shaped Church report and is just as important today.

But the intention was never to replace neighbourhood-based mission with a network approach. The intention was a mixed economy where, at its best, the two approaches formed one joined-up strategy; linked to one another, valuing one another and each reaching people whom the other could not.

Not everyone has grasped or believed this, and there has also been a regrettable neighbourhood versus network debate which has often idealised one or other part of the mixed economy over and against the other. This is unfortunate as it inevitably results in parts of the mission field being ignored, sometimes on the basis of ideological blindness.

Networks also divide and exclude, they do not just connect and join up. Most networks involve place, often a larger place than a parish or immediate neighbourhood. They involve meeting up in a place or they are hardly networks at all – however much there may be a digital component. Neighbourhoods, on the other hand, can be prisons for the poor, safe havens for the rich, or simply lack any sense of cohesion. Local mission needs to be discerned on the basis of local complex reality, often across wider areas than that of the most local.

The new Church of England and Methodist report Fresh Expressions in the Mission of the Church (pp167-172) recognizes all of this and offers the term 'locality' to describe the combined network and neighbourhood reality of society. Mission in, and to, a locality will involve network and neighbourhood approaches. It will involve inherited and more innovative forms of church, all as part of a common mission.

This combines well with Mike Moynagh's challenge for fresh expressions of church to be both 'focused and connected'. In his recently-published book Church for Every Context (pp171-173), he looks at the challenge for fresh expressions to be focused about their primary mission field – among those not reached by the church – as already established locally but understanding themselves to be part of a greater whole. A fragmented church will never re-evangelise this nation, nor will a church which cannot engage with the sheer diversity of contemporary culture.

Networks may form only one part of what is needed but networking is essential for connectedness. Everyone who is serious about mission to this nation needs to be a networker of one sort or another. At a national level, the Fresh Expressions team tries to serve the whole movement by sharing stories and helping local pioneers to recognize that they are part of something national – and even international.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

The purpose of fresh expressions of church are to be and embody an appropriate form of church to reach those who are not being reached by our existing ways of doing things, whether these are thought of as 'inherited' church or not.

In Church for Every Context (p151) Mike Moynagh writes

Many churches continue to serve significant sections of society. Yet the question presses: whom are these churches not serving?

This is a question which every church should ask itself, however well it seems to be doing. Who will never be reached if we only do this? Each well established fresh expression needs to ask exactly the same question as any church in inherited style – how can we reach the sort of people we don't reach now? Many fresh expressions are relatively small, but it may well be that the multiplication of the small is the Holy Spirit's strategy for our times.

Mike then points to the increasing diversity in our society and continues

Church no longer has the option, if it ever did, of relating to people as if they were all the same… Churches will look different because they are engaging with different people.

To reach those we are not reaching we need not only many more fresh expressions of church, but also many different fresh expressions of church. Neither duplicating inherited models, nor limiting ourselves to a number of well established types of fresh expressions, will do. What is needed is a multiplication of expressions of church both in numbers and creativity. The key process of listening to God in each context and then bringing the gospel and the context together in a creative way, opens up the possibility of real local creativity, if we refuse to let our imaginations be restricted by the models of fresh expression which are frequently used in other places. The Holy Spirit has not run out of ideas yet!

The vocation of the church according to Ephesians is to be Christ's

body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Ephesians 1.23

That is, to embody Christ as the fulfilment or completion of each place and dimension of life. Any place where people gather, for whatever reason is potentially a place for a gathering of his people. This requires a rich diversity,

so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 3:10

We have not yet seen the full range of that rich diversity.

Diversity within unity is God's intention. The creative multiplication that I long to see also requires a commitment to connectedness. Expressions of church are expressions of the Church and all of the Church belongs together. Personally I don't believe it is appropriate to use the word 'church' of gatherings of Christians which have no meaningful connection to other churches. We cannot heal all the existing breaches in the Church's unity but we have a responsibility to ensure that we do not create new ones. Inherited churches plant fresh expressions as sister congregations, fresh expressions plant new sister fresh expressions, inherited church and fresh expressions are not fully 'church' without one another. May God gift us with new gifts of creative imagination for mission and a deeper longing for unity.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

However counter-cultural it may seem in our individualistic society, the Christian faith is essentially corporate. We belong to one another in Christ. From the beginning the life of the early church was characterised by fellowship (koinonia), a generous mutual sharing of lives and gifts (Acts 2.42). This generosity was not just an internal matter but was demonstrated in mission as well. Paul thanks the Philippian church for their sharing (koinonia) in the gospel, which involved prayer and sending both finance and co-workers for his pioneering missionary work.

It is this sense of partnership which is characteristic of fresh expressions and the mixed economy at its best. At the local level, churches are releasing some leaders and resources to develop fresh expressions to establish a mixed economy of outreach where each contributes to the whole church's mission by engaging people unreached by the other congregation. As one part is blessed so is the whole. At an area level, churches can combine ecumenically or within a circuit or deanery to supplement their existing work with a new missional community – a network church, a youth congregation, Messy Church in the local school etc. Regionally, FEASTs allow the sharing of prayer, resources and training, and ensure that we never church plant competitively – out of ignorance. At the national level, denominations partner one another so that each can benefit from the learning of all. We are on a learning curve about contextual church and we have the privilege of learning new things for one another and all benefitting together. (Mike Moynagh's new book Church for Every Context has gathered and expanded much of that learning).

Networks of pioneers are forming for mutual encouragement and mutual learning, and there is to be a learning community of dioceses. The partnership of mission agencies – and the 24/7 Prayer Movement – alongside the denominations in this country is another example of this shared missionary life, which the Holy Spirit is inspiring and empowering. This is even developing internationally as fresh expressions work gets underway in various parts of the world, providing new sources of learning.

The crossing of cultural and other barriers is also part of this generous shared life. As fresh expressions are established in communities and networks previously untouched by the church, so the church locally becomes more diverse, and in the mixed economy its unity can have more of the breadth which God intends for his Church and Kingdom.

Something which first came to the attention of the national Church through a report to the Church of England has turned out to be a rich partnership of partnerships – experiencing the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the leader of the Church's mission. May this partnership deepen, grow and extend, for the sake of the gospel.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

Our aspiration is that fresh expressions of church should be communities of disciples, not just gatherings for worship. We have learned that if this is not built in from the beginning it is very difficult to add it in, let alone bolt it on, at a later stage. The initial character of the community being planted often decides the standard of discipleship that will be obtained. There is no quick fix or easy formula for disciple making, but there are some key principles.

Discipleship is not abstract. It is not a list of rules to be obeyed and sins to avoid. At its heart it is personal and corporate obedience to Jesus by those who have responded to his call to follow. It is not about religion. It is about all of life. It involves a choice to be with Jesus in order to become like him (Matthew 10.25) It is a choice to learn to live our life as he would live our life (Dallas Willard). It is a matter of the will. His yoke may be easy and his burden light but we still have to choose to bear it (Matthew 11.28-30) To become a disciple is to surrender our sovereignty over our personal destiny, and be apprenticed to Jesus, as part of his school of discipleship.

Such surrender will never happen unless there is a vision of something better and greater which makes the sacrifice worthwhile. The parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price (Matthew 13.44-46) make it clear that the kingdom (and the King) of heaven are worth such sacrifice. Do we set before people a vision of Jesus and of the transforming power of his kingdom in the world, as we call them to his service via the cross?

All human beings are disciples. They prioritize their life and establish their habits in the light of something, some vision of the good life or someone, even if it be themselves. Frequently our pressured, consumer, society makes disciples far more effectively than many churches. Fresh expressions of church are challenged to embody a better vision: a more captivating motive for daily choices than those offered elsewhere. Consumer society is profoundly seductive and consequently addictive. It shapes the habits which form human character. The life of fresh expressions of church needs to involve those who are willing in a more powerful set of character forming habits than those of the world. The key habit is that of service. Disciples are formed as they engage in mission. Immersion in the ministry of Jesus grows disciples today as in the gospels. A fresh expression should serve as well as worship – drawing potential disciples and not yet believers into the Lord's work in the world.

When I was a young Christian all the emphasis was on personal disciplines, particularly of daily prayer and Bible study. Personal disciplines remain important, but I do not believe they are sufficient to form Christian character today. In those early years of faith the Christian story was better known in Britain, and 'Christian' values taken as norms, even if they were not adhered to. Culture reinforced discipleship much more than today. Today culture is more likely to be corrosive of discipleship as supportive. It is corporate disciplines and support which are needed. A Christian way of life – the daily practice of obedience to Jesus – needs a proactive supportive community. The term 'one another' appears frequently in the New Testament and it is persistent, intentional 'one anothering' which will enable lives of discipleship. I do not know how discipleship can be sustained without some regular, face-to-face small group for mutual support and challenge.

Fresh expressions of church can be schools of discipleship if they offer a more captivating motive for daily choices, a more powerful set of character-forming habits and a proactive supportive community – for a way of life which outclasses the world.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

One of the great dangers for any movement within the church is that work which began in humble dependence on the Holy Spirit morphs into reliance on human competence. We are inclined to pray when we are out of our depth and not to pray when we think we know what we are doing. One of the hardest biblical texts to believe is Jesus' blunt statement

apart from me you can do nothing.

It is not surprising that he went on to say.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

John 15:5-7

I am convinced that the extraordinary development of fresh expressions in the church in recent years is an initiative of the Holy Spirit, in which we have been privileged to participate. I frequently say that we have caught a wave of the Spirit and that central to my job description are the words 'don't fall off'. There has been a renewal of missional imagination in much of the church, a willingness to risk new things for God and a discovery of new gifts and pioneering callings. All of this is evidence that the Spirit is at work. The core principles of prayerful discernment and incarnational mission have been gathered by watching what the Spirit has been doing, often at the frontiers of mission. These are essential but only remain fruitful if they continue to be carried out in humble dependence on the Spirit.

That humble dependence is expressed in prayer. When the 24/7 Prayer movement joined Fresh Expressions it was both recognition of the centrality of prayer and listening to God in our practice – and a challenge to remain true to this original DNA.

We know more than we did when we started. That is good, as there is no benefit in ignorance. But 'knowhow' does not win disciples or establish contextual churches. In that we are assistants to the Spirit. We are dependent on God for the things that only God can do. Prayer is not a device to get God's seal of approval on existing plans. It is not a preliminary stage until we know what to do. It is an expression of trusting dependence. 'Worry in the presence of God is not prayer' wrote Richard Foster. We are to pray in faith as we seek God's initial and continuing direction, whether for local mission or national priorities.

Our Hour of Prayer for fresh expressions takes place on the day after Pentecost. On the original day of Pentecost the Spirit was poured out for innovative, boundary-crossing mission 'to Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth'. But the chapters which follow show how hard it was for the church to cross cultural boundaries. They were wonderfully blessed at home in Jerusalem but Samaria and the ends of the earth were not in their sights. Pray that, locally, nationally and internationally, we may not be blinded by all that has been achieved, and so miss the further imaginative steps that God intends. Pray for continual wisdom and courage from the Spirit.

Movements birthed in prayer are sustained in prayer. Fresh expressions birthed in prayerful listening develop and mature through prayerful listening. Praying pioneers make praying disciples. We are all too busy not to pray. Please join us on the 28th, not just for the hour, but as a renewal of your commitment to prayer.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

There are now several thousand fresh expressions of church across the UK. They have been established for a wide variety of people in an equally wide variety of contexts. The great majority of them were started by ordinary local Christians, not by a full time, salaried pioneer. So there are very few situations where a fresh expression is impossible, and very many where it would be appropriate to start one.

A fresh expression need not be elaborate and it need not require lots of resources. It needs some people and eventually a place to gather. It will cost some money, but need not require a lot. Where resources are scarce it might involve a change of priorities. Perhaps the hardest part might be to decide what to stop doing so that something new can begin. Some patterns of church activity continue long after they have ceased to achieve what they were established to do – the people and money involved could be set free for something new. Or it might involve a decision not to buy the new hymn books or crockery, but to invest the money on a new piece of mission instead. Where a group of small churches are linked together under one minister there is the possibility of a joint initiative – perhaps each church releasing one person to create a new team. Sometimes churches have to choose between carrying on as they have in the past, or investing in a different future. For an elderly congregation it might involve asking how they could invest more in their grandchildren's generation, than in their own.

A fresh expression of church can grow naturally out of existing work or existing relationships. Is there a piece of work, on a Saturday or midweek, which could be developed into a worshipping congregation? Perhaps there is a lunch for the elderly, a toddlers group, or a school event – a breakfast or lunchtime or after school club? Sometimes pieces of work in the community, which the church set up as an act of Christian service, can also become the basis of a regular worshipping community. Sometimes events, which were established as a bridge to church, need to become church themselves, because people come to the event but never cross the bridge!

Any church, or group of churches, which wants to take this seriously should begin with a season of prayer. You are seeking the guidance of the missionary Holy Spirit, who is already at work among people who have no connection to a church. As you pray, and a fuel for your prayer, ask yourselves the key question – who will never encounter the love of God, revealed in Jesus Christ, if we only do what we do now? Then ask where you, as a congregation, are deployed in your every day lives? Who do you know through people's work, hobbies and community involvement? A fresh expression may develop through the skills and interests people have in common with others outside the church, because the one essential for starting a fresh expression is a community of people, brought together by a common concern, exploring what it means to be disciples of Jesus.

As you pray you may hear God's challenge to befriend and serve people with whom you have no real contact. Sometimes establishing a fresh expression takes longer, because it involves making new relationships, by going to people who are not connected to a church, rather than expecting them to come to us, finding ways to serve them, and creating the possibility of forming a community of spiritual explorers with them It may involve reconnecting to your community, or it may involve a new imaginative way of building on the connections you already have. But most churches, or groups of churches, can establish a fresh expression, even when they think they are starting with nothing.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

Bill Shankly, legendary manager of Liverpool, once said that:

some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.

Liverpool FC

The same might be said of pioneering fresh expressions of church, and of the pioneers and entrepreneurial Christians who plant them.

Not that the church will die if it ignores this opportunity and the people God is calling – our God is more gracious than that – but it will be in real difficulty. The growing proportion of people who have never had any contact with the church, the much older age profile in the churches and a pluralist consumer culture, all warn of the danger of limiting our fishing to a shrinking pool. Archbishop Geoff of Adelaide tells his people

more of the same just means less of the same.

So the churches' greatest resource, at this time, is the people who can do something different, pioneers who can imagine and establish something new. We need them at every level, local and national: helping their local church to establish a new congregation or missional community, pioneering in the circumstances of their work and everyday life, or deployed and supported full or part time by a group of churches, a mission agency or a denomination. It's not quite about 'anyone who will have a go'. Not everyone has the gifts for this. But at every level we need to keep an eye out for the ones God might be calling. We need to be prepared to release people from other roles, even when that causes difficulty for our existing programs (better new fishing grounds than a shrinking pool!) and to look out for those who have never volunteered before, because they were never energised by what was on offer.

One of the most significant features of the fresh expressions movement has been its capacity to

join the centre to the edge

as Steven Croft has said. It is the responsibility of the centre to recognise the calling and gifts of pioneers, whether that is the local centre: ministers, councils or leadership teams, or at a more senior regional or national level, to support new ventures and the people who can lead them. Either way we need to make it easy to offer. Pioneering may feel like going on Dragon's Den but exploring a call from God in a local church should not!

It is the responsibility of pioneers and entrepreneurial types to offer themselves and to be patient with proper processes of discernment and accountability, rather than falling victim to impatience and leaving to start something with no connection to any other part of the Church. We need people who are sent, not who send themselves.

Pioneers also need appropriate networks of prayerful support and supervision from those to whom they are accountable and peer support if their work is to be sustainable. Ideally everyone planting something new should be in a learning network of others who are doing the same. We can support one another, learn from one another and gather learning for the wider church. My hope is that each FEAST will become a hub of these learning networks.

Finally we need as much entrepreneurial thinking, as much creative imagination, about ways to support and sustain pioneer ministry as we do for the ministry itself. The planting of a new fresh expression by a local church can usually be done in volunteer time and need not be resource-heavy. But the planting of something more substantial, or deeper into never-churched territory, will often require more time than volunteers with full-time jobs can give. A fresh expression of this sort, planted by a pioneer who has had to earn their living at the same time, is much more likely to fail when the pioneer moves on than one where the pioneer has had the necessary time freed to do the work. Very properly, there are a limited number of centrally funded jobs in the church, so encourage local entrepreneurial imagination to create portfolios of support for local pioneers.

+Graham Cray