Category: Graham Cray

Today's changing culture calls for a huge diversity and range of fresh expressions of church. Graham Cray explores one particular flavour of fresh expression in an article from the Reader Magazine, November 2011.

Anglican priests and parishes have the 'cure of souls' of the whole parish, not just of those who go to church. So we at Fresh Expressions are challenging the churches to ask a key question. Who is not being touched or reached by the existing ministry of the local churches, whether that be through a neighbourhood ministry or through engaging with networks of common interest? As churches begin to engage with this question, they hopefully develop a discipline of local prayerful listening as they explore the possibility of establishing a fresh expression – a new congregation or church plant.

The whole point of a fresh expression is that it is appropriate to its context and is particularly for those not being effectively engaged by the churches already. Models that are being used elsewhere may be appropriate, but the most important thing is to work out what is appropriate for where you are. We have to be open to diversity and to imagining new things. You can't simply 'launch' a fresh expression somewhere without any thought as to whether it's the right shape for the context and culture it finds itself in.

A number of things are needed when looking to establish a fresh expression of church and that's where the history of monastic movements can help us. Firstly, we are seeking to establish a community rather than an event. Church is a community of which we are a part, not an event we go to. Biblically of course Christians don't so much go to church as they are Church. Sometimes they are Church gathered together and sometimes they are solitary, scattered as they go about their daily lives, but the Church is the primary community to which they belong. Sadly some people do attend local churches as no more than a regular event in their calendar but, properly understood, a church is a community to help people become lifelong disciples of Jesus, which is far more than attending services or staking their initial claim to faith.

We then have to consider how – in our sophisticated and in some ways novel culture – we form the habits of a way of life that will shape us as followers of Jesus? The evangelical tradition, among others, has put a huge emphasis on personal disciplines of daily prayer and Bible reading. These are vital, but to sustain them today I believe we also need something corporate; regular contexts of mutual encouragement, support and challenge. In our very individualistic society we need community if we are to sustain discipleship in our daily lives. The expression 'one another' appears frequently in the New Testament, 34 times in Paul's letters alone. What a number of us are thinking is that every church member who is serious about being a follower of Jesus might be part of a small, mutually accountable group, where they are real with one another about the areas of their lives where discipleship is hard, and positive in encouraging and praying for each other. What we might particularly learn from the monastic movement is some appropriate rule or rhythm of life.

It is obedience to the Holy Spirit from day to day that grows the fruits of the Spirit, and the local church is the community which supports and fosters that growth.

The primary purpose of these small communities within a local church is to seek to live in daily obedience to Jesus. A group of Christian disciples know they face certain pressures at work, home and in different areas of their lives. By covenanting to meet regularly as part of a shared rhythm of life they can pinpoint, between them, the most challenging areas and support and pray for one another as they identify the personal and corporate disciplines that will strengthen them to make consistent godly choices.

Character formation is the object of disciple making. It is achieved through habit, through godly repetition. It involves spiritual disciplines, but also daily obedience to the way of Christ. This commitment to a rhythm of life is helpful but it needs to be light touch, not legalistic, and should be instinctive rather than dutiful. My interest in new monasticism is, in part, because I am convinced that this sort of character formation has a much greater chance of success in community.

New monasticism is vital for the mission of the church also. Some of the newer missionary orders around today, like The Order of Mission (TOM), have drawn on monastic vows similar to the Rule of Benedict and adopted them into principles of life – hence Poverty becomes Simplicity, Obedience translates as Accountability to one another and so on. Some of our partners in the Fresh Expressions movement, CMS and Church Army, are mission agencies which are becoming Acknowledged Communities within the Church of England for the sake of their missionary calling. Another partner, 24/7 Prayer is a missionary prayer movement with a new monastic character. We shouldn't be surprised at the relevance of this approach and its effectiveness. In the era of the Celtic Church and from the time of Benedict, Europe was evangelised by monks.

I saw the results of this during an earlier period of my ministry as vicar of St Michael le Belfrey in York. York Minster, which was in my parish, was originally a minster, a community of monks who planted and later sustained churches around the area. The ancient-future nature of new monasticism means that there is much to learn from the monastic missionaries of previous eras.

The sheer scale of the mission field in Britain at the moment is immense. In England, Tearfund's 2007 statistics on Churchgoing in the UK show that just over one third of adults aged 16 upwards have never had any significant link with church at all. If we include those of 15 and under we're probably heading towards half of the population. It cries out for every local church to think about a 'mixed economy' approach (a partnership of our existing patterns of church and fresh expressions); planning something different to reach those they are not reaching.

Some of us feel that the Holy Spirit may be raising up some missionary orders again to reach where the churches do not reach. These orders are not to be freelance mavericks but instead operate in a community, investing in their growth and displaying accountability to the local bishop and denominational leaders. They should act as a pool and a resource to put into those leaders' hands for the reevangelisation of our country.

There are orders which have come into existence in response to a call to mission, like TOM; and there are fresh expressions of church which sustain their life and mission by drawing on monastic sources, such as Moot in the City of London led by Ian Mobsby and Safespace in Telford led by Mark Berry. There is undoubtedly something bubbling up from the Holy Spirit and the heart of what fresh expressions is all about is seeing what God is doing locally and joining in.

I was Chairman of the Board of Readers for the Diocese of Canterbury and can see that much Reader ministry is very relevant to this new move of the Spirit, but it will also need to adapt. We need so many fresh expressions planted that the vast majority of them will be lay led. If we are dealing with people who have never been part of a church, the level of understanding of the faith is going to be quite slim – you can't assume that people will know Bible stories any more. Readers' ministry as teachers of the faith is becoming increasingly vital as long as those same Readers are prepared to use methods of teaching that are relevant to their audience. It will certainly be necessary to know how to interact with that audience and engage with their lives.

As 'bridge' people, Readers perform a number of roles. They bridge the text of Scripture and the congregation as teachers of the Faith, and they also bridge the Church and the world. Those with a Reader vocation who remain in employment outside the church have many responsibilities to balance in their daily lives, but thankfully they know what the culture outside church is like from their daily experience and calling; all of which leads to a very real possibility that Readers may be the key people in the planting of fresh expressions of church, perhaps in their parishes, but also in their workplaces. Reader ministry will have to be much more focused around the mission of the church not just in the future, we will also begin to see new Readers emerge from fresh expressions of church; in fact it's already beginning to happen.

A while ago I attended a meeting that the Archbishop of Canterbury had called for bishops who were Visitors to a wide range of religious communities. Three different things could be seen to be happening in the monastic movement in England:

1. Some Orders with a great history are clearly in their final years. These had become small communities as their members grew older.
2. Other communities in better health are sometimes overwhelmed by people who want to come on retreats or find spiritual direction. There are very substantial demands within the Church to look at these communities for spiritual guidance.
3. New monasticism. All sorts of groups are seeking to develop some rule of life. This is being considered at the highest levels within the Church of England and, as I have said, involves agencies working with Fresh Expressions. These include longstanding mission agency CMS which has already made the transition to Acknowledged Community status; Church Army is on the same road; Anglican Church Planting Initiatives (ACPI) is led by Bob and Mary Hopkins, guardians of The Order of Mission; and the 24-7 prayer movement. In Lincolnshire the chairman of the local council of churches, Pete Atkins, is now developing an ecumenical order. This all shows that the connection between discipleship, mission and a community rule is increasingly understood and valued.

Ian Mobsby, priest missioner of the Moot community and an associate missioner with Fresh Expressions, serves on the national CofE Advisory Council for Diocesan Bishops and Religious Communities. The Council is exploring the possibility of formally recognising Anglican new monastic communities as an official subgrouping of Church of England Acknowledged Religious Communities. Soon it may be possible for fresh expressions of church associated with the CofE to explore whether their missional community is of a new monastic form.

New monasticism is not automatically connected to a missional motive, but to the extent that it enables Christians to be authentic disciples in a changing culture, and sustain missionary movements, it can only enhance the mission of God through the Church.

+Graham Cray

Further Reading

Andy Freeman & Pete Greig, Punk Monk: New Monasticism and the Ancient Art of Breathing, Regal Books, 2007

Graham Cray & Ian Mobsby (eds), Ancient Faith, Future Mission: new monasticism as fresh expression of church, Canterbury Press Norwich, 2010

Ian Adams, Cave Refectory Road: Monastic Rhythms for contemporary living, Canterbury Press Norwich, 2010

According to St Paul (Romans 1.14) the church owes the gospel to those who have never heard it, including those who are culturally very different from us. Churches have to ask the question, 'Who will never be reached if we only do what we are doing now?' Those who then bear the good news to others have to be good news themselves, recognisable good news to the communities to which they are sent.

The first steps taken to reach the unreached can lead to a long and challenging journey, as can be seen in the story of Hexthorpe Methodist Church, which serves an old railway community of about 4,000 people, close to Doncaster town centre. One of its leaders, Donald Reasbeck, explains.

The area has deteriorated rapidly over the past 14 years or so; we now have all the problems of an inner city area but on a smaller scale. In 1991/92, we drew a line across a map of Hexthorpe and became aware that all of our church members – except one – and all the children, came from one side of the line. Half of Hexthorpe was virtually untouched by the church. We started a drop-in in the church hall on a Thursday morning, but no-one came. So we bought an old butcher's shop to use as premises for a drop-in and appointed a manager in 1993. That's how the Junction started. In 2004 we also bought the nearby Rising Sun pub for use as accommodation for those needing a safe and secure environment and we have still got both premises.

In August 2010 our monitoring and evaluation report included details of numbers using the Junction facilities over the previous year – 1,218 enquiries were dealt with and an average of 36 people a day dropped in. Issues dealt with included benefits, bereavement, housing, crime, addictions, health issues, harassment and bullying, and form filling. Also the challenge in serving local residents of a wide range of nationalities – including Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe – is a constant one. Forty per cent of the children here do not have English as a first language and some 26 different languages are spoken at home.

In a Government survey of three years ago, Hexthorpe was 23rd out of 34,000 so-called Super Output Areas in the whole country. These measure deprivation by certain indices. Therefore we are convinced that it is essential for us to continue to provide the day-to-day facilities – a safe place to sit and meet with others and talk or just be quiet, a drink of tea/coffee, a prayer.

Our work with young people has been very challenging. Some are excluded from school and are at a loose end most days. Others when not at school would sooner be outside rather than at home. On occasions violence has been threatened against staff or property but generally they respect our discipline, although there are moments! The Junction is not a youth centre, but the need for provision for these youngsters shouts out at us because there is no provision at all in the community for young people.

We will continue to support all initiatives that seek to help the community and bring lasting benefits. The Junction endeavours to see that the community is consulted and involved from the beginning. Local people don't like to be told what they need by the experts!

Money from the Doncaster New Deal for Communities has come to an end after a decade of support. We must continue to seek funding over the next year from both private and statutory sectors. We have two paid posts, a full time manager, and – for the last four years – a managerial administrator, shared by two people. In addition there are nine volunteers. We cannot sustain the salaries without support.

We are not a branch of the social services, we have a Christian distinctiveness and that distinctiveness has become increasingly less of a barrier to the accessing of secular funding. Relationships and trust are so important in this area. The spending of grants for their designated purpose and the diligent keeping of records and accounts are appreciated by outside funding agencies.

An exciting new development for 2010 saw the starting of a weekly lunchtime service with an average of 15 of us sitting around a table. We will have a song, a reading, a talk and discussion followed by sandwiches and a cake. This complements the weekly Bible study and the occasional celebration evenings. The Junction also hosts a Christianity Explored group for men. Our aim is to continue to develop the sense of Christian community and to present the gospel in words as well as in actions. Eighteen years ago our vision was that the Junction could be a new kind of church that we found hard to describe at the time.

Some people do regard it as their church – though we are very much part of the local church. We would say it's essential to be part of the local church. We are not separate; it's not the Junction and the church. We lay great emphasis as a church on teaching and preaching but we have learned that you can't make assumptions. We learned that when after a service somebody asked, 'Who is this bloke Paul that you keep talking about?' We are not quite certain who is going to be there and we are never quite certain what is going to happen.

It would be marvellous if all of those who come to the Junction became Christians but it's not conditional. We love and serve them all. Sometimes we're asked how many people have come from the Junction into the life of the church and how many have become members. In terms of outlay has it been 'successful'? Has there been a good return on the investment in them? Thankfully we don't think in those terms. It's great when people do come to faith, but we are just called to do what we do. We can do no other. If God has called us to a work then we have to be faithful to that calling. Yes, monitoring and evaluation is important but in the end the question is, 'Have we been faithful?'

Bishop Graham Cray is Archbishops' Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions, the highly successful joint initiative of the Church of England and Methodist Church pioneering new ways of being church. He talks to Christian Today about the 'mixed economy' of church and why both traditional and innovative forms are needed for effective mission today.

CT: What is a mixed economy of church?

Bishop Graham: 'Mixed economy' is an expression that originates from Archbishop Rowan Williams when he was a Bishop in Wales. The thinking behind it is that new congregations and church plants are not to replace existing churches with their approach, but complement them.

There is much good work to be done by traditional churches and they need to be supplemented and complemented by new forms of church to reach those that remain untouched by existing churches.

It is a partnership between the two and not a competition. The intention is not to replace one another, and neither is it to operate in isolation from one another but rather supplement with mutual prayer, recognition and learning from one another.

The great majority of Fresh Expressions planted in the last five or six years are new congregations of existing churches so it helps lots of local parish churches and Methodist circuits to become mixed economy.

CT: You meet a lot of people in the traditional churches. Do they feel threatened by new expressions or pressured to change at all?

Bishop Graham: It's a varied picture but I don't think there is much of that. If there is pressure to change, it's indirect, because no one is saying stop doing church traditionally and 'everybody's got to do these new things'. The other aspect of the mixed economy is an understanding that the whole church is missionary and that traditional churches need to be missionary in their traditional forms.

There is a challenge that way, but I find that more traditional worshippers are grateful that something is being done and I find it even more with the older generation who say that they are worried that their grandchildren don't go to church at all. So if they see something happening that isn't church the way they are used to but it's helping their grandchildren engage with the church, then they are excited about it and not necessarily threatened by it.

CT: The mixed economy means many different styles of church and different traditions and denominations working together. Is there a tension between the inevitable diversity and unity?

Bishop Graham: I had a meeting recently with David Cornick, General Secretary of Churches Together in England and a former colleague of mine. I think we are both clear that unity and mission are equally important and you can't simply go for one and not the other. But the way it is working out is beginning to change. We had a long period of time when there was considerable hard work about formal unity for the sake of mission and to give a united witness. That's still very important but what's tending to happen now is that more progress is being made with unity when churches in an area are acting together or coordinating in mission.

Fresh Expressions is one of the ways they can do that. Doing mission is the best route to unity, many of us are discovering. Diversity is fine as long as there is real communication locally. Some churches have gathered together as a result of the Hope08 initiatives and have kept working together and a lot of the Street Pastor initiatives have been made possible by that.

We have a regional organisation called FEAST through which the Fresh Expressions strategy team leaders of different denomination in an area coordinate together. It allows them to know what the other is trying to do and that way, you don't have six churches working on one estate, for example, and no one working on the estate next door.

In lots of parts of the country, rural and urban, we are encouraging churches to plan together and to pray together and, if you like, coordinate the diversity. So it helps with unity rather than undermines.

CT: When we talk about the church today, a word we often hear is decline, but Fresh Expressions seems to be experiencing a lot of growth.

Bishop Graham: Yes it is. It's hard to know exactly how much but the Methodist Church has fairly robust figures now and there are something like 1,200 Methodist churches that are planting a fresh expression. Now a lot of them will be quite small and inevitably lots of them will be young because this is a young movement but that amounts to a lot of people.

Some of them will be people who had a background in church but stopped going. Others will be people who have never had any real contact with church. But certainly one of the ways the church is growing and evangelising in Britain is through the planting of fresh expressions.

CT: Would you go as far as saying that it is the key to the church's long term survival?

Bishop Graham: Well, I think it is one of the keys. If we continue with this mixed economy approach where the whole church is realising that it is called to mission, and that there is a place and partnership, and for the traditional and the fresh expression, then we might become quite a different sort of church, much more engaged as a whole with its community and not needing words like 'traditional' or 'fresh expression'.

So I think fresh expressions are one part but it will never be the whole of the future. It really does need this dynamic relationship between the more traditional and the more innovative.

CT: The royal wedding was traditional. Was the Church of England not tempted to go for a fresh expression?!

Bishop Graham: [laughs] Well, I believe the choice was down to the couple and they wanted it like that! But one of the mistakes we can make is just assuming that fresh expressions are for the young and the traditional is for the old.

I have a lot to do with youth ministry, I chair the Soul Survivor Trust, so I know that large numbers of young people like it very contemporary and lively, but others love the chants of Taizé, for example, and something more structured.

You have to remember that this current generation of pensioners includes people like Rod Steward and Mick Jagger. There is a rock 'n' roll generation that has reached pension age now. So the mixed economy is for all generations.

CT: You've just partnered with 24/7 Prayer. Why have you decided to move Fresh Expressions forward with them?

Bishop Graham: They came to us because they were coming to the conclusion that the core values that they had and the core values that we have are very similar. Our core values are about prayer and spirituality and all our practical training is founded on the principle that you need to discern, you need to pray, you need to listen to God, you need to help him to show you how to engage with your community, your area, your network.

That ties in so well with their prayer houses that get involved with mission, and we are a missionary organisation that is rooted in prayer and discernment. Andy Freeman, who co-wrote Punk Monk, is also training to be a pioneer minister in the Church of England and so came more fully in touch with the work we are doing with Fresh Expressions through his training.

We are absolutely delighted to have them as partners. It will strengthen us in terms of the prayer base involved in local mission strategies and the planting of fresh expressions, and developing patterns of prayer and worship within fresh expressions as they start to grow.

CT: Is a fresh expression something any church could do?

Bishop Graham: More or less, yes. We would like the mixed economy to be the default setting for the church in the UK, so that it becomes the norm for any church both to develop its established patterns as much as it possibly can and at the same time ask: who will we never reach if we only do this? What else could we do? And ask the Holy Spirit to inspire their imagination and show them.

CT: Is there a secret to a successful church plant?

Bishop Graham: There's an expression in mission we use a lot: see what God is doing and join in. The two key ingredients are, one, that it comes out of prayerful listening to God about the opportunities he is preparing in an area, and, two, that it comes from what the Mission-shaped Church report points to: dying to live.

That is, you don't plant a fresh expression or do a church plant through establishing just the sort of church you believe churches ought to be like and that you personally would love to have! Rather, it is about being willing to sacrifice what you would like to have for what is appropriate for those you are trying to reach and that becomes the shape of the church you are helping establish.

It's got to be for others, not you, and it's got to start with listening to God's wisdom and not just your local good idea or cloning something someone else has done elsewhere!

CT: You must hear all the time about exciting fresh expressions being developed all around the UK.

Bishop Graham: Well, the trickiness about that story is that most of them aren't wonderfully exciting! They are just really locally appropriate and people are being reached for Jesus in a way that they weren't being reached before.

We are releasing a DVD this month with 28 stories and among my favourite is one Methodist church on the edge of a beach that was down to two members aged 90 and 85 and is now a thriving church that majors on, although not exclusively, ministering to the surfing community.

In the borderlands of Scotland, a Church Army evangelist is leading a fresh expression that is working with people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. Sorted in Bradford started with relational work in skate parks and is now involved in schools and the Diocese of Bradford has formally recognised this as a church through what we call a Bishop's Mission Order and it is working very effectively with unchurched young people.

The exciting thing about all of these is that they are local, they are appropriate and people who didn't know Jesus before are getting to know him.

Today (6th May), the Fresh Expressions national day conference in Oxford will welcome the Archbishop of Canterbury as a keynote speaker to consider the theme of 'making the mixed economy work'. Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions team, writes about why it is time to 'stop talking mixed economy and start acting mixed economy'.

Our aspiration is to see the church reshaped, not by a church initiative, but by sharing in the Mission of God. We are all learning: that the mission of the Church is to share in the mission of God and that mission is not an activity of some Christians, but of the very essence of what it means to be the Church. Baptism is into Christ and into his body and into his mission.

Roman Catholic missiologists Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder wrote that

the church is missionary by its very nature and it becomes missionary by attending to each and every context in which it finds itself.

The Mission-shaped Church report was about 'fresh expressions of church in a changing context'. As we engage with the missionary God in a multi-choice world, where the impact of Christendom is rapidly fading, so we will be reshaped by the Spirit, as we learn again how to be missionary here.

Our context requires more than fresh expressions of church. It requires a week-by-week partnership, which Archbishop Rowan has called 'a mixed economy church'. In such a church, every parish church and chapel, every deanery, circuit, synod and presbytery knows that it is called to mission through word and need – finding ways to give local expression to the five marks of mission. Existing churches extend their reach beyond their current attendance, and fresh expressions of church are planted to reach those who still remain untouched by existing churches.

It is time to stop talking mixed economy and time to start acting mixed economy. This requires a partnership where traditional churches and fresh expressions of church pray for one another, support one another, and learn from one another. It requires growing relationships of trust between those pioneers who plant fresh expressions and those to whom they are accountable. Such trust is properly based on integrity of character and not necessarily on supervisors and pioneers' understanding of one another's ministries. Each needs to respect the other for the things they themselves cannot do.

We do not truly act mixed economy unless we act ecumenically as well. The denominations are not competitors but partners in mission. Their shared task is to engage the whole of society in their part of the country with Christ and his kingdom. According to Paul Avis, general secretary of the Church of England's Council for Christian Unity,

Mission is the whole Church bringing the whole Christ to the whole world.

That understanding needs embodying locally, in every locality. We can't be properly missionary, and we can't fully embody the mixed economy, without one another. This is not so much unity for the sake of mission, as partnership in mission, which will reshape the church.

We have to take seriously the scale of the task: 34% of adults in England have had no significant contact with any church and the proportion of young people and children will be much higher. In my view it will not prove to be enough to encourage the majority of churches to plant fresh expressions of church. I am thrilled that so many are doing so. I work hard so that many, many more will do so. But I also believe we need to find ways to reach beyond the reach of the churches in this nation, even beyond the reach of those which plant fresh expressions of church.

I believe we need a new breed of self-supporting missionaries, mostly lay people, whose vocation from God is to plant fresh expressions of church in the locations of their life circumstances, in the work place and the leisure centre, wherever they are, or wherever God sends them. I'm not looking for mavericks or lone wolves, but disciplined people, called by God, equipped by the church, who are prepared to be accountable to one another and to the church's senior leaders, and who will reach more deeply into our increasingly post Christian society than most local churches can reasonably be expected to go. We need regional and national orders of missionaries in life to re-evangelize our land.

With a mixed economy, ecumenical partnership and a new missionary movement we really could see the landscape changed, not just in the church, but in the nation.

This is not about reversing decline! The scale of church attendance in previous times is almost irrelevant to the case I am arguing. It is about learning to be the church in our current context. It is about a church which is missionary by nature learning how to be missionary in its current context. And it is about grace. According to St Paul, those who have been encountered by the grace of God in Jesus Christ owe it to those who have not. We are 'debtors' to them (Romans 1:14), because we are debtors to grace. Mission is not a duty, it is a reflex in response to the love of God.

Changing the landscape: making the mixed economy work will also host the launch of the next Fresh Expressions DVD, expressions: making a difference. Comprising 28 stories, the DVD (£15) is available from the Fresh Expressions shop. Look onsite too for details of the newly-produced Share booklets, the first seven in an ongoing series – ideal for anybody considering, or involved in, growing a fresh expression of church.

Country life is changing at remarkable rate. The 21st century village is, more often than not, now home to a range of communities – and the challenges and opportunities associated with them. A conference at the beginning of May, run by Fresh Expressions and the Rural Churchplanters’ Forum, will look at one of those challenges in more detail: making and growing disciples in the countryside. Revd Sally Gaze, author of Mission Shaped and Rural and leader of the Tas Valley Cell Church, South Norfolk, explains more

Lots of people have a very set idea as to what life, or ministry, in the countryside is like – usually people who have never lived or ministered here! Sometimes their image owes more to The Archers than reality but the fact is that rural contexts are very diverse and the countryside is changing very quickly indeed. We asked those booking for the conference to let us know a little more about their own settings and the variety is amazing; one Minister's parish covers 350 miles and includes 10 distinct communities; four islands, five villages accessible by road and one by sea on the mainland.  In a classic understatement he says, 'The traditional parish model cannot provide a model of ministry that enables mission and innovation to be developed'.

It's interesting that there are recognisable differences in what people think of as a rural setting. A lot of places that describe themselves as rural would not be seen as such by others in more remote areas; there are real regional differences being played out against the same backdrop. Many of the 'rural' areas surrounding the London belt for instance would not be seen as such by many working in far flung areas of England, Scotland or Wales. That's fine – we wouldn't say one 'urban' context is exactly the same as another simply because it's urban. The same is true of the countryside.

The Rural Churchplanters' Forum came into being because training was available on how to start mission initiatives in the countryside but there seemed to be a gap when we started to think about what happens when people become disciples for the first time and want to grow and mature in faith. In rural contexts we don't have the resources of many large, urban churches so youth work, for instance, may be a particular challenge if you only have one teenager who's attending what is the only church in the village. Where can that teenager go to gain support in his or her faith? Maybe churches across an area can resource age appropriate fresh expressions of church. Christians in the countryside need to pull together. That is shown in the work of other organisations too – The Arthur Rank Centre is very supportive of what we are doing and we also have a good relationship with Rural Ministries.

We also have to make the most of what the countryside can offer in that we often have the opportunity to do things in small, or mixed age, groups. It's not about how many people you can get to come to a particular event or a once a month service, it’s about how you can enable them to grow in faith, to follow Jesus in a practical everyday way.

In a major cultural shift in recent years, many people – whose families have lived and worked in the same rural area for generations – can no longer afford to live there. Instead others move in from the towns, some settle well but others have a very different approach to life and the area they inhabit. This means there can be several 'villages' within a village as the very different communities live side by side but appear to have very little else in common. The challenge as we minister in these situations is to share the good news of God’s love with all of the people in the area, whether they are long-time residents or newcomers.

Another major social trend to contend with is the increased use of technology. We are seeking to communicate the Gospel in an age where people are used to comfortable surroundings, the big screen and instant communication. With many village churches working together, planning ahead for church services and associated activities remains a must… but people's decision as to whether to attend or not is now much more likely to be decided at the eleventh hour. That's not a purely rural phenomenon of course but the mobile phone – signal permitting – has undoubtedly changed the way we communicate and commit. What does that mean for us as church communities?

making and growing disciples in the countryside will bring together people from across the denominations that have planted or are hoping to plant a fresh expression of church in a rural area. Helping us along the way will be Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions team, and other members of the Rural Churchplanters' Forum. Our hosts are Pete and Kath Atkins, leaders of the Threshold family of churches in rural Lincolnshire.

What do I expect the outcomes from the conference to be? I think it will:

• highlight key issues for the national Church to consider in terms of making and growing disciples in the countryside;
• identify ways in which we, as pioneers of new kinds of churches in the countryside, can support and learn from each other each other.

Some ministers, seeing the unity of the church as being vital to mission, are concerned that the development of fresh expressions of church is something that will lead to further segregation but I believe diversity is good for unity. It is as we listen to people – and honour their different needs and preferences – that we communicate the love of God.

making and growing disciples in the countryside takes place at Bawtry Hall, Doncaster, from May 4-5. For further details, contact Sally Gaze at sally@tasvalley.org.

Should we have distinctive congregations for young people or not? Is it better to have all ages together in the local church at worship? Bishop Graham Cray – Archbishops' Missioner, leader of the Fresh Expressions team and Chair of the Soul Survivor Trust – explores the often thorny subject.

What is the logic of youth congregations? Does it mean that we end up with children's church, youth church, 20-30s church (with no-one there…), middle-aged church and elderly church?

To make matters worse, should there be black church, white church, Chinese church, rich church, poor church and computer nerd church? (The fact that some of these actually exist does not answer the question about God's will and the purpose of his Church.) What does each generation lose if it is cut off from the others? How is the reconciling, barrier breaking work of Christ's cross to be experienced and demonstrated?

The answer lies in mission, unity and diversity.

Underlying this very practical issue are a number of important principles about the nature of the Gospel, the relationship between mission and unity, and the nature of unity and diversity in the local church. The danger is that an emphasis on mission alone can result in a fragmented church where no one has significant relationships with any Christians from a different generation or fragment of society. Equally, an emphasis on unity alone can restrict mission to 'people like us' or 'people we can cope with'. Or it can lead to disaster because no one had thought how young people, or young people from a different background, could be integrated into existing church life and culture.

I once asked a youth minister if his middle class youth fellowship and the members of his estate youth club ever met one another? His reply was that they did – and when they did they threw cups and plates at one another! If we want unity we will also need to have diversity, whether it be within a congregation, between linked congregations or between sister churches. I will take a look at these apparently competing principles later.

Reaching and keeping

In 2002, in a Grove booklet about Youth Congregations and the Emerging Church, I pointed out that they had emerged as a new feature on the Church's landscape for two main reasons:

• As a practical way to keep young people we might otherwise lose. This was not paranoia. In the last two decades of the twentieth century the number of children and teenagers in the UK churches halved. It was not easy to keep existing young people in the churches and it seemed far easier to win young people to Christ than to integrate them into church;
• A missional motive, as well as this pragmatic 'survival' one. Young people were on the cutting edge of the massive shift in culture, which many people have called modern to postmodern. Western culture was changing and the gospel needed to be preached and the church planted into the new world, which was emerging. Inevitably the first fully integrated inhabitants of that new world were young people, hence youth congregations. Those youth congregations whose members did not all leave the area for higher education at 18 could be expected to develop into all age congregations within the new culture. Some – notably Soul Survivor Watford – have done precisely that, while retaining the priority of winning teenagers for Christ.

But what about today? There are still, sadly, churches which still have not been able to integrate young people into their weekly life and worship. In my previous role as a bishop in Kent I sometimes met congregations who wanted young people to attend, but entirely on their own terms and without any will for change. It is a fundamental principle about the body of Christ that new members, whatever their age, automatically imply change. New people have to be considered as decisions are made, and space made for new gifts and insights. So when it comes to the eternal salvation of teenagers I am a pragmatist. I would rather have young people meeting and worshipping separately than be lost to the church and possibly to Christ.

On the other hand the recent study on The Faith of Generation Y – by Bob Mayo, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Sally Nash and Christopher Cocksworth – shows that many of today's teenagers are not put off the church. They don't know much about it and are not at all adverse to intergenerational activity, partly because family is so important to them. If church is really functioning as the family of God there are good reasons to believe that more local churches should now be able to integrate young people than was the case a decade ago. The gospel of reconciliation to God is mean to be demonstrated by visible local reconciliation with one another.

The 'distinctive' argument

I would also caution against too much use of the idea that each generation is distinctive, and thus needs its own version of church. It is one thing to point out that, when there is a culture shift of the sort that occurs every few centuries, innovative mission will be needed among the first generation to be shaped by the new world. It is another thing altogether to imply that the distinctive features of each generation are more influential than features held in common, and is such that each generation needs its own church! There are always generational distinctives, but that alone is not the basis for segregated congregations.

Some youth workers make the mistake of assuming that the young people they serve must see things the same way that they did, when they were in their teens. They had angst about the church so their young people must as well. That is not necessarily so. Beware of generational theory. It was developed as a marketing tool and should not be used uncritically by the Church.

A third way

Despite all that I have said so far, I still believe there is still a vital role for youth congregations today. They should not just be a last resort for churches that can't keep their young people any other way. They are appropriate mission initiatives in their own right. Many churches in the UK use a cluster of approaches for mission. They make their churches as welcoming and hospitable as possible and invite friends to events and courses, aiming to help them to both believe and belong. This is just as appropriate for young people as for any other age group. But churches also involve themselves in their communities to demonstrate the gospel through loving service, and thus make new friends to invite. Various forms of youth work can act as one of these bridging projects. There is a third strategy complementary to the first two. It begins by asking the question 'Who will never be reached if we only do what we are doing now?' and results in the planting of new congregations, with a different ethos, designed to reach those untouched by existing local patterns of church life. We call these fresh expressions of church and it is my role nationally to resource the Church to plant them.

Youth congregations are one of many examples of fresh expressions of church – as was made clear in the Mission-shaped Church report in 2004. The underlying principle here is not generational. It is a God given passion to reach those with no connection to church and little knowledge of the gospel. Fresh expressions of church might be identified with an activity (such as the surfers of Tubestation in Cornwall); a vocation, an institution – maybe a workplace, school or college; a particular neighbourhood or any other way in which human beings form community these days. There are plenty of intergenerational fresh expressions but there are also, and need to be, youth specific ones as well. Sorted, a youth congregation in Bradford is a good example. It began with relational evangelism at skate parks, is now involved in two secondary schools, and is recognised as a church by the diocese.

Teenagers can and should be integrated into multi generational churches. But some churches are not anything like multi-generational. They have ageing congregations into which it would be extremely difficult to integrate younger people. It may be too late. It might be better to plant something younger, and begin again! We should work for an active partnership between existing patterns of church life and fresh expressions of church in each area. This combination is often called 'the mixed economy' church. All dimensions of this mixed economy need to win and disciple young people. It is not either or, it is both and.

The theological rationale for this is found in the relationship between mission and unity. Christ died for 'all' so that 'all things' could be reconciled to God and forgiven people to one another. Those who have received the gospel of reconciliation are in debt; they owe the gospel to those who have not heard it. As a result there can be two equal problems about unity in the Church. One is that those who are already Christians may not be united. They may be more content to live and worship in groups defined by their particular culture, rather than by their shared identity in Christ. But there is an equal problem.

Even if all the Christians in a place were united across the generations and all other cultural differences, that unity might not be broad enough, because of all the groups who remain completely untouched by the gospel. The first problem would be solved by finding appropriate ways to express unity and interdependence, the second can only be solved by outreaches to untouched groups – sometimes by an appropriate fresh expression of church. So innovative mission is meant to create problems for unity, and unity is meant to challenge fragmented mission. Youth specific congregations are one of the tools we need to re-evangelize a nation in which the vast majority of young people have little meaningful connection to the Church, but all cultural specific congregations – including the elderly ones worshipping with the Book of Common Prayer need to have a real connection to the rest of the local church or churches.

Up, in, out, of

Every congregation needs four dimensions – up to God in worship, in to one another in community, out to the world in mission and of the rest of the church in partnership. Unity can be embodied in many more ways than all being in the same worship service. It might mean joint service to the local community. Soul Survivor's 'Noise' weekends were designed for young people but in many places all generations now share in what the young people began. It might mean a prayer evening or 24/7 prayer week in which all generations join.  It might mean having a really good intergenerational party sometimes! It sometimes means young people being mentored by older members of another congregation of the same church. It might equally mean members of a youth congregation visiting elderly or housebound members of a sister congregation. Unity is about real relationships, not about always being together in the same time and space.

There are a wide variety of possible models. A youth congregation can be one of a number of interlinked congregations of one church, A secondary school based youth congregation can have strong links to churches in the communities and youth ministries where the students live. An Anglican deanery, Methodist circuit, or ecumenical group of nearby churches can run a combined youth celebration with youth cells within each participating church. A youth church plant can sometimes grow into an all age congregation. A multigenerational church can have, as its primary calling, the winning of unchurched teenagers for Christ – such as St Laurence's, Reading.

There is no simple one size fits all, answer to 'Youth congregations – right or wrong?' In some contexts they are vital – or whole groups of young people will remain untouched by the gospel! The mission of the church requires them.  In other places they are unnecessary as intergenerational unity is achievable, and disunity would impede the mission of the church.

All mission requires discernment – listening to and following the missionary, uniting, Holy Spirit in the local context is the only safe way to decide.

Bishop Graham Cray is Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions team. In 2004 he chaired the working party which wrote the Mission-shaped Church report on church planting and fresh expressions of church. Here he responds to the recently published For the Parish: A Critique of Fresh Expressions by Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank.

The Church of England has a choice between its call to 'evangelize the whole country or decline into a sect' – such is the concern at the heart of For the Parish. Those who work in fresh expressions identify exactly this challenge but have a different strategy to address it. Both sides of the argument want the same outcome.

In many ways this book makes for a frustrating read because its misinterpretations detract from the important issues it affirms. The fact is that I am as much 'for the parish' as authors Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, having spent 35 years of ordained ministry as a parish priest, training ordinands as parish priests, or exercising episcopal oversight for parishes.

The authors see fresh expressions as independent from parishes, claiming that 'until now the average Fresh Expression has had little or nothing to do with its parish, deanery or diocese.' In truth, the vast majority of fresh expressions in the Church of England are new congregations planted by parish churches and most of the remainder are deanery or diocesan initiatives. Fresh expressions often serve as an extension of the ministry of these parishes and deaneries, helping them to remain true to their calling to be the church for all.

The book's ignoring of the Fresh Expressions initiative's ecumenical nature is a major flaw too. The authors come near to making exclusive claims for their particular understanding of the Church of England that would fall far short of our existing ecumenical understanding and commitments.

For the Parish also fails to understand the strictly limited purpose of the Mission-shaped Church report, namely to:

• provide a follow up to the 1994 Breaking New Ground: Church Planting in the Church of England report, and comment on more recent developments, and as a consequence;
• provide 'some theological principles' for its proposals about church planting. It was never expected to cover the whole of a developed ecclesiology. The Mission-shaped Church report identified itself with, and assumed the ecclesiology of, two key reports: Eucharistic Presidency (from House of Bishops) and Presence and Prophecy (General Synod).

The Mission-shaped Church report gave considerable emphasis to the need for legally authorised network church plants to supplement existing parochial provision. It did so because this required legislation, now provided by Bishop's Mission Orders, whereas new congregations planted within a parish did not.

Criticisms and shared concern

Responding briefly to some of the criticisms the authors identify, I will also highlight some important areas of shared concern:

(1) Faulty methodology

It is claimed that the Fresh Expressions initiative uses a faulty methodology based on a philosophical mistake, making an inappropriate distinction between the forms and the meaning of the Faith. The authors rightly say that the meaning can only be learned, and embraced through the forms. But the quotations about fusing 'the meaning and the forms', or about the 'one gospel having many clothes' – which they criticise – come from international consultations at Lausanne and the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion about the engagement of the gospel with diverse and changing cultures. What was being addressed was the danger of confusing culturally specific forms with the embodiment of the gospel itself. An example would be a conviction that Church's responsibility to teach the Scriptures could only be fulfilled if it used the Authorised Version. Such confusions distance the Church from culture in the wrong way.

(2) 'Inherently neutral' culture?

Fresh expressions practitioners allegedly lack a proper understanding of the mediatory role of the church because we see culture as 'inherently neutral' and merely there as 'clothing for the church'. For the Parish uses a fine quotation to explain the mediatory role of the church:

'In mission we share God's work: in mission we pass on the saving message through human words and communities, through human words, drama and music. Supremely, what we draw people into through mission is the life of Christ lived out – and thereby mediated – in the community of his Body the Church'

These words explain very well our understanding of the purpose and nature of the church in both fresh expressions and inherited forms. Culture is not regarded as neutral by fresh expressions practitioners; rather it is seen as providing a profound missional challenge to the church.

At various points Mission-shaped Church made it clear that the Church is called to be a countercultural community. Our present culture is described in sociological detail, not because we have no choice but to accept it – instead the detail aids understanding of our missionary context.

The disagreement between fresh expressions practitioners and these authors is between two different approaches to engaging our culture with the gospel, the former seeing engagement as the way to be countercultural and transformative, while the latter argue for more of a distinct parallel presence in society. This is worth a rigorous debate, but both approaches are committed to an understanding of the Church as a supernatural transforming presence.

(3) Inadequate individualised understanding of salvation

For the Parish suggests that fresh expressions are 'embarrassed' about the church and just see it as a means to an end rather than as a foretaste of God's final purposes. This does neither the movement nor the literature justice. Mission-shaped Church was about the 'Church' in mission in a changing context – not about individualized salvation – precisely because 'salvation has an ecclesial dimension.'

Mission-shaped Church, quoting Eucharistic Presidency, affirmed that the Church is 'a genuine foretaste of God's kingdom'. For the Parish suggests that fresh expressions thinking prioritizes the Kingdom over the Church in such a way that the church is reduced to less than its biblical dignity and identity. But the authors are in equal danger of collapsing the Kingdom into the Church.

(4) A 'flight to segregation'

For the Parish sees the development of fresh expressions of church as a 'flight to segregation'; claiming that the American 'Church Growth' idea of 'homogeneous units' provides the foundation for many of the Mission-shaped Church report's proposals. It is the case that Church Growth thinking was influential in some church planting circles. It offered at least some answers to the problem that many parish congregations were already more or less homogeneous units, in other words groups made up of a single people type or culture, and it opened the way to expanding their reach by engaging with groups which had been untouched.

This remains a major challenge in the Church today but the Fresh Expressions initiative now addresses it primarily through contemporary missiology, through the literature of the Gospel and Culture movement – and in particular through post-Vatican 2 Roman Catholic thinking on inculturation.

There is particular emphasis on the significance of the incarnation as being both (a) a unique salvific event and (b) the paradigm for the Church's mission as it crosses cultural boundaries with the gospel.

For the Parish dislikes this incarnational principle but it has been the theological basis of cross-cultural mission around the world, mission which is now required here. Many fresh expressions establish a bridgehead for the gospel through a particular group with which they have established a relationship but this does not mean they would settle for niche church as a final outcome.

In the New Testament, boundary-crossing mission led to new problems of unity which the church then had to address and resolve. That is the right order. The mission to the Gentiles was not put on hold because it created problems for the unity of the church, nor because all types of Gentiles were not being evangelized at the same time. When previously unreached people find faith it is the Church's task to resolve the new challenges to unity which have been created by the Missionary Spirit.

For the Parish tends to dismiss statements which contradict its reading of fresh expressions as being 'token'. This then colours the way it engages with the concept of a 'mixed economy church'. But properly understood, the mixed economy is about the interdependent partnership between the traditional ministry of the parish and its extension through fresh expressions of church. Difference can be a resource for a more representative unity.

(5) A flight from tradition

I have already distinguished a false dichotomy between the meaning of the faith and its forms, from the absolutizing of the forms of a particular era. The description of a 'Christian Imaginary in the Parish' in the latter chapters has many excellent features but also seems embedded in a literary middleclass culture alien to much of our population and to offer an inappropriate one size to fit all. What impresses me, by contrast, about many fresh expressions is the seriousness of their approach to worship, spirituality and discipleship. Many are engaged at a catechumenate level with friends with little knowledge of the faith or of the Church, and their creative engagement with the traditions of the church for a missionary context is a gift from which we can all learn.

For the Parish rightly recognises the seductive and corrosive nature of consumer culture and calls for transformative patterns of ecclesial life and discipleship. When fresh expressions adapt or translate the Church's historic traditions to engage with our society, that is also their intention. The ultimate test of the ministry of any Christian congregation lies in the quality of disciples being formed through the patterns of its ongoing life and ministry in Christ. To the authors I would say that they are right in claiming it is time for a proper ecclesiological debate – but not one that's based on caricature.

+Graham Cray