Thursday 8 July 2010

Taking our time

At a recent training event I was engaged in conversation by someone who was doing a fresh expression (FE) of Church. We had all the usual buzz words in play and the picture painted was one of expectancy but the excitement levels were just appearing the be diminishing a bit. Upon probing a bit I discovered that six months in to the work there was an expectation that by now those who had been drawn in would have become 'church' and that this was putting pressure on those doing the stuff and those who endorsed and sent them.

I'm not sure I helped when I said that my understanding was that it took something like six to seven years rather than six to seven months! Trouble is, that's the (potentially unpopular) reality.

People ask me (they assume missioner means I know) about fresh expressions and I often have to ask people what 'mixed economy' means to them. The answers are, as you'd expect, often weird and wacky. Mind you, ask people what fresh expressions means and you'd be even more surprised at the breadth of definition and application. Apparently it's changing the day (or even time) the service happens to having church which eschews anything Christian and seeks merely to be a 'spiritual' place.

As I understand it:

Fresh expression is being church where we are for those who are not currently 'church'. It comes about because we have discovered an itch in the community in which we find ourselves and have resolved to scratch it.

It is costly and demanding because it means opening doors and welcoming in strange people and having listened met them where they are and blessing what God is doing in their lives (helping them to recognise it) rather than just doing 'evangelism'.

It is the body of Christ going out in servanthood and humility to do as Jesus did (and is therefore what we call 'incarnational' meaning 'in the flesh'), in pronouncing and making real 'basileia', the 'kingdom of God' is among them. I often come back to the image of the lamp stand of Luke 8:16:

“No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light."

The aim of the fresh expression should be to create disciples and yet so often it appears that what is really at the heart of such a venture is the need to build up a church's congregation or worse still, "Pay the parish share!". Not so, our reason for engaging in such a project is to see people come into relationship with God, recognise the freedom won by the Christ and live in the enabling of the Holy Spirit.

Whatever it looks like, it's more than likely won't look like the church who established it! That said, it should be able to be in relationship with it.

The goal is to establish a new church (meaning congregation or people, not a building) which can, over a long period of time (never a short-term project), stand and exist on it's own two feet. The aim has to be a standalone rather than a depend upon church, then again, autonomy is great in theory but ownership and control are hard for most of us to relinquish and the plant 'leaving home' is never easy.

Fresh expressions is doing 'church' on a Wednesday because it means that people who can only do a Wednesday can be part of a body of believers. Fresh expressions is about doing 'church' where the people are rather than expecting them to travel to what might have once been the centre of things but no longer is. It is doing Church when and where the people are there - simple isn't it? So why do so many still set the times to suit themselves?

The more I study, the more I find just how immensely big God is. I continue to find other facets on the gem that is Church and find through them aspects of God which have escaped my attention and require me to engage by means theological and dialectic. This is how we grow I guess, and it's how we grow Church too!

Oh yeah, mixed economy church is a world where Church consists of traditional parochial and fresh expressions of church existing in relationship and side by side. It could refer to a Parish situation or perhaps wider still (Deanery) and ultimately is what we have in the Church (universal) but an isolated congregation isn't mixed economy on its own.

Perhaps we might do better comparing it to a business who, in order to exist, has expanded it's product range to enter more than one market. In this setting we'd say they'd 'diversified' rather than keep within the core business model. If we only have one product on the shelf we will only reach one part of the customer base out there - diversification means we reach more potential customers with a product that suits their needs or aspirations.

Mmm, diversified Church, might work :)

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