Paul Dunstan asks what a sprout is for.
The tinsel has been packed away for another year and I have a confession. I don't wish it could be Christmas every day. One reason is… sprouts. Hardly anybody admits to liking them, but many seem to think they should tackle at least one during the festive season. Perhaps we feel they will counterbalance our overindulgence in nice things. Who knows? Maybe they really are good for us.
I see several parallels between sprouts and church. First, both appeal to a small minority of people. Second, just as some people nevertheless gird their loins and force themselves to indulge in a sprout – maybe even look forward to it as a once-a-year exotic (or quixotic) experience – so some people brace themselves for a Christmas church service. Third, some of those find it wasn't as bad an experience as they expected and decide they might not wait until next Christmas before they try it again. Fourth, some cooks try to lure us to sprouts by adding all sorts of things – bacon, chestnuts, even anchovies – to make them more palatable. You might call them fresh expressions of sprout. Do you see where I'm going?
One of my frustrations (and maybe yours) about fresh expressions of church is that I've seen – as a practitioner and as a companion of several fresh expressions – that we still aren't reaching the unchurched in any substantial way. In many cases we cater for existing churchgoers and Christians who want something that inherited church isn't providing.
Let's be honest: in practice what tends to happen with many fresh expressions is that we take something people like doing and try to sneak church into it. People like drinking coffee and eating pastries so we let them do that and we try to slot in a bit of church. They like walking so we let them do that and we try to slot in a bit of church. They like doing crafts and games so we let them do that and we try to slot in a bit of church.
However, what we don't see clearly enough is that the unchurched people generally want coffee or walking or craft or games and can't see why we want to spoil it by including a religious 'bit'. Cue the sprout analogy … you can make sprouts more appealing by adding bits of bacon, but (the bacon-lover wants to know) why spoil a perfectly good sandwich by putting sprouts in it? Why spoil a nice trip to the café by putting church in it?
And we do know this, I think, though we don't like to admit it. Why else are so many fresh expressions attendees so reluctant or unsuccessful when it comes to inviting unchurched people along?
I think the basic problem (knowledge of which will help us see a solution) comes if we try to market something that's unmarketable: the church. Unchurched people have already made up their minds about church. They aren't interested. Otherwise they wouldn't be unchurched. They won't change their minds if we add a well brewed coffee into the mix or set up so many craft activities that you can hardly see the religion – any more than I would alter my opinion about sprouts if you slipped just the tiniest sliver of one into my bacon sandwich.
And are we supposed to be in the marketing business anyway? Surely, our first calling is not to draw people into church (fresh or inherited), but to proclaim Jesus Christ and the good news of his kingdom, his life, death and resurrection. Of course, making disciples has a corporate dimension and takes place in community – church – and for that we need fresh expressions of church more than ever.
I don't have a trendy solution to offer. I don't think we need one. I know that when we are being what we are supposed to be, we keep God-in-Jesus as the focus, and not the church, and that we can rely on him to draw people to himself. That means enabling and encouraging disciples to be more Jesus-focused and equipped to share him, in word and deed. It means seeing people as they are in relation to Christ rather than how they are in relation to the church. And it means trusting him to build his church rather than attempting to do it for him. Maybe, when we learn that he created sprouts and loves them, we will learn to love them, too. Wouldn't that be a miracle?