Church for Every Context. Michael Moynagh

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СКАЧАТЬ was a word used to communicate the movement as a whole . . . Emergent currently tends to reflect churches inclusive in character of all sorts of conditions of people; emerging is more representative of churches that are evangelical and conservative in nature (Gray-Reeves and Perham, 2011, p. 3).

      Doug Gay has asked whether we may be near the end of ‘emerging’ as a useful term for the church (Gay, 2011, p. xi).

      Fresh expressions of church

      The third tributary consists of fresh expressions of church. The term was first used in print in the Church of England’s 2004 report, Mission-shaped Church, which has been highly influential. The term deliberately echoes the Preface to the Declaration of Assent, which Church of England ministers make at their licensing and which states:

      The Church of England . . . professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation.

      The term ‘fresh expressions’, the report proposed, ‘suggests something new or enlivened is happening, but also suggests connection to history and the developing story of God’s work in the Church’ (Mission-shaped Church, 2004, p. 34).

      Since the report’s publication, all manner of initiatives have described themselves as ‘fresh expressions’, including the redesign of a church notice board! So to draw some lines round the phrase, in 2006 the Fresh Expressions team – formed by the Church of England’s archbishops and the Methodist Church to encourage and support the development of fresh expressions of church in the UK – offered the following definition:

      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 (Croft, 2008c, p. 10).

      Since the report, fresh expressions of church have multiplied across a growing number of denominations, including the Church of Scotland, the Congregational Federation and the United Reformed Church, and overseas. New forms of church – many not calling themselves ‘fresh expressions’ – are emerging in Australia, New Zealand, North America, other parts of Europe and in some places in the global South.

      Communities in mission

      ‘Communities in mission’ is my term for groups that seek to combine a rich life in community with mission and do not identify strongly with the other tributaries. They include simple church, which values small, multiplying, home-based churches, minimal structures and relational rather than institutional ties, and organic church, which is very similar but whose leaders put more weight on belonging to a larger movement. Both are less interested in radical theology than in being radical church.

      Communities in mission also include mid-sized communities that are being formed in a number of well-established churches. They are clusters of Christians, of varying sizes, which gain purpose from serving a specific group of people outside the church. Each community meets in varying ways and with varying regularity, but does so as a ‘congregation’. For example, a small group may gather three times a month and then join with the wider local church on perhaps one Sunday of the month. Larger clusters have small cells that meet regularly for prayer, study and fellowship (Hopkins and Breen, 2007, pp. 29–41).

      New monasticism

      Within each of these four tributaries are groups that tap into new monasticism, a subterranean source of spiritual nourishment with origins in the monastic tradition and the secular Celtic revival. Ian Mobsby has identified three groups of new monastics – those inspired by monks and nuns who gather for prayer in disused pubs, youth clubs, in places of natural beauty and elsewhere; those who identify with the friar tradition and move into an area either as single households of pioneers or as intentional communities; and a growing number of ‘friar monks’ who are inspired by both monk and friar traditions (Mobsby 2010, pp. 13–15).

      Water flows freely between these four tributaries. A good number of new churches would see themselves as both a church plant and a fresh expression, for example, or as belonging to several tributaries. The result of this energy and innovation has been a bewildering eruption of different types of Christian community and different ideas about what it means to be church in today’s world.

      Definition

These developments as a whole defy easy definition, and yet some clarity of terms is necessary. I propose to work with a definition based on a summary version of the one offered by the Fresh Expressions team.4 New contextual churches are new Christian communities that are

       missional – in the sense that, through the Spirit, they are birthed by Christians mainly among people who do not normally attend church;

       contextual – they seek to fit the culture of the people they serve;

       formational – they aim to form disciples;

       ecclesial – they intend to become church for the people they reach in their contexts.

      Some examples

      New contextual churches can be classified in a variety of ways. One is to describe them in relation to the local church. On this basis, some are closely linked to an existing church. They emerge from within a ‘fringe’ group – a mission venture or a community project, for instance – so that these initiatives are no longer stepping stones to Sunday church but become ‘church’ in their own right.

      For example, the leaders of a church-run luncheon club for older people invited members to stay behind after the meal for quarter of an hour, at the start of which a candle was lit on each table. There followed some Christian music, a reading from Scripture, a period of silence and some prayers. This became the start of a journey to faith for those involved, and the beginning of a church alongside and in the context of the luncheon club.

      Alternatively, a local church may bring a Christian community to birth as part of a new initiative. A Sunday ‘Drop In’ opened in inner-city Bristol in 2010 to serve a marginalized section of society. There is a cup of tea, some food, pool and table tennis, newspapers and a prayer board. Toward the end of the session, someone invites requests for prayer and a short, informal prayer time follows. Numbers vary from 15 to 25 each week. Some have asked to be baptized. There is cross-fertilization with the regular Sunday congregation. Some of the latter help run Drop In, while a few from Drop In attend church groups or occasional services.

      The leaders see Drop In as

an experiment in a new way of being church, at a time when regular church has lost its draw. We do not know where it is leading, or whether it will last . . . We think that we have created something – small and fragile, certainly – where healing СКАЧАТЬ