Leicester Diocese Study Day - Mission-shaped Church,
George Lings
The Mission-shaped Church report has been written to let the rest of the Church of England know about the fresh expressions of church that Anglicans have created in the last fifteen years. It puts on paper what has been happening in practice. It highlights the major changes in our UK mission context and the significant improvements in understanding since a previous report in 1994.
The report has tried to make a rough map of the contours of today’s home mission field, marking the diversity of expressions of church that have emerged by response to this mission field. So it is also a collection of 25 short stories, intended to be sign-posts of ways forward. The stories illustrate a new variety of ways of expressing being church, and explain the specific character of each. They show what works, as well as insisting that it is their values, not the outward forms, which are the key.
Mission-shaped Church has been written to enable permission-givers and pioneers to talk together as creative partners to start and sustain what is needed. This could be a key resource for trainers and should help this subject area to become a normal part of formal theological education and lay training.
What did the report conclude?
The existing parochial system alone is no longer able to deliver its underlying missionary purpose.
This will come as no surprise to some, yet be deeply shocking to others. Please be clear on the nuances. The underlying missionary purpose of parish is not repudiated. Reaching all, being a national church is affirmed. The word alone, in italics, is crucial. It is recognition that society has changed and a geography or territory-based system is not well placed to enter a society based round networks.
What is meant by “network”? “Network” describes a society in which connection is more important than place; who we know, rather than where we live has become more significant. The increase in mobility and consumerism has led to large sectors of society becoming like this. It is then natural that people attend the church of their friends, or of their choice, to which they then learn to become committed.
For example, imagine a hypothetical modern woman. She goes out to work. While working, she uses her computer via email or MSN to fix up who she is meeting that day. Some friends agree to go for a drink at lunch time. She seeks a balanced life so after work she goes to the gym where another set of contacts socialise. On her mobile through the day, a Friday, she has also been working out where some of them will go clubbing. Around 3 in the morning Saturday she falls into bed at her home. Sunday lunch time she surfaces to chill out for Monday. Here’s the question – in which community should we grow church to meet Melissa ? Is her domestic address the best or only answer?
We need a mixed economy – no longer promoting one way of being church
The language of “mixed economy” was coined by Archbishop Rowan, out of his experience in Wales of seeing fresh expressions emerge alongside the existing. His instinct was to want to “recognise church where it emerges”, as this quotation given at the English General Synod shows:
Mixed economy means looking at all expressions of church and making some assessment of what works for which groups in society. This includes assessing the old and it is clear that some of these expressions are proving attractive and there is some obvious connection between the value of spirituality and the virtues of antiquity. Holy Places are in, and by no means is all of that mere tourism. That is not to say there are no weaknesses in these developments. There are dangers in being anonymous attenders who never enter the community life of church, and equally who never become part of the church’s mission to further outsiders.”
Mixed economy” also means investing in, creating & nurturing a diversity of the new. This is language that implies the transfer of priorities and resources to an underdeveloped part of the life of the overall church. The variety of fresh expressions of church is considerable. There is one list based on chapter 4 of the report. Planters and pioneers can take great encouragement that this is the warm and welcoming way the Archbishop of Canterbury, is considering them:
What has been so extraordinary, so life giving and wonderful in the last decade or so, is more and more stories coming in, of how those fresh encounters happen … God is showing us examples of what the church is, in startling new ways, because we are seeing what corporate forms of life actually happen when people meet Jesus.”
Rt. Revd. Dr. Rowan Williams, National Anglican church Planting Conference June 23rd 2004 St Barnabas, Kensington
Mixed economy” is a both/and mentality, not either/or. Mission-shaped Church talks about “double listening”; this is listening both to the mission context and the inherited tradition. From that process expressions of church grow. Part of our mission context still includes those who encounter Christ, through traditional expressions of church. Other parts of our mission context lead to fresh expressions. Mixed economy is living with both.
hen the question becomes, as Archbishop Rowan put it in June 2004:
How does the church organise itself in such a way that a) it doesn’t simply send out the message that fresh expressions and new encounters are a kind of tolerable eccentricity on the edge? b) But neither does it send out the message that everything people are doing at the moment is wrong and they need to forget it.
Yet Archbishop Rowan also made clear on another occasion what “mixed economy” does not mean. We do not need a mixture of mission-shaped churches and those that are churches that are not mission-shaped (what I would call “mis-shapen” churches).
There are only expressions of church – previous and fresh
The language of fresh expressions owes its birth to a suggestion from Archbishop Rowan. I commend it to you because expressions of church offers us all some welcome humility in dealing with those who do church differently to us.
I guess that everybody here is human but every face carries a different expression of being human. We need our difference and our connection across difference. So too we need mutual respect in encountering other expressions of church. Expressions remind us that there is a church catholic to which we belong, which is bigger, wider deeper than any one expression. All our expressions of church are provisional – they exist for a specific context and time. Study of church doctrine shows clearly how the understanding of the church has changed over time to fit different contexts and centuries. It was also the Archbishop who reminded us that the fullness Christ is bound to be more than any one way of being Church can demonstrate. The language of expressions of church is a good way to recognize there cannot be one way of doing church. This challenges the old Anglican instinct for monopoly.
Our history is full of these assumptions. For example, as the church of the land we called all others dissenters. Until 1689 it was illegal to be anything else – even then the Act was only An Edict of Toleration and it took years before we learnt the language to call others Free Churches. The parish instinct of responsibility for all, can powerfully collude with the belief that all people really belong to us and have strayed from the fold. Actually, people are less like sheep and more like different, exotic animals in a zoo.
The term Common Worship goes back to the Book of Common Prayer – when it was illegal in the nation for anyone to use anything else. Anglicanism has placed much of its identity on what is now a myth that every Anglican worships the same. We pride ourselves on being accessible for all. Language like Parish Communion and Family Services maintains a myth that the Church of England is open for everybody and to everybody. Too often, the reality is we are a denominational sub-group within a larger Christian sub-culture. Ask the non-churched teenager, the lapsed Christian Buddhist, the man at the working men’s club, the pagan woman or the yuppie business man. To them, we are toast.
All churches need re-shaping in this light
Mission shaped church is not for the trendy. It is a process for all. There is a serious danger that this agenda will be domesticated. Churches may opt 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 the way in which Jesus said the Spirit should affect the church. 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”. The first 13 chapters of Acts reveal a church that is slow to hear that. They only leave Jerusalem because of persecution, the pioneer idiocy of Philip going to Samaria and the unplanned conversion of Saul. Church history is littered with similar stay at home attitudes. Acts 1.8 isn’t an interesting geography lesson; it is a disturbing call from the familiar through the disagreeable to the unthinkable. It utterly undermines complacency and even mission shaped around “come to us”.
Let me connect this ripple effect of the Spirit in mission with what we know of our contemporary mission field in the UK. Mission-shaped Church chapter 3, pages 36-41 offers us a way of reading the contours to the mission field at home. It distinguishes between four groups:
attenders 10%
fringe 10%
The de-churched are 40% of people who have left the church. They are split equally between those open to return and those so wounded by the experience that they are closed to return.
Then finally come the 40% non-churched - those who have never been, except for Granny’s funeral.
These are national average figures from Richter & Francis 1999 book Gone But Not Forgotten. In the urban parts of the north the non-churched would be a far higher figure.
However, even this concerning picture may be too positive. By looking at attendance figures over the century, we see the falling percentage of those who were in church under the age of 15: - 80% of 80 year olds, but only 30% of 45 year olds. This gives a different proportion over time of the non-churched; now the de-churched are about 30% of the population and shrinking, and the non-churched are 60% and growing. The reality is that inherited ways of being church, and of doing most of our evangelism, tends to help a reducing minority of people. The Finney figures of the 1990s showed ¾ of those coming to faith were from de-churched backgrounds. We are doing the vast majority of our fishing in a shrinking pond. We desperately need fresh expressions that can begin to connect the major mission field in Western Europe – the non-churched.
The mission and resultant shape of church we are used to working with is “Jerusalem-centred” – with our people who are churched or those who are comfortable to be our people. The most recent survey by Steve Hunt of Alpha shows 57% of guests were already churched. Suppose we were to connect more with the de-churched. For a start there are 3 times as many of them as us. “Jerusalem” becomes more minor and no longer in the centre of things. As for mission to the non-churched, it brings us into contact with a group among the under 45’s who are six times the population size we are in church. That kind of mission would shape church still more and it shifts the centre. It is also changes the nature of the apostolic journey. Mission stops being come shaped and instead it takes on a “go” shape – which fits much better with its meaning – of being sent.
Truly to understand Mission-shaped Church is to see a more radical but, I think, a more biblical agenda for mission.
Mission-shaped is far more than mission-flavoured.
The shifts of instinct are significant:
From working only to modify the existing, to deliberately creating what is different.
From improving an existing church, to a policy of diversifying the kinds of churches.
From adding numbers to an existing church, to multiplying the number of churches
This is the journey out of monopoly into diversity, not just more of the same – what I might call the Judea journey – but allowing the creation of church, among those who don’t find the way we do church helpful.
This is the journey from “Jerusalem” towards “the ends of the earth” – to those groups of people who have never darkened our doors and yet who may be spiritual.
Of course this means seeing and accepting that one all inclusive congregation is an illusion in today’s society. We can’t even do it across our own existing traditions. One congregation as utterly high church, seriously low church, definitely broad church, fiercely evangelical, passionately liberal and joyfully charismatic. It doesn’t exist. We say as Anglicans that we value our varied traditions. Now we are creating new ones – they are the range of fresh expressions – which in turn are different from one another. Mission-shaping church will lead to different church shapes, not cramming the new shapes into the old form of church. Unity then will not be about being the same, but about integrity in relationships across difference. Actually that’s what that ancient custom called marriage has been about for a long time. It can be joyous and creative.
Accepting that cross-cultural mission is now normal is another change. We have to stop thinking why don’t they come back to us. The reality is that most people in this country were never there is the first place. Today even the majority of 60 year olds have no church background. So cross-cultural mission skills like listening before speaking and deciding are utterly central. We shall need to grow fresh expressions of church from seed, not transplanting ready made ones for they won’t fit. What does that mean?
Research shows creating fresh expressions is not best done by centering on provision of worship, and is far better starting with building community.
If we know that mission shapes church – and this process creates a “go” shape not a “come” shape, this profoundly questions whether provision of worship is the obvious theological starting point in mission.
Robert Warren came up with a very helpful diagram in the 1990’s about the functions of church. What does Church do – it worships, offers community and acts in mission. These are like 3 intersecting circles. Spirituality beats at the heart of these three activities.
Contrast that ideal picture with much western practice. Then you notice a dominant circle about worship. This can be measured by investment of money and time, money and personnel in buildings, programmes and clergy to run them all. All too often the community who meet in this building are somewhat dysfunctional and unattractive. As some wag said, “the main reason others aren’t in church, is because we are.” Third, in practice mission is a weird thing that either happens overseas or is done by enthusiasts, who thank God, are not people like us. Try to make such a beast mission-minded, let alone mission centred is difficult. So attempts to change it often turn out only to be a guilt-induced temporary foray out of the fold, in order to invite others to come and worship.
t seems from field study there is an inherent order in the creation of fresh expressions of church. It is very unlike what we are used to.
It is essential to start with the apostolic or missional community. This group go bearing seeds of the gospel and the church. They live in such a way that others are drawn to them; strangers become friends, prompted by what they see to ask questions.
s the planting team connect with the culture, learn its language and find its priorities, the shape of mission to that culture or area grows clearer. Only by being there does the specific shape to the mission emerge. It is part of connecting with discernment of what God is doing there. Only then as local people respond to Christ and are discipled in the Christian community does indigenous worship slowly begin to emerge. It grows out of the stories of finding faith, stories of answered prayers, it meshes with the local musical culture and local people’s creative gifts. What must be characteristic of the worship is that it feeds the life, gifting, calling and aspirations of the growing community. Monastic groups would describe this process as worship nurturing the charism of the community.
But note the order: public worship does not come first. Indeed it cannot; it must be grown as the community in mission co-operates with God in evolving a mission shaped church. This is a very old story – not a new-fangled one. It resonates with the dynamics of the New Testament. It echoes the practice of the pre-Constantine Church.
It is one example of the next headline. Funnily enough, those who have created fresh expressions of church have shown all the rest of us something of the process of discovering church for new contexts. This activity at the edge of the church has a central lesson for all.
This is part of the genuine difficulties for old expressions of church truly becoming mission-shaped. They don’t have a blank sheet of paper to start with. That may be one very good reason why it is so much easier to begin something else, than to try and change what is. Discern those whom you are being sent to. Join in with what you sense God is already doing. With those people, start with relationships and build community. When they are ready, use another venue, find what day suits them to meet. Grow what is needed. Don’t import ready made outside solutions. That’s the Mission-shaped church process.
Nor does it stop there. Just like the story in Acts and through history, mission is not a one stop railway – from here to there and that’s the end of the line. The process isn’t a closed circle. It’s an ongoing rather messy helix of going out in mission, forming church which in turn continues its apostolic dance.
Some may be thinking that this is quite interesting stuff asking the question “but is this Anglican and is it church?” This is a fair question. The report makes strong emphasis upon the episcopal, pointing up the pivotal and increased role they will play. It works deeply from the incarnational, making the patterns of Jesus central to what it commends. It seeks to be Biblical in discerning principles, which connects with the previous point. It is also rational in its assessment of the mission changes and the mission need. It is pragmatic in the stories it tells and advocates gradual change in what it recommends. Those two are English church values; episcopal, incarnational, biblical, rational, pragmatic and gradual – that sounds Anglican to me.
The church over 2000 years has seen significant periods of change. Here is one way of looking at it. (If you want highbrow versions of this look at Bosch’s Paradigm shift theory, the writings of the international mission thinking Andrew Walls, or Kung on the church.) From time to time a fresh emphasis – usually born out of some mission imperative arises and disturbs the old order, that itself may be heading for the buffers. This is certainly what Walls believes he sees through history. The new comes off the main line like a branch line. The first case within the New Testament is the start of the Gentile mission. It raises questions of who can be church.
Take another example, we now celebrate the Celtic patterns in a way that Wilfred and Bede did not approve of in the 7th- 9th centuries. The rise of the monastic was different to what was seen before and could be seen as critical of existing expressions. The Reformation clearly thought things needed changing. The 1790s among Protestants saw a new emphasis on world mission, at the time entirely denied by Calvinist thinking. I don’t say these are the only changes – a notable omission in this country is the Oxford movement. Yet in all these cases something happens to the supposed main line – it begins to deviate towards the best values of the branch line.
Perhaps we are in a similar situation today. What is crucial is that the tension between the existing and the emerging is held onto. This is part of what being Catholic means. If that two-way hold is broken – the creative can spiral off into a sect and the existing expression can sink back and loose the challenge from the fresh expression. The danger in holding the connection too tight is that the fresh is domesticated and the existing is only superficially renewed and may indeed hit the buffers. Both scenarios are tragic.
I wonder if one useful analogy in helping us separate essence from form is the language of DNA. Perhaps it is our best dynamic equivalence of essence. It is at least a shift into the world of biology and out of philosophy, which seeing church is made of people might be a good thing. DNA is a useful analogy because it holds onto two necessary realities. Each new person has their unique DNA, but this is also related to what they have inherited. The same will, I suggest, be true in Mission-shaped churches. They will partly be contextually unique, and rightly so, but they must also reflect what is the nature of being church in every age.
If church with mission in its ontology had broad strands of DNA what might they be? The group writing Mission-shaped Church, had looked at a wide range of expressions of church. They were aware of ACC’s work on 5 marks of mission. We tried to offer an equivalent that was generic to church. I would put them like this, in this order and with this sense. With missional DNA, any and every mission shaped church will …
Be Trinitarian: This is more than credal orthodoxy (though I think that important) and its content differentiates Christianity from other world religions. It takes up elements like a focus beyond ourselves to attention to God himself – so spirituality and self giving in community are intrinsic values.
Be relational: This to me is extension of focus on Trinity. It is about seeing community at the heart of reality. Personhood is not the same as being Individual. Persons know themselves in relation to others. Is it the Africans who say “Because we are, I am.” So it is not a big step, as shown in the Trinity, to be the kind of community that relates outward in mission, seeking other persons.
Be Incarnational like Jesus: Here the self-giving style is further nuanced by deep willingness for change in order to reach the other. This laying aside of status and preferences is celebrated in Phil 2.
Be disciplers, like Jesus: If the DNA is to be community in mission, seeking persons who are other, then growing further similar communities of those following Christ is natural. Follow me was Jesus characteristic command. We are called to this and to call others also.
Be Transformational like the Trinity in action: In Creation, Salvation and Sanctification God is seeking the transformation of creation. As we, the church, live out relational, incarnational and discipling values, in partnership with the life-giving Sprit, this will be transforming. Church will naturally look beyond itself to a Jesus-centred, kingdom values, counter-cultural affect upon society.
Now if you are confident in the DNA of church, you can leave the question of what exactly will emerge until later. Take an example. If you meet my wife and I, are you able to tell what our children look like? You do not know and cannot. However, if you were to meet them - instantly you can see similar face shapes and noses that are alike. You can work it out backwards – but not forwards. So it is with fresh expressions of church. Just because it may not be clear what they will look like, or just because they don’t look exactly like a parent – it doesn’t mean that they aren’t church. Mission-shaped church thinking stands to affect us all and helpfully offers us the chance to re-evaluate what is the essence of church in mission and what is just one kind of past expression. Such changes have happened before. Maybe we are in another such time.