Category: Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

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

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

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

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

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

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

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

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

Liverpool FC

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

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

more of the same just means less of the same.

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

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

join the centre to the edge

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

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

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

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

+Graham Cray

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

According to the recently-published statistics, the Methodist Church and the Church of England each have one thousand fresh expressions of church, which involve a total of 66,000 people, meeting at least once per month. In addition, fresh expressions are developing in the United Reformed Church, the Congregational Federation, the Church of Scotland and other traditions. There is a missional movement, growing in strength in the UK. At its heart is the rediscovery of creative, contextual mission as a norm for local churches.

Despite official reports, endorsements by Synods and Conferences, by Archbishops, Presidents and Moderators, this is essentially a grassroots movement. Senior leaders and governing bodies have endorsed and commended local initiatives and promoted them across their networks. The Mission-Shaped Church report told the stories of local projects which had the potential for national significance. In Bishop Steven Croft's words we have been learning to 'join the centre to the edge'. The models of fresh expression which have proved to be 'viral', (e.g. Messy Church, Contemplative Fire, some forms of café church) all began as local initiatives. More generally, the publication of local stories has fed the imagination and given the courage for imaginative mission in many different forms in many different contexts. Many local churches are paying new and closer attention to the work of the missionary Spirit.

The Fresh Expressions initiative came into being in response to an emerging pattern of the Holy Spirit's activity and now serves an expanding fresh expressions movement.

The Spirit is not only the instigator of creative mission, but the sustainer and maturer of the Church. A further sign that this is a movement of the Spirit, with the capacity to last, is the growing interest in whole life discipleship, rules or rhythms of life, missional communities and new monasticism. Those who pioneer the new quickly find that they need deeper spiritual roots to sustain them. The numbers of fresh expressions are very encouraging, but few fresh expressions grow quickly. They do not provide a quick fix to overturn years of decline, but are part of the Spirit's call to long term, patient, incarnational mission. In a variety of different ways, often drawing on disciplines and traditions from previous eras of the church, the call to mission is also becoming a call to deeper discipleship. The term 'ancient future' church is evocative of much of this.

The third sign that this is a missional movement of the Spirit is its ecumenical nature. The Spirit is stirring up the same concerns in a range of denominations and traditions. The msm course is proving to be appropriate form of learning together ecumenically. Pioneers from different denominations easily recognise a similar DNA in one another. Stories from one tradition inspire new imagination in another. In many places FEASTs (Fresh Expressions Area Strategy Teams) are simply a more formal recognition of a partnership which is already developing.

Fresh expressions are here to stay – for two reasons. First they are now a proven part of the mission of the churches in this country. The movement is making a substantial numerical difference, and helping hundreds of local church to engage in new ventures of creative mission. It is part of the emerging mainstream. But it is also here to stay because the task has hardly begun. Six percent of Church of England parishes are involved. If they can engage 40,000 people, what would happen if 20% of parishes were to be involved – and the same with all of the participating denominations. There is a lot of work to do to help more local churches understand the possibility.

I am deeply grateful for the progress which has been made. But fresh expressions are not a quick fix either locally or nationally. We have to ditch the quick fix mentality, which is such a central part of Western culture, and continue to be a movement following the Spirit, engaging in patient creative mission in each context, as the Spirit leads.

Graham Cray's monthly e-xpressions column.

The challenge facing the churches in 2012 is the re-evangelization of Britain. This is a diverse task, addressing a wide variety of national and regional settings and different cultural and economic contexts. It is a call to sensitive contextual mission, based on confidence in the gospel, but humility, when deciding how it is to be shared and embodied. We are still in the process of learning how the church takes appropriate local shape; whether that be existing churches becoming more missional, or fresh expressions being planted. The temptation to clone, rather than listen to the Holy Spirit in the specific context, remains the greatest temptation. Corner cutting, disguised as passion for the gospel will not do. The gospel is best served by patient, but expectant listening, which longs to share in the mission of God in the context to which we have been called.

As the Church in Britain grows in its understanding of contextual mission a number of issues are raised. When should the gospel community take appropriate shape within a distinct culture or subculture, and when should it embody the breaking down of the barriers between cultures? Contextual church planting must not be just an ideological justification for niche churches. Consumer choice is not the same as contextual mission!

It is the missional challenge, not the desire for convenient forms of church, which gives fresh expressions their character.

Two questions lie at the heart of the listening process through which they are planted: who will never be reached if we only do what we are accustomed to doing and which aspects of society will remain untransformed and unchallenged if we do not plant? We who have encountered the grace of God in Jesus owe it to others, we cannot just plan for more of the same, and hope that 'they' will come. Contextual mission involves going and incarnational planting. But even that is insufficient. The church does not exist for its own sake, nor is it primarily an evangelistic agency. It serves the kingdom of God. The proclamation of salvation is a call to the kingdom. To be evangelized is to be reconciled to God and drawn into a community of disciples which serves God's purposes in its locality. The church is the community of the kingdom of God for its locality – whether neighbourhood, network or a combination of the two. This is the calling of fresh expressions as much as of inherited models of church.

In some contexts, the primary need will be to broaden the reach of mission, to plant fresh expressions which reach those unreached by existing ministry, adding diversity to the combined witness of the local churches, and making further social transformation possible. In other, more conflicted or divided areas, the challenge is to plant fresh expressing which demonstrate the reconciling power of the gospel, exactly across the local lines of division, because the Kingdom of God requires it. In all cases the unity of the church needs visible expression between congregations as well as within them.

The purpose of contextual mission – of church for every context – is to fulfil the Father's purpose. Which is that his Son and his Son's ministry, be embodied through the church, in each and every contest, as a sign, agent and foretaste of his kingdom. This, and nothing less. is the task and challenge of re-evangelization.

+Graham Cray

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