Month: December 2013

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

The theology of the church (ecclesiology) is a funny thing. It is meant to guide us as we shape the church of tomorrow. But only too often it is simply used to justify the shape of the church of today. A dynamic understanding of the church, intended to equip it for principled appropriate change, in response to changing cultures, and direction from the Holy Spirit, is given theoretical acknowledgement, while nothing changes. Perhaps we have given too much uncritical emphasis on the church as steward of the inheritance from the past, and too little on the church as an anticipation of the future.

Most mainline denominations say that the church is called to be 'a sign, instrument (or agent) and foretaste of the kingdom of God'. If we take that seriously there are as number of consequences. Signs show people the way and allow them to understand which paths will take them the wrong way. If the church is to be a sign, then it has to be contextual. The sign has to be erected where people, going about their everyday lives, can see it. The local church must live its life where people are, culturally and geographically, not where they used to be. But the church is more than a sign. It is the instrument God uses and the agent he chooses as his partner, to offer salvation and to demonstrate the reality of the kingdom of God. People need the church, not a pointer to something else, if they are going to find salvation through Christ and be recruited to serve in the kingdom of God. So it is vital that the local church engage its life with the localities it has been sent to serve. But, most significantly, the church is a foretaste, an anticipation of God's kingdom. People should be able to see among us an imperfect taste of what God has prepared for the new heaven and earth. Local churches are called to be communities which offer a taste of the future, in advance.

Our Western society lacks hope more than anything else. The best many people can hope for is more of the same, or in these difficult economic tines, holding on to most of what they have. They need local communities of Christians who live in the present in the light of the future Jesus has secured, and do so locally, as they engage exactly the same difficulties and challenges as their neighbours. A regular question for each local church should be 'How can our life and worship together here best show people the future which Jesus has won for us?'

The relationship with the past is vital. The future is only possible because of the past. The incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus have opened the future. The moment we depart from those central truths we have no hope to offer. We are indeed stewards of the inheritance of the past, and that inheritance has shaped the churches over the years. But so has the culture of many different eras. We need to distinguish between adaptations which were appropriate for a different time, and the beliefs and practices, which make the church the church in every time. The past is powerful because it has been such a blessing. But some of yesterday's blessings are the very things which stop us receiving what God intends for the sake of the world today. 

It is the role of the Holy Spirit – the first fruits of the kingdom of God, the taste of the powers of the age to come – to guide the church, so that it becomes a foretaste of the future in whatever setting God has located it. We receive the gospel from the past, and the Spirit equips us to live it out as a local foretaste of the future. We go back for the sake of the future, not simply to justify the present.

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

The ultimate test of any local church's ministry, whether in 'inherited' mode or a fresh expression, is 'what sort 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? To what extent are they a community whose life together shows the wider community a better way of living?

Such discipleship must be 'glocal' (to return to an ugly sociological term which I used in a previous e-xpressions) – both global and local. It must be 'global' in two ways. It must be 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 it must engage with the shared features of Western culture as they occur in our globalised world – consumerism shapes our lives all over the UK so we need to engage with it wherever we are. It must be local, or contextual, because the gospel is not detached from ordinary life, but is the power of God to transform local living.

At the heart of fresh expressions praxis is discernment, listening to God in context, to learn how to engage with local issues, serve appropriately, and plant a new indigenous community, rather than clone 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 know they don't know their new community. But those who are planting a fresh expression in their 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 to begin? 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, causes for hope. When a call to repentance becomes necessary, as it must in any journey to the cross, then you will be calling people to turn from the things that diminish them, to the fulfilment of their deepest longings in Christ. 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, to work towards a local light touch rule of life, and to focus the community and worship life of a fresh expression around these first priorities, in partnership with local people.

I recommend two prayer-soaked approaches. The first is 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. The second, which has a greater degree of analysis, is called 'participant observation'. This is 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. (For more on this I recommend Nigel Rooms new book The Faith of the English as a case study in reading a culture, which has principles applicable to a more local context, or to different national cultures. He draws on Kate Fox's book Watching the English).

Two final warnings: Pay more attention to how people live than what they claim to believe or disbelieve. And remember, 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!

+Graham

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

One of the most frequent mistakes people make when seeking to plant a fresh expression is to begin with a worship service and then try to attract people to it. There are a number of dangers which follow. You may end up with an event which people attend for a while, rather than a community to which they belong. You may end up with an event for bored Christians and create a culture which is highly inappropriate for unchurched people. Or you may end up with an event which no one attends, because you designed it for them before you knew whom they were, let alone knew them.

Any serious attempt to plant has to begin with listening and be incarnational and culturally appropriate for the people who you are trying to reach. But the time will come when a pattern of worship will need to be established. There is an art to this because it involves being glocal – the combining of a global faith with a local context: the bringing together of two worlds. There is the world of the church, which has patterns of readings and prayers, special rituals with water or bread and wine and a whole host of symbols and special vocabulary. Then there is the everyday, 'common sense' world of the people who have begun to journey with you and to whom you have been talking about following Christ. These two worlds have to become one world, which will probably be different to either the way you have been used to worshipping, or to your new friends' previous experience.

You are the bearer of the traditions of Christian worship. You will bring worship as you know it (what else could you bring?) and the fresh expression will properly take on some characteristics of the particular denomination or tradition to which you belong; but in a way that is appropriate to the culture and context to which you have been called.

What you should not do is to import ways of worshipping which are familiar to you, without checking what they would mean to your fledgling congregation. Some things are essential even though they are strange – some people have never prayed with others before, or may never have prayed at all. So you need to explain and ease a way to experiencing something new. Some may know nothing about the Bible and need to be introduced to it carefully. Others' ways of doing things may have been helpful to you, but may never be right in this fresh expression. You may be used to sitting politely and listening to sermons, when new Christians, or not yet Christians, need a chance to interrupt and ask questions. You may be used to a long period of singing, accompanied by a guitar, when your new friends only ever sing on the football terraces or at karaoke. Liking your favourite charismatic choruses, Wesley hymns or Taize chants is not part of the price of conversion!

A mature expression of church will combine the rich traditions of worship – Scripture, prayer, praise and the sacraments – which all Christian share, with the focus given by a particular denomination, or partnership of denominations, and the distinctiveness of a local context. As a consequence the whole Church will be the richer.

+Graham

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

If fresh expressions of church are to make a long term contribution to the re-evangelization of the UK, and the wider mission of God in our land, much will depend on the recognition and training of appropriate leaders. Many of these will be lay rather than ordained, but the comments I wish to make apply to all 'authorised' leaders who are given some training. It is the nature and perceived purpose of that training that is crucial. The Church needs glocal leaders!

The term 'glocalisation' was coined by sociologists (who else would have come up with such an ugly word?) to describe the impact of global change on local communities. This can range from seeing Starbucks and McDonald's wherever you look, to the closure of a local firm because of 'the world market', to a global menu available on your high street, to a local firm developing a global brand. Many people in the Facebook and Twitter culture belong both locally and to wider networks not restricted by geography. Glocalisation can connect and it can isolate. It has both positive and negative effects, varying from place to place. My point is merely that all communities are now glocal communities, and that the local church in an interconnected world is a glocal church. Just as people are encouraged to 'think globally and act locally', so Eddie Gibbs suggests that a characteristic of fresh expressions should be that they are 'locally engaged with global issues' (Eddie Gibbs, Churchmorph: How Megatrends are Reshaping Christian Communities, Baker, 2009). The glocal church needs glocal leaders.

Training for pioneers and missional leaders has to be on an action-reflection model, with much higher proportions of relevant practice than was traditionally the case for seminary courses. I take that for granted here. Rather, I want to emphasise that leadership training, for a glocal church, has to be both contextual and connected.

Every missional leader needs skills in discernment, in reading a context in the light of the mission of God. No-one should be authorised who cannot do this! But contextual training is not just a matter of training leaders to read the context with which they are familiar, or where they have been placed. It also requires experience in reading contexts with which they are not familiar, or they will be in danger of being blinded by familiarity. It is hard to read your own context discerningly if you have never faced the challenge of reading an unfamiliar one. Contextual training needs exposure to more than one context.

Even the most distinctive context is glocal. It has been shaped by wider influences, and is the result of connection. Training for glocal leadership needs to be connected in two ways: to the historic faith and to the world church.

How has the 'givenness' of the Gospel, that which makes us Christians and which all Christians share, been expressed and embodied in different eras and places? All mission is about 'constants in context' (Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder,Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today, Orbis, 2001). Training needs to focus the shape of the church in different eras as well as the intellectual expression of its belief.

And how is the faith expressed and embodied in the world church today? The centre of world Christianity is no longer in the West. Much of the world church in microcosm is present in the UK. Training for the glocal church needs to introduce leaders to the riches of the world church.

The purpose of this connected element of training is not just to be better equipped for the glocal, but to establish an understanding of the interconnectedness of the whole church, of belonging to the whole, of catholicity. Context and connection provide the key to training.

There is no context-free training, so the context of training is part of the training itself. I am convinced that it is not so much the location of training – in a college, on a course, in a locally created scheme – which matters, but the clarity of its purpose and the appropriateness of its shape, for that purpose. Training has to be shaped by the constants of the faith and the context of mission. That context is glocal and requires glocal leaders.

+Graham

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

I frequently say that 'a fresh expression is not "church lite", but "deep church" (C.S.Lewis' equivalent of mere Christianity) in the right place, at the right time, at a price – the comfort and convenience of those who plant it.'

Those who plant fresh expressions can find it a very fulfilling, as well as very demanding, experience. But their fulfilment is indirect, it comes through the people for whom they are planting finding Christ, and growing as his disciples. There is always the temptation to do something for ourselves rather than for others, and thus to welcome others at our convenience not theirs.

But there is another way that a fresh expression can go off course. The primary purpose of fresh expressions is to create church for those untouched by existing church. But if it is attended by too many bored church people, or church folk looking for a change, it can develop too churchy a culture. Equally, if it is attended by too many people who are struggling with church and perhaps giving church one last chance, it may be shaped by these concerns, rather than those of the unchurched. It is very difficult to reach people who are on a journey into church through a community shaped by those who may be on the way out!

Or the differences may be cultural. When Chris Russell and team arrived to establish St Lawrence Reading, with the stated purpose of 'living to see non-churched young people come to faith and creating new forms of church with them,' the team had to lock the doors of the church when they met to worship and pray, so that they would not be joined by the young people from lively local churches. If that had happened a middle class youth church culture would have been established, which would have been impenetrable to the young people they were called to reach. The locked door was for a positive purpose: to ensure the time and space for the long term work of making relationships with non-churched young people. Then, as their statement of purpose goes, 'to create new forms of church with them', not just for them.

This was possible because this fresh expression did not begin with a public act of worship designed to attract young people. It began with relational youth work in their schools. It is still too common a mistake to start with a public worship event rather than with incarnational ministry. If you can find the way to enter the world of those you are trying to reach and, within the limits of Christian discipleship, to take it as seriously as they do, then you have a real chance to help them find Christ and follow him there. Then you create the form of church with them.

How can a fresh expression protect itself from death by the attendance of well-meaning people? First, as we have seen, be careful how you start! But then establish a contract with any who wish to come who already attend church. You are not looking for attenders, you are looking for a mission team. The doors of St Lawrence are no longer locked to keep worshippers out. But anyone who wishes to join, whatever their age or background, is told that they are joining a church which exists to win non-churched young people, and that contributing to that is the condition of joining.

Fresh expressions need Christians who make a 'second commitment' to the mission of their fresh expression. God may use someone's frustration with existing church as a means of calling them to commit to this mission. He may use previous bad experience as a springboard for getting it right this time. But this commitment to the fresh expression's mission to others must take priority over all personal agendas.

+Graham

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

Any gardener knows that there is little point in planting if you are not also willing to prune at the right season. Churches and denominations find it far easier to start things than to stop them. 'As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be' is not just part of a prayer, it has become a way of life. But Jesus spoke of the Father removing branches that bear no fruit and pruning those that bore fruit so that they would bear more.

Concerning church planting, Professor Robin Gill wrote,

A more pro-active policy of pruning and planting should be encouraged. Simply pruning induces decline, but simply planting leaves intact the long-standing excess of churches and chapels… both pruning and planting are needed for effective numerical growth across denominations.

In practice all denominations are pruning at the moment, not pruning local churches, which is neither easy nor desirable unless the situation is completely unsustainable. But pruning budgets and posts, linking groups of churches together under one minister etc. In such a climate it is very difficult to introduce new claims on limited funds. But simply to readjust shrinking resources to keep as much of the show on the road as possible is a recipe for continued decline. As the Archbishop of Adelaide said to me,

More of the same just means less of the same.

The hard choices are about what to prioritize. The choice may be between sustaining what we have, while hoping to find a little for new work, or giving first priority to the re-evangelisation of our nation.

If we wish to see growth we will have to choose the latter. The key resource and dominant item in any denominational budget is stipends or salaries and the ministers they support. Are we willing to give financial priority to deploying clergy who can either lead an inherited model of church into growth, or pioneer the planting of fresh expressions? Can we give attention to the whole mission field, not just those we already have in church, invest our resources in the future, and give special priority to those who have a track record in winning new disciples and engaging them in holistic mission?

We need to prune back the bureaucracy which clings like ivy around historic denominations, to develop more enabling and relational processes of releasing and authorizing ministry, and mission. The most significant resource, hidden by denominational budgets and clerical attitudes, is the laity. If our nations are to be re-evangelized it will mainly be non-ordained Christians who do it. We need procedures to authorize local and regional lay initiatives, which are low on control, but high accountability.

The real challenge of pruning is not removing dead branches, it is pruning fruitful work so that it becomes even more fruitful. We need to move away from a culture where we assume that the unavoidable task is to keep as much as we have been doing going for as long as possible. Such a policy inevitably leads to 'last in first out' when resources shrink. Rather we need a culture which reviews each aspect of work regularly, asking whether it still fulfils the purpose for which it was established, and whether other work now has greater priority. I cannot think of a greater priority, for our work at home, than the re-evangelisation of our nations.

It really is possible to live as a light touch, pruned back church, without becoming church lite! Archbishop Rowan recently returned from Africa. He told the General Synod that,

What is special about places like Congo and Sudan is a Church with negligible administrative structures and no historic resources working with such prolific energy. "Silver and gold have I none"…

Is it time to get out the secateurs?

+Graham

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

One of the most painful realities of church life in the UK is the absence of young adults. If 7.5% of the population are in church on an average Sunday, it is only three percent of those in their twenties and thirties. Of these, more than a quarter worship in London, and many more worship in large churches round the country that have developed significant ministries for this age group. These churches often have a major emphasis on discipleship, are not growing consumer Christians and are a vital resource for the church nationally, both now and for the long term future. But the fact remains that the twenties and thirties age group is as good as missing from the majority of churches.

Conversations at Soul Survivor's Momentum event also showed that some keen Christians in this age group are hanging on to church by the skin of their teeth, more out of loyalty than anything else. Some also spoke of the difficulty of reconnecting to 'ordinary' church after a few years of student Christianity. Christian ministry on campus put some off and demanded all the extra curricula time available from others. The result was disconnection from normal church life. Many students then moved to find a job and found no-one within twenty years of their age group when they tried to join a local church. In a culture which changes so fast, that is a substantial gulf.

In theory, fresh expressions have majored on those who have never been involved in church, even if in practice many first attempts at a fresh expression draw in people with some former church background. This generation provides us with a major challenge in both categories. We need to plant fresh expressions which have a primary focus on young adults and we need some of those well-discipled young adults to take a lead. Good pioneer ministry will be needed. We also need to find ways to network and support those young adults who continue as ones or twos in much older congregations, so that they do not give up and leave, but can fully play their part.

But above all we need to listen to those who are struggling to remain or who have given up. In the UK one third of all adults are de-churched. People have been pouring through the back doors of Britain's churches for decades now, with little local attempt to ask them why. There is no point trying to plant fresh expressions for those who have given up the struggle with church, let alone for their many non-churched contemporaries, if we do not find out what the problems are! The listening process, which lies at the birth of any fresh expression of church, is even more vital here.

There seem to be some distinctive characteristics of this generation – most notably many have a real struggle with commitment and closure. This is not because they are weaker or less spiritual than other generations, it is substantially the consequence of the culture which formed them. Put this together with churches that can be conservative about change and are older than the average of the population and some of the difficulties come into clearer focus. But nothing replaces careful local listening. In South Africa recently I spoke with younger Dutch Reformed pastors, who were teenagers during Apartheid and who want to remain in their church, but struggle to trust it. It gave me an interesting parallel.

I do not believe that the struggles of young adults are necessarily an indication of future generations. The teenagers I meet at Soul Survivor are different again. But for the sake of God's kingdom and of his church as its sign, instrument and foretaste, I believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently.

+Graham

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

One of the ways by which we can recognize whether something is church, is whether 'the Word and the Sacraments' are present. Scripture is studied, so that disciples can understand what Jesus wants them to know and do, and act accordingly. Communion is celebrated to rehearse what Jesus has accomplished and set our eyes, minds and hearts on his coming kingdom. If a fresh expression is really church it will develop to a stage where Holy Communion (under whatever name a tradition uses) is part of its regular pattern of worship and discipleship. This is for the most basic of reasons. Jesus told us to share bread and wine in this way in remembrance of him. It's that simple! But when it comes to Holy Communion it can get complicated. What sort of complication can depend on the stage of the fresh expression's development, and the particular tradition from which it comes.

Many fresh expressions begin as communities of enquirers, people exploring faith in Jesus or returning to faith in Jesus. Ideally they do not begin as worship events, but when the time comes for gathered church and worship to take shape, communion would normally be part of that shape. How often can be a tricky question. Traditional churches whose main Sunday service is always communion can be experienced as members-only gatherings and no longer offer services where it is easy to be 'just looking', but this is vital for fresh expressions. The Lord's Table is meant to be an expression of God's generous invitation and hospitality, but it can be made to appear as a fence telling people to stay outside. As church takes shape there is a question of the style or culture of a communion service. It needs to be something the wider church would recognise as communion. I think it also needs to bear some of the family characteristic of its parent denomination, but it also needs to be incarnational, true to the culture of the fresh expression. We need 'messy communion' – not something overlong and overformal dropped into the middle of Messy Church!

Then there is the question of who can lead or preside? Many denominations are involved in planting fresh expressions and not all of them require an ordained minister to preside, but many do. If a minister is regularly involved there is no problem. In the long term we should expect God to raise up ministers from among the indigenous leaders of many fresh expressions. But for the moment there can be a difficulty.

There are a number of possibilities.

The leader or leaders of a fresh expression are not necessarily the ones who should preside. Leading the mission and the mission community are not the same thing as leading worship. An ordained minister can relate to a fresh expression, attend when they can without having to take responsibility and then act as a key link to the wider church when they preside. There needs to be a real connection between fresh expressions and the rest of the Church and this could strengthen it. When a fresh expression is linked in to a more traditional local church or group of churches it is possible to have a celebration of communion at one church, including, in its turn, the fresh expression and then each of the others has representatives who take the bread and wine to the other churches in the team. Churches in a more catholic tradition would be happy to use the reserved sacrament.

Each fresh expression needs to find a way forward that is appropriate to its own cultural and denominational tradition and it is the responsibility of the leaders of each denomination to address real issues being raised by innovative mission. This is not a time for breaking the rules, but it time to ensure that new Christian communities can be fed by both Word and Sacrament!

+Graham

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

In Church After Christendom Stuart Murray-Williams has written that

The brightest hope for church after Christendom is a symbiotic relationship between inherited and emerging churches. We need each other.

We usually refer to that symbiotic relationship as the mixed economy: a complementary partnership between fresh expressions of church and inherited models of church. But it can be understood in other ways as well. At a recent conference in Germany, Bishop Steven Croft spoke of

connecting the centre to the edge

as one of the keys to the rapid growth of fresh expressions in the UK.

Over time, and brought to a head by the publication of Mission-shaped Church, the expertise of pioneers began to be taken seriously by senior church leaders and pioneers themselves began to understand that they had something vital to offer the wider church. Church plants and fresh expressions of church (before they were called fresh expressions!) which had been regarded as fringe or eccentric, un-Anglican or un-Methodist, were recognised as of strategic importance. Without this connecting of centre and edge there would be no fresh expressions initiative. Mission-shaped Church encouraged double listening – to God and to the context. But another double listening was already taking place within the church. If this was pivotal to the start of a national movement to plant fresh expressions, it will be equally important for it to be sustained.

At every level of the church: local congregation, circuit, deanery, presbytery and Churches Together group, as well as synod, diocese and district, the centre and edge need to listen to one another and learn from one another. Those planting fresh expressions, or simply struggling to relate their faith to friends and colleagues, need to share their experience with their church leaders. Church leaders need to listen and allow their understanding of the local mission field to be enlarged. In this way more traditional approaches to mission can become more effective. Equally, pioneers need to learn from the church's traditions and those who lead more traditional approaches. Fresh expressions are not about completely reinventing the ecclesial wheel, but about proclaiming and embodying the historic faith afresh. There is much to learn from the wisdom of other traditions and previous generations.

Church leaders also need to develop relationships of trust with pioneers. Leadership is not about control, only allowing people to do what we understand, it is about releasing others to do things which we could not do, but which God has called them to do. According to Archbishop Rowan

Leadership is not about giving commands, not even about making decisions, it is quite literally about leading, clearing the way, making it possible for us to go where otherwise we could not.

When leaders give pioneers support they free them to fulfil their callings from God. Pioneers need to know they that someone is guarding their backs, not waiting for them to slip up.

The connection between the centre and the edge is lubricated by trust, communication and prayer. Leaders who have authorised pioneers or who have been given a supervisory role are called to make every effort to see that the fresh expression flourishes. Pioneers need to keep the rest of the church informed. They are a reminder that the whole church is missionary, that mission is the calling of both dimensions of the mixed economy, and that it takes place both through the centre and at the edge.

In Oxford on May 5th the second Changing the Landscape conference with Archbishop Rowan will help us to strengthen this vital connection.

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

Archbishop Rowan Williams' description of church as:

what happens when people encounter the risen Jesus and commit themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their encounter with each other

reminds us that true church is an event, an ongoing relationship with Jesus. But it is also a corporate event and a whole life event.

If fresh expressions of church are going to equip new Christians for whole-life discipleship then they have to be more than a Sunday or weekday event. Going to a gathering once per week or month may be the starting point but it cannot be the destination. The essence of Church is that it is 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. The term 'one another' appears more than 50 times, primarily in Paul's letters and John's gospel or letters. So how can the participants in a fresh expression grow together (as a community) so that they can grow personally and together as Christian disciples?

It helps to set out to create community from the beginning, rather than decide you need it 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. Equally, an effective plant among people who already have good relationships, perhaps through a key doorkeeper or 'person of peace', gives you a community to work with, although not all of its pre Christian communal behaviour may be helpful!

Meals together and other social events can help community form, and simultaneously draw new or fringe people in. Christians don't have to be religious every time they meet. Christianity is a shared life in Christ. Sometimes it is good just to share about things that you enjoy, but don't fight over the sport! Mutual encouragement for discipleship happens best among friends. Practical service together for the local community can have the same effect.

And when you gather to worship bring your daily lives into the prayer and praise. Try Mark Green's TTT – 'this time tomorrow' – where each week someone shares what the challenges of being a Christian at work are, followed by prayer.

Because once a week or once a month is often not enough, there are all sorts of patterns of smaller meetings, which could help. As ever, it's the context that will shape the planning. You could have regular cells. You could have 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 time together. As long as the content is relevant it really doesn't matter what the topic is. It all creates an opportunity to build relationships and have some more 'one another' opportunities. The more you create the opportunity for people to meet and encourage one another in the faith, the more chance you have to aid growth in discipleship.

Some fresh expressions are developing a locally appropriate rule or rhythm of life, supported by daily texts or emails. All the new media allow us to support one another when our community is dispersed, and keep us in touch until the next time we gather.

I will add just one health warning. We are seeking to grow warm communities, which are easy to join. 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.

+Graham