Transcript FRESH EXPRESSIONS FOUR YEARS ON

FRESH EXPRESSIONS
FOUR YEARS ON
Melbourne
MISSION-SHAPED CHURCH
 ‘church
planting and
fresh
expressions of
church in a
changing
context.’
FOUR YEARS PROGRESS
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25,000 copies of Mission-Shaped Church sold
National Evangelism Officer (Paul Bayes)
Senior Staff coordinator in 40 dioceses
‘Fresh Expressions’ organisation (+Methodist)
635 registered projects,
35% of parishes in 2005 count.
New legal Framework: ‘Bishop’s Mission Order’
Revision of the Ordinal
Mission leadership criterion for all ordinands
FOUR YEARS PROGRESS
 Pioneer
ordained ministers
 Pioneer lay ministry guidelines
 CMS and Church Army refocus
 Resources: books, pamphlets, DVDs,
 ‘Share’ Online guide www.freshexpressions.org
 Training courses: ‘Mission Shaped Intro.’
‘Mission Shaped Ministry’
 Additional financial provision, national &
diocesan.
A SHIFT IN CULTURE
‘Essentially the Fresh
Expressions program is
not simply about a kind
of scattered set of
experiments;
 it’s about that gradual,
but I think inexorable
shift, in the whole culture
of our church that has
been going on in the last
few years, and which will
undoubtedly continue to
grow and develop.
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PART OF THE
BLOODSTREAM
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And that shift in
culture is about the
way in which
discovering new
expressions of the
Church’s life has now,
rather paradoxically,
become part of the
blood stream of the
traditional,
mainstream churches’
life.
Rowan Williams
 To
be, so to speak, an ordinary average
Anglican, to be an ordinary average
Anglican diocese, to be an ordinary
average Anglican bishop, now involves
you in thinking about, planning for, and
involving yourself in, some quite
extraordinary and, on the face of it,
sometimes rather un-Anglican bits of
new life.
BEING THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND
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So you’re going to
hear something now
about being the
Church, and being the
Church of England,
not about something
marginal, something
eccentric, but about
the very life blood of
who we are and what
we are.’
MISSIONARY CONTEXT
 ‘Ministers
in the Church of England
must pursue their vocation
increasingly aware of the missionary
context in which the church is set.
 In previous generations ministry was
exercised in a culture where Christian
beliefs and behaviours were the norm:
today’s context is more of a spiritual
and moral market place.’ Criterion H
Church attendance segmentation in 2006
Leaving aside the minority who are of other faiths, the UK adult population segments fairly
evenly between the Non-churched, De-churched & churchgoers.
Closed
non-churched
32%
Other
religions
6%
Unassigned
2%
Regular (at least monthly)
churchgoers 15%
Fringe churchgoers
(at least 6x yr. ) 3%
Occasional
churchgoers
(at least annually)
7%
Open
de-churched
5%
Open
non-churched
1%
Base: UK All adults (unw. 7069 w. 7000) at TAM Wave 2
Closed
de-churched
28%
Percentage of child population in Sunday
School UK, 1900-2000
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1900
1920
1940
1960
1980
©UK Christian Handbook Religious Trends 2001/2001 No.2
2000
CONCLUSION

The existing parochial system alone is
no longer able to deliver its underlying
missionary purpose.
 We need a mixed economy of the old
and the new.
NOT EQUIPPED
 ‘We
know that our much loved and
treasured parochial system is not
equipped to meet all the challenges of
young, mobile populations, whose
patterns of life and work are not those
of their parents’ and grandparents’
generations.’ +Rowan Williams
OUR PEOPLE?
 ‘The Anglican
pattern of ministry, built
around parish and neighbourhood, can
lead to a way of thinking that assumes
that all people – whether attending or
not attending are basically ‘our people’.
All people are God’s people, but it is an
illusion to assume that somehow the
population of England is simply waiting
for the right invitation before they will
come back and join us.’
OUR PEOPLE?
 The
social and mission reality is that the
majority of English society is not ‘our people’ –
they haven’t been in living memory, nor do they
want to be. The reality is that for most people
across England the church, as it is, is
peripheral, obscure, confusing or irrelevant.’
 ‘The task is to become church for them, among
them and with them, and under the Spirit of
God to lead them to become church in their
own culture.’
the mixed economy
Celebrating and building on what is
mission-shaped in traditional forms of
church…
…and finding new,
flexible, appropriate
ways to proclaim the
Gospel afresh to those
who do not relate to
traditional ways
THE CHALLENGE TO THE
DIOCESES
 ‘It
is for dioceses to think creatively about
how to connect the old and the new, to
encourage traditional parishes to share
prayer and energy with new initiatives in
church life, and above all to help break
down the perennial suspicion between
the historic mainstream and the risktaking innovators. The historic
mainstream, after all, had its origins in
risk-taking innovators.’ ++Rowan
Every parish has the potential
A midweek
all-age after school
service
a Sunday
Evening Deanery
Youth congregation
Parish Communion
A small community
in a new housing area
A network
of midweek cells
assembling monthly
FRESH EXPRESSIONS OF
CHURCH
 A fresh
expression is a form of church for our
changing culture established primarily for the
benefit of people who are not yet members of
any church.
 It will come into being through principles of
listening, service, incarnational mission and
making disciples.
 It will have the potential to become a mature
expression of church shaped by the gospel
and the enduring marks of the church and for
its cultural context.
fresh expressions
three characteristics
• a strong mission focus
• a willingness to re-imagine church
• a commitment to both existing and
new forms of church
CALLED TO PROCLAIM
AFRESH
‘Which faith the Church is called
upon to proclaim afresh in each
generation.’
 ‘Bringing the grace and truth of
Christ to this generation.’
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Why do we need a mixed
economy?
Changing Sundays
Changing relationships
Changing cultures
Church at different times
Church for different networks
Church in different cultures
Less knowledge of faith
Church for beginners
Deeper spiritual hunger
Church for disconnected
explorers
fresh expressions of church
FRESH EXPRESSIONS
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Legacy X
Sanctuary
B1
Messy Church
Sanctus 1
Cell church
Goth Eucharist
Tube Station
G2
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Church for skaters
East West church
Network church
All age craft based cong
Young adults city centre
Merseyside Police
Cambridge
Surfer church
Church in the gym
KEY PRINCIPLE 1

Inculturation (Embodying the Gospel)
 Planting not cloning.
 'Dying to live’
 Something new grows
THE PRICE OF MISSION
 The
church must always be willing to
die to its own cultural comfort in order
to live where God intends it to be.
 John 12:24 ‘Very truly, I tell you,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the
earth and dies, it remains just a single
grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit.’
DYING TO LIVE

‘The seed loses its previous identity,
which was to be part of the sending
church with its particular
manifestation and culture. It will
become something different from
what it was before. Dying to live is
inherent in the planting process.’
Mission Shaped Church
INCARNATIONAL
 Entering
their
world.
 Taking it as
seriously as they
do.
 Helping them to
find Christ there.
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INCULTURATION
‘Inculturation is essentially a
community process “from below”. Its
purpose is to allow the gospel to
transform a culture from within.
 No serious attempt at inculturation
can begin with a fixed view of the
outward form of the local church.’
Mission Shaped Church
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KEY PRINCIPLE 2
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FROM - Detailed advance planning
 TO - Discernment in context.
 ‘Seeing what God is doing and joining
in.’
WATCHING
 ‘We
must relinquish our missionary
presuppositions and begin in the
beginning with the Holy Spirit. This
means humbly watching in any
situation in which we find ourselves in
order to learn what God is trying to do
there, and then doing it with him.’
John V Taylor
THE MINISTRY OF THE
SPIRIT

‘If God’s Spirit is
among the people
of God wherever
they are, then
those are the
places where it is
possible to
incarnate a
missional life.’
HEALTH WARNING!
 DON’T
TAKE ‘MODELS OF CHURCH’
OFF THE SHELF?
 FOLLOW THE HOLY SPIRIT?
 AN INVITATION TO IMPROVISE!
TOGETHER TO GOD’S
FUTURE
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‘…do not try to call them back to
where they were, and do not try to
call them to where you are, beautiful
as that place may seem to you. You
must have the courage to go with
them to a place that neither you nor
they have been before.’ Vincent
Donovan
WHAT IS CHURCH?
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‘If ‘church’ is what happens when
people encounter the Risen Jesus
and commit themselves to sustaining
and deepening that encounter in their
encounter with each other, there is
plenty of theological room for diversity
of rhythm and style …’ ++Rowan
Williams
So what’s not Cricket?
THE MARKS OF
ANGLICANISM
 The
Declaration of Assent
 The Lambeth Quadrilateral
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The Scriptures
The Creeds
The Dominical Sacraments
Historic Episcopacy locally adapted
A national church
A international family
A liturgical tradition (Shared frameworks)
‘Lets wait and see.’
A EUCHARISTIC COMMUNITY
 The
eucharist lies at the heart of the
Christian life. It is the act of worship in
which the central core of the Biblical gospel
is retold and re-enacted, the focal point of
Christian worship.
 All expressions of church will ultimately be
eucharistic.
 An appetite or a starting point?
CATHOLICITY
 ‘Catholicity
refers to the universal
scope of the Church as a society
instituted by God in which all sorts and
conditions of humanity, all races,
nations and cultures, can find a
welcome and a home.
 Catholicity therefore suggests that the
Church has the capacity to embrace
diverse ways of believing worshipping,
CATHOLICITY
 and
that this diversity comes about
through the “incarnation” of Christian
truth in many different cultural forms
which it both critiques and affirms.
 The catholicity of the Church is
actually a mandate for cultural
hospitality.’ Paul Avis
CRITICAL FACTORS
 New
imagination
about the church
 New climate of
permission
 New resources
 New pathways for
ministry
 Old law revised to
support mission
FRESH EXPRESSIONS
FOUR YEARS ON
Melbourne