Mission-shaped Church or just Mission flavoured?  

Since the publication of Mission-shaped Church in January 2004 there have been substantial gains in the life of the Church of England. Yet I am disturbed.  

Why worry ?

Our instincts are illustrated by our history. Let me highlight three strands. Firstly throughout the 20^th century the Church of England produced penetrating reports with far reaching recommendations. Our track record has been to praise the contents and, by processes worthy of Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Prime Minster, to ensure that the recommendations are never implemented. Redistribution of central funding from the Church Commissioners will be an acid test. Secondly we have the habit of welcoming our pioneers in such a way as to domesticate them. Who the revised selection criteria work for, how adventurous ordinands are deployed and whether fresh expressions are allowed to multiply once more,  would test that instinct.  Thirdly we are past masters at changing the language, but not the substance. We are like dishonest traders who change the labels on the bottles for sale but leave the contents the same.  

Oh dear!

So some larger churches, particularly in the south, say they don’t need mission-shaped thinking. They will just tweak the worship they offer and the evangelism they do. I challenge them to evaluate who has joined them in the past year. What percentage are transfer growth and what proportion are converts? Of those coming to faith, what percentage are from the de-churched and how may are genuinely non-churched? Other churches are now describing the worship they offer as their mission.  Several diocesan training packages linked to Mission-shaped Church are very disappointing. They take people no further than a search for what they do best as existing church and then try to make that relevant. It is all within the “come to us as we are” mentality. The idea that church might have to be seriously re-imagined or created differently elsewhere is nowhere on the horizon. Behind it all is a very worrying assumption. Like the struggling Tory party, we still believe the delusion that one more push, in the old way, will solve our lack of appeal. Add a pinch of mission to the existing potion we peddle and people will queue up for it. I wish.  

There is a serious danger that churches are opting to become a bit more mission flavoured.  That won’t close the gap to the non churched , it won’t bring mission into the DNA of church. It will fail to connect with how Jesus said the Spirit should affect Church. As such we are ignoring the biblical vision of Christ our Lord. That apostolic mandate is given in Acts 1.8 - “when the Spirit comes, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem , Judea , Samaria and the ends of the earth”. This I believe could be a good framework in which to hold what needs to be done. Acts 1.8 isn’t an interesting geography lesson, it is a very disturbing call; it indicates a journey from the familiar, through the disagreeable, to the unthinkable. It utterly undermines complacency and all mission shaped around “come to us”.  

Yet the first 13 chapters of Acts reveal a church slow to hear. They only leave Jerusalem because of persecution, the pioneer idiocy of Philip going to Samaria , the unplanned conversion of Saul and the disturbance of Peter’s sleep on the rooftop in Joppa.  Frankly they didn’t get it. Church history is littered with similar stay at home attitudes.  

The Judean journey is not enough

The reality is that inherited ways of being church, and of doing most of our evangelism, tends to help a reducing minority of people. John Finney’s figures from 1992 showed ¾ those coming to faith were from de-churched backgrounds. The 2004 survey by Steve Hunt of Alpha shows 57% of guests were already churched. However the de-churched reduce in each succeeding generation. We are doing the vast majority of our fishing in a shrinking pond. We desperately need fresh expressions of church that can begin to connect with our major mission field, the non churched.  
 
The Samaria safari
In the paradigm of Acts 1.8,  we are obsessed with Jerusalem centred ministry. We focus on people who are churched or those who are comfortable to be our people. Suppose we were to connect more with the deeply de-churched. It might be like the unwelcome mission to Samaria . For a start there are 3 times as many of them as us and they don’t all like what we are. To go that journey, notice from the diagram, what happens to the Jerusalem circle. It becomes more minor and no longer in the centre of things.

The ends of the earth expedition

Mission to the non churched, brings us into contact with a group among the under 45’s who are six times more than those in church. That kind of mission would shape the resultant church still more and shift the supposed centre more radically. This is the journey to those groups of people who have never darkened our doors and yet who may be spiritual. It is underlines a change in the nature of the apostolic journey. Mission stops being come shaped and takes on the go shape. That fits much better with its basic meaning of being sent.  

The shifts of instinct needed are significant and largely absent.

• From working only to modify existing church to deliberately creating what is different

• From adding numbers to an existing church, to multiplying the number of churches

• From monopoly into diversity – not just more of the same - but allowing the creation of church among those who don’t find the way we do church helpful.

The Mission-shaped church process is not for the trendy. Acts 1.8 shows it is a process for all. Truly to understand Mission-shaped Church   is to see a more radical but more biblical agenda for mission. That’s what I’ like to develop in the next article.

George Lings

May 2005