Anglican Communion News Service

Developing “fresh expressions” of church can be unpredictable, messy and prone to the odd failure… but it’s a vitally important part of revitalising the church with which more and more parts of the Anglican Communion are coming to grips.

“Fresh expressions of church have developed to a scale beyond the imagination of those who wrote the report issued Jan 2004,” said the Bishop of Maidstone Graham Cray, who is chair of the working group which produced the Mission Shaped Church report for the Church of England in 2004.

Bishops from around the world came to the session to hear some reflections from Bishop Cray and also from Steve Croft, Archbishop’s Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions, an initiative of the Church of England and the Methodist Church. They also shared their experiences and concerns from watching the way their own churches and others have grappled with engaging with a culture that has turned its back on traditional forms of “being church”.

Such new manifestations of church can be as diverse as skate parks, cafes, and pub meetings. They are not exclusively Evangelical initiatives, but can come from an Anglo-Catholic perspective, with all the grappling with Eucharistic practice in a culturally contextualised setting that entails.

These expressions of faith communities recognise that people who are currently disengaged with church gather primarily around friendship and work networks, and find the traditional boundaries and culture of parish-based, Sunday-worship church not only off-putting, but completely irrelevant.

Bishop Andrew Curnow of Bendigo, Australia, described how the Australian Church had adapted the Mission Shaped Church report to the local context, and had then moved to produce a resource to take the concept to the laity.

“We have produced a brochure called ‘Time to Grow’, aimed at the person in the pew,” he said. “We’re trying to explain … the gap between where the church and culture is, and how if we’re going to turn [around] and grow again, we have to have an exciting engagement with mission, and what we want to be.”

In Australia that often meant redefining the church in terms of hospitality, be that gathering around cafes or meals, or in overhauling the attitude of congregations to newcomers.

Pioneering ministries such as these require specialist ministers, Bishop Cray said, and the Church of England had made changes to theological education to facilitate the development of ministers prepared to go out and work “on the edge”.

Fresh expressions of church also challenge the institutional church to grapple with ecclesiological issues: what does it mean to be church? Bishops play a key factor in allowing this to be played out as ministries develop, and they need to be permission givers, he said.

“If we’re to see the church to turn around, to be modelling discipleship, we have practice that ourselves, by giving permission, allowing church to be redefined in new ways.”

Steven Croft affirmed the role of bishops in establishing fresh expressions of church

“I’m astonished at the difference it makes when a bishop and a diocese intentionally blesses this activity,” he said.