Fresh Expressions
Fresh Expressions is an initiative of the Church of England and the Methodist Church. It has been going since September 2004. It aims to help Christians of any denomination think about ways of starting and growing fresh expressions of church in their area.
When Methodism was born it found itself on the outside of the established church. The Wesley's, especially John, did many things that did not fit with the practices of their day. Why did they behave as they did? Could it have been because they recognised that they lived in changing times? It has been suggested that in the whole of Christian history no one has faced exactly the challenges we face today.
“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." |
Could it be that there is a new expression of church growing from within our denomination in response to challenges such as the following?
• The pattern of the week has changed - many people now work on Sundays or for others Sunday is their only day off to be spent as essential time with families or for sport.
• The way we relate to others has changed - instead of relating closely to the people we live near, our social networks now form around work or leisure and the people we know may not all live in the same place.
• Our culture has changed - church is no longer at the centre of one recognisable culture for most of society; in fact church itself has become a subculture.
• Knowledge of Christianity has changed - the signs, symbols and traditions which mean a lot within the church are very hard for an outsider to understand; imagine how you would feel in the unfamiliar and foreign environment of a betting shop or a nightclub?
• Society is becoming less religious but more spiritual - people are looking for meaning and answers to life's big questions but seeking answers in forms of ‘spirituality' which have nothing to do with Christ!
In what ways you think these changes affect your church. In what ways is your church reacting to them?
Church as we have inherited it seeks to reach out to gather others in; and when they come in, they are expected to, and helped to, become like us. Most of our mission is predicated on the ‘stepping stone' or ‘half-way house' principle. We create environments where people are comfortable, such as: parent and toddler groups; drop-in coffee mornings or lunch groups; maybe car boot sales or craft sales on Saturday mornings. Some of our churches even develop ‘projects' out in the community using alternative premises. But in all of these cases our hope is that the people who attend these events and ‘projects' will one day be sitting on the pews in our churches!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this perspective on mission, in fact it is important that such mission develops and grows; but what about the people who will never relate to the established 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." (www.freshexpressions.org )
A fresh expression of church is intended as a community or congregation which is, or has the potential to become, a church in its own right. It is not intended as a ‘stepping stone' or ‘half way house'. And so what we might currently regard as ‘outreach projects' may one day come to be regarded as church. It is in this way that the idea of fresh expressions of church is relevant to our local situations here in the Methodist Church in Ireland.
It is very important that we realise the idea of fresh expression of church is not intended to be a case of either ‘traditional' or ‘fresh' church; rather it is meant to be a case of ‘traditional' and ‘fresh' church, both. We in the established Church do not have to abandon what we are doing and all the traditions we love. All the research suggests that, when done well, the traditional forms of Church are helpful and meaningful for approximately 40% of the population. And so we need to continue to develop and grow the Church as it is.
But what about the other 60% of the population who find it difficult to connect with the church as it is in terms of our normal Sunday worship. It is no longer enough for us simply to say, ‘Come to us and be Church this way'. We need to go to where people are and sow the seed of the gospel in new ways.
We need to develop what is known as mixed economy church. ‘Both-and' means traditional churches alongside many different expressions of church for a changing world. Because we must recognise that we live in changing times!
