Church for Every Context. Michael Moynagh
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 and transformation can take place, and a new kind of community can grow.5
New contextual churches have emerged within networks that jump localchurch boundaries – in a Methodist circuit, an Anglican deanery or among local churches from different denominations acting together. A number of youth congregations have been started through this type of collaboration, such as Eden, a monthly youth gathering in Sussex that breaks into separate youth groups on the other Sundays (Lings, 2007). The congregation is connected to a group of churches in an area rather than to one local church.
Potentially important is a further category. These are gatherings beyond the reach of the local church. They are started by individuals in the context of their daily lives – in a school, among friends or perhaps at work. The initiative comes not from an existing church or group of churches, but from an individual or group who may or may not be recognized by the wider body. A group of women started a monthly event in a leisure centre, for example. Visiting speakers talked about how God had helped them to lead ‘fit lives’, such as when bringing up a child with handicaps or when facing a crisis. The leaders recognized that when individuals began to enquire about Jesus, this would have the potential to become a church.
Missional, contextual, formational and ecclesial
The definition used here would include only a portion of the many groups and communities in the four tributaries just described. The definition is not intended to put question marks round what is left out, but to provide some discipline and coherence to the language I am using.
The emphasis on mission reflects the prevailing theological understanding that in mission the church joins God’s mission to the world.
‘Church and mission’ was once the theological frame used by the ecumenical community in an attempt to address this dynamic. It was discovered, however, that the ‘and’ already bifurcated that which was not