The 'Return of Christianity to England?'

As someone who has done church on estates since the last century the news that the Church of England (CofE) has a 'new vision' to put a church on every estate caused extremely mixed emotions and the assumption that, like the Curate's Egg, not all of it would be bad!

My cynical side came from the awareness that + Phillip North's (who is a really nice chap) former church on an estate in hartlepool was recently closed. Add to the scale pan an ongoing conversation with someone from another diocese to mine over the reality where they are of clergy not being relapsed because of the lack of money. Top it off with the track record the CofE has had in removing much of the effective church presence in the difficult places by contraction and amalgamation and you'll see that perhaps the cynical streak may have some realism behind it.

Having said that this is the Curate's egg, there must be something to commend it; something that brings joy. Which there is, for at last the poorer and tougher places - 'urban estate church' is a metaphor for 'rough' places - are being thought about. The idea of those resident in large estates getting some form of help to establish and lead these new churches is great for these will essentially be what Ray Oldenburg (R. Oldenburg, 1989, The Great Good Place, Marlow & Co, New York) called 'Third places'.

For those for whom this is a new term, Oldenburg identified three places where life is lived out:
Home (the first place),
Work (the second place) and,
Social/Community (the Third Place) where community is discovered or created and maintained.

Interestingly, the third places identified by Odenburg and by this 'New Vision' just happen to be Community centres, cafés and schools (to which we can add pubs, bookshops, games shops), and more besides. This what Pioneer Missioners and others have been doing for some time under the label 'missional'

Now it's not rocket science to observe that where community is built crime rates change, truancy and other issues are also addressed and people begin to become part of a positive, supportive and cohesive reality. Local congregations were the foundations of the Church (read the book of Acts) and I think I'd have to take Philip North to task when he says that, "Big cultural problems can't be solved," by these ecclesial communities - I am certain that they can (doesn't it say something about renewal and transformation in the Bible?).

“The vision is a thriving, loving Christian church on every single large estate. “  Hallelujah!

He continues with, "It's not a building but church as community of people."     Wasn't it always?

Well it all sounds very positive and the promise of some being trained to lead churches with the potential that some might even be ordained. Wow, it's all very first century Church - and that has to be good.

There are already people out there who are calling for us to examine the estate churches with a view to (and I quote) 'develop and new theological understanding, new models and theological language'. This is a load of complete and utter tosh for the very last thing is 'new' theology!!

The CofE is promising to train those leading these new estate churches, something which includes the possibility of ordination. The leaders will naturally emerge from their church communities - we need to facilitate and recognise these leaders -  if that is what ordination will be then it's more 1AD Church and that's good. It's not rocket science to discover that local people are the best evangelists and church planters.

Blimey have none of the pointy hats read O'Donovan's 'Christianity Rediscovered' or Freiere's 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed'? Of course the locals lead the locals better, they just need to have their own Rosetta Stone handed to them - inculturation, that's the key.

At last as desperation begins to bite, the CofE is doing what it should have been always doing: Looking too provide Church for those who are not Church in the places where Church is not but the people are. Blimey - we've been doing this with Fresh Expressions and Mission Shaped Ministry (and Introduction) courses.

Stories of people changed when the find Church because they feel safe, but surely the reality is that people are changed when the find Church because the meet Jesus and are changed by the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit. Bath and Bread - Blood of Christ - nothing we've done separating us from the love of God: This is what it's about.

Great that this 'New Vision' is potentially, "Going to every place, including places that many people don’t go to, like estates"

I applauded the damning self-indictment: “A church which abandons poor areas is not the church of Jesus Christ." Always good when the people in charge get to realise that.

But what of the years the locusts have eaten?

I know God can restore them, but we still have the same bishops and senior clergy who have closed churches, ignored the poor ("If you can't pay you can't have!"), covered up or turned a blind eye to acts of abuse and the like.

As Ric Thorpe so rightly says regarding Council estates: “Council estates are places that are sometimes cut off from the rest of a parish."

NOTE: For sometimes, read more often than not!

Remember how Jesus walked on water

Overall I am made very happy that this 'New Vision' is being paraded and have a few things I need to resolve in my head so the voices rising from my own passions and madness are quelled:

i. This a great potential initiative - its exactly what we were doing in the pentecostal church over thirty years ago and it worked well then in the communities of faith we engaged with and supported in the tough places. So we are thirty years behind them - what can we learn from them and the Fresh Expressions folk? A hint: it's not bung all your money into Pioneers and hope they will rescue us!

ii. The establishment of worshipping communities in fellowship with each other and the wider ecumenical world and the collegiality and disciplinary structures are essential if we are to bring about a holy, loving, and life-giving Church. John Wimber struggled with this, the Pentecostal church struggled with it - so how are we not going to struggle?

iii. What of the various covenants and mutual commitments we Anglicans have made? I see and hear nothing ecumenical in any of the conversations, media stories and other utterances. Are we looking to build Church or the CofE? There is a difference!

iv. There's nothing new here other than the fact That Philip North has got Justin and others excited about doing what we should always have been doing!

v. Bishop's Mission Orders have been with us for ages and yet I've not heard of homogeneous or other forms of church coming out of them.

If they do, why haven't they pushed and publicised anything?

Who is going to own the new entities that will be springing up on an estate somewhere near you?
Will it be the same person running the church that's ignored those people and their patch of earth?

How will the established churches fare when these new 'Third Place' churches thrive and not only see growth but also see transfer growth? How will the incumbent of St Willyballs on the shelf cope when they see their sheep stray in a church near them?

vi. Prayer. I haven't seen a single thing that speaks of Prayer (or Jesus come to that, or the power of God's Holy Spirit).

I have so many more thoughts and questions and yet the timer has pinged and fifteen minutes of scribble has not come to an end. I hope this proves helpful to those who might stumble across it. It's not meant to be negative - it's an honest entry to this, for the discussions will last probably as long as the 'New venture' (a colleague gives it three years before the next 'New Vision' arrives).

I'm less cynical and pray that it is the Lord building this house with us - may it truly be so.

Feel free to challenge, educate (hope you've lots of time for that one), dialogue, explain and excite me with this. I am so very up for it but need more than a sideshow and fireworks.

Pax

Mission Shaped Introduction

For the next six weeks, beginning tomorrow (Wednesday 23rd September), Tamworth will be hosting  a Mission Shaped Introduction course. This has to be one of the most impressively effective courses I have attended or delivered as we look at what 'mission' really means for those who call themselves Christian and for those who pass by the church buildings without a clue about what really goes on in them or the message they long to tell. 

This is a course which seeks to get us to think of the ways in which we can bring the Gospel into the lives of people where they are and when they are able to receive, and hopefully, live it for themselves.  

It is about thinking of new ways of being, and doing, Church: Often referred to as a 'Fresh Expression'. Which, for those who aren't sure about what a fresh expression is, here's my definition:

Christians coming together to live the Christian message in ways that those outside of the traditional (or inherited) church can understand and embrace. 

Basically it is: Christians 'doing church' for those who are not church.

Many people, when they hear the words 'fresh expression', if they have heard the term before, jump to the conclusion that this is 'Messy Church*' but in many cases they would be wrong because there are many more forms of fresh expression than that.

What we are actually talking about is planting new communities of Christians, these are what we usually refer to as 'church' and that can cause some real difficulties in the minds of some and the realities of others.

What the Church needs today is a combination of the older and 'established' expressions of church working together with newer 'fresh' expressions to build a Christian community across our villages, towns and cities. We call this a 'mixed economy' model. What we are doing is creating new churches to work with the old: The problem is that some think that we are merely creating something to bring people into the church that the new church came out of - here's an example:

St Blogspots, residing in it's wonderful Norman building, offers Messy Church' to the people around them. The project goes well and by its first anniversary there are eighteen families coming to the services and it is beginning to develop its own identity and character. Just after the first birthday celebrations one of the PCC members asks when those who come to Messy Church will be seen in the 'proper' services and is more than a little disgruntled to be told that they quite like will never come. "What's the point of us paying for it if they're not going to come in to our (declining) services," they ask - And they ask that because what they thought the PCC had agreed to sponsor was 'Messy Evangelism', something that would bring people into their services! 

Whilst some of those who come to the fresh expression might indeed come to services in the sponsoring church (or one of the sponsoring churches if sponsored by a Churches Together group) the reality is that what you are hoping for is, like any parent; for the child to mature and become an independent adult with a good relationship with them.

There are many views regarding the venue of these fresh expressions and all of them are right and yet many of them are also perhaps just a little wrong too. Here's are some attitudes I have encountered to reflect upon:

i  If we 'do' the fresh expression in our church building that makes it ours.
Our service, our people, OUrs, do you hear me, OURS! (you can add a maniacal wahahaha if you wish!)

ii. If you 'do' the fresh expression in a different building (venue) then we just have to wait until they are led into the church that gave them the money to do it!
After all, we paid for it and so it is ours.

iii. If we do a 'fresh expression' then we might lose some of the members of our own church to it (and the subtext here is that they are already losing member) so surely it's better to keep those we have rather than send them off to start their own thing. The should be committed to ours.

iv.  if we do a fresh expression and it is successful it could become more popular than our church and they'd soon forget that we are the parent and they are the 'daughter*' church - they might take the place in the hearts of the community that is by virtue of the time we've been here, ours!

v. If we did a fresh expression and it took off and worked and attracted young people and those who have never come to church that would be great. What a privilege to have been part of birthing a new Christian community here. We long for the day when we can have like-minded partners working together for the Gospel in fellowship together.

We find thinking like this because we are all human and struggle when the places we cherish are also struggling. Our desire to see Christ proclaimed can sometimes be tempered and even chilled by our desire for stability and maintenance of the familiar - and with the right mindset and actions both of those can be achieved without being limited as Church or as a person. This course is a remedy and a spur to achieve great things for God (and be blessed as well).

This is what the Mission Shaped Introduction (and the fuller course which may follow on) is all about. So here are detail of our MSI course:

And if you can't attend ours, then ask your Vicar / Pastor / Minister about running one in your church, deanery, Churches Together group

or contact Fresh Expression by clicking HERE

* Messy Church is a fantastic coming together of people as a church in its own right. It is attractive to families, accessible for all ages and fun - and there's often a meal and a chance for real engagement and encounter: Just like the early Church. It is about creating a new structure, not a tunnel into the church that might have started it off as a means of bringing people into their building (that's Messy Evangelism).

* 'Daughter church' - a term far too often used to point to a church that is inferior or subservient and under the control of, or at least looked down upon by, the 'Mother Church'. We should have partners and flat structures in church (and that works both ways for those in churches founded by an older parish church).

Church Growth strategies: 'Change (or move) the building'

Working on Stanley Hauerwas' premise that:

'Church growth strategies are the death rattle of a church that has lost its way.'

We started our journey looking at some of the church growth thinking before us with the issue of 'worship' and the bus moves on today to consider the building we meet in. As we do I have to say that I am still surprised at the number of people who confuse the living stones that are Church with the bricks and mortar that is the church building - and sadly this is more than something of a problem with descriptors or syntax!

I recently visited a location where the original rural community had dwindled and almost died away almost as quickly as the new build housing developments had risen from the fields that once supported the area. No longer was the hand being put to the plough but to the world of commerce and because of this the new inhabitants of that place were generally commuting into the nearest cities as a new dormitory community was formed.

The problem was that the community was served by lovely old, yet small, rural churches. You know the sort of place: Lychgate, lovely little graveyard and possibly no toilet! These gems of church architecture and social history were posted around the new community with the result that there was no church building in the centre (a question: When developers build, why do they forget the infrastructure like shops, doctors, church and other staples of a good community?).

The answer here would be to build or otherwise utilise something suitable in the centre of the new population; a place where the community could come together and meet their needs (spiritual, social and community). The problem was that the lovely people in the pretty churches, although all up for growth and the spreading of the Gospel, only really wanted that to happen in a way that grew their congregations - and to be frank that just wasn't going to happen, So the place continues with the dying remnants of the churches that once was now keeping the lights on and having conversations over tea which hearken back to the 'good old days' (which I think happen after a gap of ten years has passed) when they had a congregation!

Meanwhile time will continue to pass and the Christian witness in that place will cease and the Church will have had another brick fall from the wall that is ministry and engagement fall and the witness will be weakened, probably never to return.

There is a another place I know where the people don't come into the church building even though it is central to the community. Here there are voices which call upon the people to move from the old building into something fresh and new and ready to be filled with new believers. Talking to one of the zealots (the definition of such being anyone who is more passionate about Jesus than me) about their desire for a new building I was told, 'This building is old and no one comes in - we need a new building where people are attracted and the old is put aside.'

Now I'm all up for Fresh Expressions of Church, especially in what we call a 'mixed mode' or 'mixed economy' setting where we find the inherited or established churches alongside night church, café church and other engagements where the people and Church come into relationship and God is seen to be acting in the place and in the people they serve (and it's not the established church building). The problem is that as attractive as it is 'moving out' is not the general panacea for healthy and successful church. In fact when we have an old building we find ourselves take up with the 'cure of souls' (that means we care for the people in our patch) and function also as the 'curator of a place's memories' - and this is important.

To move into a place where the people ARE is important and missional (telling people about Jesus) important BUT being in a place where people identify themselves as part through their heritage and family history is something we cannot afford to pass up and brings some unique selling points and relationships.

More recently I am beginning also to hear those who want to move from an existing building because they don't want to be tied to a building and the maintenance and the money having your own place demands.

'If only we weren't tied to the building,' said one of the most lacklustre and boring people I think I may ever have met, 'Then the people would flock in I'm sure,' they continued. My question was, 'Why? What good is a change of venue without a change in the way that you think about those who aren't coming?' My question was met with a steely star and the conversation dwindled away and my colleague left offended.

There are many reasons to change what is inside the building - after all we celebrate the various architectural bits from the generation passed and yet struggle to make the buildings fit for purpose - changes that keep a building relevant are useful and necessary as much for the soul as the welfare of the people and when the time comes that the building is no longer an effective place than it needs to become a 'festival church'; a place where the building is used for set services during the year but no longer for regular Sunday (and other) services.

Add lighting, PA, TVs or projector screens to help make the services run (and projectors and TVs cut costs as there's less paper to print and trees to cut down!) as we would like it to run - and what about a place for baptism other than the font (get digging)? Building kitchen space and toilets and the stuff that make a building useful and utilise every crook and nanny* you can find in the place: We must never walk away from our buildings lightly and yet we must not let them handcuff us either!

There's a lot in this splurge and there's so much more I'd love to add and comment upon but I'm sure you get the picture by now. Our buildings should be aids to ministry not lead weights that drag us down and yet, that said, sometimes we blame the building when the real problem lies in the nearest mirror.

Pax

* Yeah I know - apparently it's a 'vicism'

Mixed Economy Gym

Had to be done: Watch the difference between established church and fresh expression in a Gym setting:

The term 'Mixed economy' comes from former Archbishop Rowan William. He used it to explain how 'Fresh Expressions of Church' could exist alongside traditional 'inherited forms of church' without interfering or hindering each other in any way.

This is a great demonstration of the steady 'established' running (literally) alongside the more charismatic expression and bot run their race beautifully - and drink tea in the lough afterwards too I'd reckon!

* If people think this is useful - let me know and I'll stick it on the web so you can download it!

Let’s get Missional!

Many words are found in church language yet not all of us fully understand them. Realising this, I thought I’d have a quick go at making sense of them here – so here goes:

Missional
An extremely popular word these days. For me, it was George Carey, as Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) who made me aware of the word  but Priest and theologian, Leslie Newbiggin, who made it real.

Newbiggin used the word to describe the life, ministry and mission of the Church thus:

‘The Church is sent into the world to continue that which he (Jesus) came to do, in the power of the same Spirit, reconciling people to God.’

It is in the reconciling  (mending relationships) between God and the people in it that Church finds its most important role, for we are not (as someone said recently) ‘do gooders’. We are in the world to point to – and look like Jesus!


Missional Church seeks to build bridges and make Jesus, the Christ, known in the world. It looks at ways of being effective and influential and in being involved with, and in, everything around us.

Missional Church is a church with open doors, hands and hearts – welcoming and embracing all who come into contact with it as family and friends.

Fresh Expressions (FE)
I was recently invited to an ‘FE’ evening and the person next to me assumed it meant Further Education (which was a fair guess) - never good when we fail to define the terms, abbreviations and acronyms we use, is it?

A good definition of an FE is:

‘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.’

In a nutshell – if people who are not part of church would come if there was a Wednesday, 5pm service, then that service would be a Fresh Expression.


One such service is ‘Messy Church’ which seeks to build a church for those with children.
Note – it is a church in its own right, not merely something to bring people into the other Sunday services. This would make it messy outreach!

Fresh Expressions have four marks in that they are:

·     missional – serving people outside church;
·     contextual – listening to people and entering their culture;
·     educational – making discipleship a priority;
·     ecclesial – forming church.

A healthy, effective and flourishing Church consists of the traditional church buildings and services and alongside these we have Messy Church and other services, some in the same building and others in cafés, clubs, pubs, homes and wherever the need is found to be.

These many expressions of church (traditional and fresh) work together for the Kingdom of God and do so across denominations and any other boundaries that might exist. This is exciting Church as it creates new relationships with people and churches around us too.

Hopefully this short piece has given you a feel for what missional church and the opportunities and excitement that is to be found by be part of it?

To find out more take a look at the 'Mission Shaped Ministry' site

and have a look at

Fresh Expressions   too!

Mission Shaped Ministry

Tonight sees the first of two 'taster' sessions for a new Mission Shaped Ministry course that is being held in Tamworth (staffordshire) and I have to be honest, I am excited about it.

We don't know how many will be coming to the thing and that makes it all the more fun - do we cater for thousands or five?

What I do know is that the whole concept of 'Fresh Expressions' and 'mixed economy' Church is the way forward and developing a people who are missional and looking to engage and be relevant is exactly what the Doctor ordered.

Here's a copy of the flyer I have distributed around the area for you to pray over, recommend and enjoy:

Thank You