Day: 17 March 2014

Discernment always trumps routine

Graham Cray explores the place of discernment in a fresh expression of church.

At the heart of the fresh expressions' praxis lies discernment – following the missionary Spirit: seeing what God is doing and joining in etc. However, that is easier to do when a fresh expression is being established, its shape and focus not yet clear, than when it has settled into a routine.

Routine is good, because fresh expressions of church need contextually appropriate patterns of worship and community life. Pattern gives people a security and helpful repetition. It frees us to attend to God and to one another because we are not wondering what on earth is going to happen next BUT routine can also blind us to the need for change. My favourite Australian road sign reads, 'Choose your rut carefully. You will be in it for the next 200 miles'.

Sometimes, routine is merely the way things have developed and it needs regular checks against the original vision. It is only too easy to start out missional, and end up with all the energies being taken up with the pastoral care of those who have been drawn in by the first phase of mission. The very success of the mission creates a context where the missional focus is crowded out, or a key component of the original vision is overlooked.

For example, The Point in Burgess Hill was planted in 2004. They report,

In the early days it was very much 'café church' and low key in its style, focusing mainly on families and young children. What happened over the years was that a lot of what we were seen to be doing focused on a Sunday morning gathering with modern, contemporary worship. The result was as more and more people came, we struggled to maintain our original vision to reach the unchurched, and the majority of those we were reaching were 'de-churched' and some transferring from other churches.

This led to a new attentiveness to the Spirit through a review and a congregational vision process, out of which 'Church in a Pub' has been birthed. A regular health check against the founding vision is always worthwhile.

But vision bearers also need to be open to change because some fresh expressions are seasonal. They flourish during a particular time of opportunity and then need to transition – unless it is time for honourable closure because the task has been completed.

Sometimes transitions are natural developments. In Bradford, Sorted 1 began as a youth ministry but now is a young adult fresh expression – they grow up! Sorted 2 is based in a different school while Sorted 3 has been established in the original secondary school in order to maintain the vision for young people and reach the next cohort.

Change can also come because God opens up something new. Adrian McCartney of Boring Wells in Belfast puts it this way:

One of our Wells [network of mission shaped faith communities] was in a little commuter village called Moneyrea. We'd been there seven or eight years and it had grown and developed in a way but wasn't making the impact in the local community that we had hoped for.

What happened next? Adrian explained,

One day someone gave us a prophetic word, saying, 'I think God is telling us to put the wheels back on the wagons' so we had had a feeling of wanting to do some inner city work as well. We were looking for an opportunity and when we approached the Rector of what was an enormous inner city parish (three parishes had been brought together); he – without any hesitation at all – offered us the use of the buildings.

God is the God of surprises. The missionary Spirit tends to act first and invite us to follow afterwards! Develop patterns, but don't be blinded by doing the same thing time and time again. Discernment always trumps routine.

+Graham Cray

Call the Midwife for fresh expressions of church (Roger Johnson)

Roger Johnson suggests that we Call the Midwife to start missionary work.

It really shows Christianity in a positive light don't you think? I'm talking about the BBC programme 'Call the Midwife'. It depicts Christian people as compassionate, sensitive and caring – not the usual negative stereotype we can often see in the media.

I reflect on St Paul's missionary endeavours. He went across the northern Mediterranean region planting new churches but he quickly appointed local leaders to be responsible for the on-going running of the church. He would act as advisor, mentor, and sometimes critic when they went astray, but he recognised that what he was developing was not for his benefit, but for the benefit of local Christians and the Kingdom. In a very real sense he was acting as a midwife – bringing to birth something that would be someone else's child.

But have you ever thought that as Christians, we are called to be midwives? More and more people in our churches are getting involved in the formation of fresh expressions of church. These range from Messy Church, through café church to various kinds of community gatherings and children's activities, all with the aim of creating genuine, viable and sustainable Christian communities in their own right.

To be fair to those doing this, although they are involved in their formation, running and even financing, the form of church they are involved with may not be their church, nor would they necessarily want to be part of it long term. In a sense they are acting like midwives who bring other peoples' babies into the world. They may be passionate about the new birth but they recognise that what they do is for someone else and they must not develop an emotional attachment to the newly born baby.

Some are suspicious, if not critical of fresh expressions of church, fearing that the 'new, trendy' form of church is going to replace the traditional model which they know and feel comfortable with. People have been predicting the demise of traditional church for decades and it simply hasn't happened, neither do I expect it to. However, we need to accept that in some places, the traditional model, although not dead and buried, is on a life-support machine. Having said that, not all fresh expressions of church will survive into the future in this fickle, consumerist society which we inhabit.

We live in a country where church-going is off the agenda for the majority. However, the need for the gospel is greater now than it has ever been. The survival of the Church will require self-sacrifice and total commitment by people who may never see the fruit of their labours. I have no idea what the 'Church of Tomorrow' will look like but I believe it will be very different from today's model.

Just to give you one example, take Sunday Schools. These flourished in an era where church-going parents were Christian and their children needed a basic grounding in the faith while mum and dad went to the main church for solid and deeper teaching. Today's parents are not in that position and they are as much in need of basic teaching on the faith as their children. This partly explains why Sunday Schools have seen a sharp decline in attendance while Messy Church, where children and parents worship and learn together, is flourishing. We need more initiatives like this, especially for people who value a church where they can participate rather than being preached at. These models are emerging but more resources, human as well as financial, need to be applied.

So, it's time to 'Call the Midwife' and start missionary work that will bear fruit for tomorrow's generation of Christian.