Review: Seven Sacred Spaces by George Lings

 Back in the days when books were published on paper, and the literature about Fresh Expressions and emerging church could fit on a single shelf, the Church Army began producing Encounters on the Edge. Written by George Lings and his research team, they profiled the growing number of church plants and experiments happening around the UK. Lings visited, interviewed, reflected, and drew lessons for the wider church. 

As well as feeding into the whole Fresh Expressions/Mission Shaped Church initiative in the CofE, one or two of the Encounters took on a life of their own. 'Seven Sacred Spaces', published in 2009, was picked up in a variety of settings, including an entire Welsh Diocese, and is now a full length book. Bible Reading Fellowship, the publishers, have also published a suite of study, follow up and application materials. 

If you want Lings' summary of the Seven Sacred Spaces, its here. In brief, his work focused on monastic communities ancient and modern, and the discovery that the same key spaces were found regularly across all of them. These spaces expressed different aspects of monastic life, and Lings explores whether they give us a creative and fruitful template for discipleship and church life. The 7 spaces are

Chapel – for worship together

Cell – for personal prayer

Scriptorium – for study and passing on learning

Garden/Kitchen – for work/service

Refectory – for hospitality

Chapter house – for decision making

Cloister - for community - planned and unplanned encounters. 

Lings questions whether local church life, which invariably focuses on the 'Chapel' - both the building and the act of corporate worship - is missing a trick. Many local churches have a thin parody of the other 6 spaces if they have anything all, from grim coffee (refectory) to a dated bookstall (scriptorium),  with work nowhere to be seen. What would we look like if we had a balance of all 7? 

The 7 Sacred Spaces book takes us through Lings discovery of the 7 spaces, with a chapter explaining each one in more depth and looking at where it is found in the Bible, in monastic rules and Christian communities, and in the world at large. One chapter shows how different groups have put the Spaces into practice, and there are separate sections applying the Spaces to mission, discipleship and life (the chapter on the latter is mostly a critique of current church practice). Lings, refreshingly, closes the book by downplaying it, cautioning against taking these insights as a new reformation or a silver bullet, but as a resource, lens, portal or diet which can help us grow more in our life in Christ: ‘the mental battle of living a life in Christ, alone and together, is central. The spaces are but the arenas in which that life is played out’

Each chapter is worth reading on its own - the chapter on Cell will help you reflect on your personal prayer life, the chapter on Chapel should be required reading for anyone looking to rethink their church building. I can't remember the last time I read a good Christian reflection on meetings, despite the fact we spend a large proportion of our life in them. But in the Chapter chapter, Lings throws out this challenge “The church should be a community where decision making together becomes sacred, because it faces down grumbling and judging, and where it listens well, because it expresses mutual respect and humility. Bring it on.” 

The section on Cloister - the connecting place in the monastery which allowed for meetings, as well as bumping into the people you wanted to avoid - focuses on the quality of community life. 'Community is the cheese grater of the soul'  The monastic rules tend to say very little about what happens in these spaces, but often this is where the quality of community is found out. Every organisation has rules, but studying the rules won't tell you what it's like to work or live there. 

 There are plenty of insights in the chapters on Work (garden) study (scriptorium) and hospitality (refectory), each of which is probably a post in its own right. Whether you buy into the 7 Sacred Spaces or not, each of these is worth a read on its own. How do we rediscover work as a spiritual practice, part of the 'work of God? What would a church look like if it was centred on a kitchen and shared table rather than a worship space? In a culture which churns through information and attention at high speed, how do we treasure and pass on true knowledge? 

Our Story Part 1

Skip this bit if you want to get back to the book. St Peters church on the Westfield estate in Yeovil is one of the two churches I'm vicar for. Last year we demolished the 50 year old church hall and built a new Community Centre, wrapped around the church. We've ended up with a single building, with a kitchen/cafe area at its heart (refectory), connected by a single door to the church building (worship). The vision for the centre includes skills and learning (scriptorium - we have a mini library in the building already), drop in (cloister), and as a hub for volunteers and the local community association to use to serve the community (work/service). Committees are part of the running of the place (chapter). The vision is not simply to be a building for hire, but to be a community hub which brings positive change to the community - better literacy, skills and employment levels, less isolation, better mental and physical health, stronger community etc. During lockdown, the sole users have been a health team, the local community midwives, which is a bit of a nod to the '8th space' of hospitals and hospices which were often found in monasteries and convents. 

The 7 Sacred Spaces has given us a framework for thinking about the mission of the new Community Centre, and how it expresses the life of the church. More than that, it has given us a way of looking at discipleship. We had an away day in a nearby village hall last year. During it, we tried to tease out the values which underpinned each of the 7 Spaces. For Cloister, we identified Availability. One of the group took a walk through the village during our extended lunch break, and deliberately sought to put that into practice. She came back bouncing with excitement, having had several conversations with complete strangers as she ambled slowly up the main street, smiling at anyone she met. She now makes it her practice to 'bimble' around Westfield, usually taking way longer than she'd planned to get anywhere, because of the 'chance' conversations she gets into. 

The main mission activity of St Peters is..... wait for it.... a coffee morning. Is that it? you cry. But Mondays 'Community Coffee' (Refectory/Cloister), held initially in the church and now in the cafe space, has been the way into church membership for several people over the last 5 years. A couple of years ago when Christmas Day fell on a Monday, the regulars all asked for it to continue on Christmas Day as many of them were living alone, and 15 of them turned up. St Peters has grown from 15 to 50 in the last 10 years, principally by prayer, hospitality, and being available to the community. 

Our Story Part 2

Lockdown shut us out of our churches back in March, and did so again last week. Amidst the wailing and gnashing of teeth lurks the question: is there a way of being church which doesn't depend on gathering together in the same building at the same time every week? Can we be a local church if we can't meet as one body for worship? Again, the 7 Sacred Spaces offer a tantalising answer. Is it possible to be a local Christian community based on some form of rule of life and set of shared values and practices? They include corporate worship, but they aren't defined or exhausted by it. So when corporate worship stops, the church continues. 

So we created a workbook of bible meditations with a week on each theme, and encouraged people to meet in 2s and 3s to reflect together each week on what God was saying. And a set of videos on each theme to complement them. And quite a few people - both from St Peters and from the main parish church -  have taken these up and found them powerful and helpful. Where we go next..... we don't know!

Questions and Comments. 

1. I would recommend the book for anyone who is frustrated with how we do church now, and wonders if there is a better way, but is weary of cavalry charge solutions. Lings is always worth reading, and you are bound to find something which challenges or stimulates you.

2. I see that the original 7 Sacred Spaces booklet is no longer available online. That's a shame - there are people who might read a 40 page booklet but not a 220 page full length book. The BRF resources are some help here, but there's still a space for a substantial explanation of the 7 Sacred Spaces which isn't book length. 

3. There are 3 areas where I was longing for the book to go further

 - Biblical material: in some chapters there were fewer Biblical examples than I'd expected, and some of the 7 Spaces take on different qualities when seen through the lens of scripture. For example, if Cloister is to do with availability, then you see this time and again in the mission of Jesus and the early church (many of Jesus healings, the beggar at the beautiful gate, Philip). The workbook we produced on the 7 spaces is based on a daily bible reflection over 7 weeks, and there were dozens of possible verses and stories which didn't make the cut. 

 - Mission and outreach: monastic rules tend to be inward looking, and focus solely on those who are in the monastic community. There are missional ways to look at prayer, study, hospitality, work, and cloister. Lings notes with sadness that mission - sharing the good news of Jesus - has disappeared completely from the Franciscan 3rd order. This is a failing shared by the local/institutional church too. 

 - Social transformation: which connects to the previous point. After the fall of the Roman Empire (bear with me), monasteries play a significant role in the history of Europe. As well as spreading the Christian faith, they became the hub for thousands of towns and cities. They transformed the land, draining and irrigating swathes of territory to make it productive. They preserved and passed on learning - monastic libraries were often the only place literature was kept safe, and the monks themselves were among the few people who could read and write, so often ended up in key administrative positions. The monasteries housed travellers, cared for the sick, educated the young, invented new technology, developed trades (those Belgian monastic beers......) and pursued science (Bacon, Grosseteste, Copernicus, Lull, Ockham). Though Lings notes that several voices are calling for a renewed form of Christian community within society, there is more to be said about the initial impact of such communities when they first spread across the UK, and what we could learn from this. 

4. How the 7 Sacred Spaces can underpin both an individual and a shared rule of life. This brings things back full circle, as the monastic spaces are themselves expressions in architecture of the monastic rules. There are glimpses of this in the stories Lings shares, but I guess we don't know what this really looks like until there are communities living it. 

I'm so grateful to George Lings for doing this work, and putting it into a framework which can be used in so many different ways. The 7 Sacred Spaces framework is a challenge to the way we 'do church', and Lings calls for a form of Christian community life which gives equal weight to all 7, rather than orbiting 6 as minor satellites around the Chapel space. Historically, the Church of England has always seen worship as the defining activity within the parish church. Out main buildings are for worship, and our main investment in human resources - clergy - puts them in a special caste of worship leaders. But in the days prior to the parish system, it was monasteries which spread the faith and established new Christian communities. Maybe a community along these more holistic lines is a more suitable form of church for  post-Christian England than parishes centred on a worship building for a gathered congregation. And covid makes this an even more pressing question. 

Fresh Expressions at Lambeth Palace: putting your dwellings where your doctrine is

Justin Welby is setting up a new monastic community at Lambeth Palace, to spend 'A year in God's time'. Great idea, you have to be aged 20-35 to be part of The Community of St Anselm, and it's part of the Archbishops ongoing vision to put prayer at the heart of the renewal of the CofE.

The community is 'an experiment' - the role of prior is a fixed term 3 year contract - and the aim is to draw in 16 full time and 40 associate members for prayer, study and service.

Welby not only believes that the renewal of the CofE begins with prayer, but is prepared to put his dwellings where his doctrine is. I wonder if any other bishops palaces will follow suit?

I think this probably also makes him the first bishop in the CofE to set up a Fresh Expression of church, though I'll happily be corrected on that one. If you're going to encourage other people to do things, the best way is to lead by example. Bishops should be church planting, if they're going to lead the rest of the church in doing it.

UK Snapshot: post-christian christenings, faith-based politics, changing churches.

1. The BBC has a piece on '10 ways christenings have changed', in advance of Prince Georges baptism later today. The last 2 of the 10 are an improvement, but I'm not sure about the rest! One thing is certain, we've moved on a long way from the original idea of godparents as potential surrogate parents who would step in if a childs birth parents were martyred for their faith.

update: one of the trends - increasing numbers of godparents - is followed religiously (if that's the right word) by Prince George, who has 7. That makes for an interesting precedent: the most I've ever agreed to is 6 (bartered down from an original 16!), and I encourage people to aim for 2-4. 

2. Labour MP Stephen Timms highlights a recent Demos report (free download) which argues that faith groups are more likely to be sympathetic to left-wing perspectives than those of the right, and that "faith is a very good starting point for politics, and for progressive politics in particular, because faith inspires, on a large scale, exactly the values that can make politics work: responsibility, solidarity, patience, compassion and truthfulness."

3. Christian Today has an interview with Phil Potter, new national head of Fresh Expressions for the Anglican church. "my vision is to see the culture of the church itself change. That change would see it becoming a culture which welcomes and embraces an ongoing cycle of transformation and renewal for the sake of the Gospel." You might almost suspect he's been talking to his boss. The CofE has tended to change in nausea-inducing lurches, we don't seem to be able to celebrate anything good without erecting a Grade 1 listed monument over it. 

To review, decide, plan and change on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual cycle is a good spiritual discipline both for the church, and for individual Christians. The irony is, we have the resources in our tradition to do this: from the Catholic side, Ignatian prayer (with the practice of a daily 'examen of conscience', a spiritual review), and from the Protestant side the idea of 'semper reformanda' (such fun we still cit it in Latin) - 'constant reformation' as the guiding principle of the church. But it's our attitude to those same traditions, our idolisation of them, that makes change such hard work. 

Pagan Church? Don't You Believe It

Update: detailed piece from Steve Hollinghurst on what the CofE is really doing, and how the Telegraph's spin on the story was way off the mark.

There are various outraged noises in response to a piece on Radio 4 yesterday, talking about how Christians respond to events like the gathering of 20,000 people for the summer solstice.

"The church of England is making efforts to recruit the increasing number of people who describe themselves as pagans" (Radio 4 presenter)

You can hear the report here, at 1 hour 25 minutes in. Robert Piggott the BBC correspondent talks about Anglicans 'reformulating' their faith. Steve Hollinghurst from CMS talks about a 'pagan church, where Christ is very much at the centre', and goes on to describe a church which worships Jesus but which draws on the kind of practices that pagans would engage with. That's not massively different from a 'biker church' or some other form of church planted into a subculture. Christians have been involved in outreach to pagan and new age subculture for a while - e.g. the Jesus Deck, or Spirit of Life, a crossover event hosted at Coventry Cathedral a few years back.

I don't see anything to be scared of in this. A standard church of England service simply won't hit the spot with the kind of people attracted to paganism. A few years ago I did some research into 'creation spirituality', a neopagan movement based around the writings of former Catholic priest Matthew Fox (not the guy in Lost, another one), and found that many of its adherents were former members of mainstream churches, who had left because the church was so disconnected from nature, green issues, human experience and community.

Comments:
1. If anyone has a problem with what Steve Hollinghurst said, or the other contributors to the Radio 4 piece, why not engage him directly? Isn't this what Jesus tells us to do?

2. Steve explicitly talked about 'Christ at the centre', in a piece where the BBC had clearly pulled sentences out of a bigger interview. Do we really imagine that a short radio piece will give us the whole story? I'm constantly suprised at the ability of Christians to rush to judgement before seeking to understand things or find out all the facts.

3. Having worked (briefly) with Steve in the past, I would want to commend him for his courage and creativity. The piece was talking about outreach to pagans and those sympathetic to paganism. It's a small but growing number, and as DL Moody once said about evangelism "my way of doing it is better than your way of not doing it". Rather than talk about the death of the CofE, lets talk about why some people are turning to paganism rather than to Christ, and how we should respond to that.

4. If you want to get worried about paganism infiltrating the church, then talk to the Episcopal Church in the USA, who received Fox as a priest following his ejection from the Roman Catholic church. Fox's writings effectively present a form of paganism cloaked in Christian language (radically redefined to accomodate Fox's beliefs). He was received publicly by the bishop of San Francisco, and is a regular feature at Grace Cathedral.

GPS Worship

A couple of great stories have gone up on the Fresh Expressions site, one of a Car Boot Fair church - something I've long wondered about for Yeovil but not done much about - and one for Geochurche. I only heard of  'geocaching' when a church member explained it to me a few weeks ago, and loved the creativity of turning it into a spiritual pursuit in the Peak District:

There is a considerable, weekend population taking part in everything from mountain-biking and rock climbing to rambling, canoeing and… geocaching. This involves people searching for hidden things, or 'caches', by using Ordnance Survey grid coordinates. It's like treasure hunting, with participants using their smartphones, GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking devices or traditional maps to find a series of caches as part of a wilderness 'adventure'.

What we plan to do with Geochurche is to hide elements of a service - including prayers and meditations - in pods/caches around the Peak District on routes that can be used by walkers and mountain bikers. The grid coordinates for the 'hidden treasure' will then be shared on our website - along with a final reference point and time for a 'meet'

This gathering in the wilderness will include opportunity to think about what it has been like to share in such an experience. This will not be the same for everyone as we will set it up in such a way so that different people will access different pods, depending on the time and mode of transport they use - and not everyone will be able to find them. This will hopefully lead to time for reflection on our spiritual journey, some songs around the fire and a sharing of bread and wine.

I was recently discussing the first half of Pauls letter to the Romans with a group, and someone commented that it was a very dense, theological letter with not a lot of imagery and application. It struck me that, yes, that's how we read it, but in Pauls day it would have been image-rich. For us, terms like redemption, adoption, sin offering have all become technical theological terms. In 50AD (or whenever) they were daily realities, images drawn from everyday life. 

We wondered aloud what theological terms we might coin if we were drawing on imagery from early 21st century technology and society. The gospel, and the church, need continuous retranslation into the culture, and a lot of that will simply mean experiments. So I really hope Geochurche works, but even if it doesn't, there'll be valuable translation lessons. 

Diocesan Church Growth Strategies 4: Case Study - Exeter

Part of the Church Growth Strategies conference is an invitation to participating dioceses to talk about what is and isn't going on in their county. Here's a bit about Exeter, which was really encouraging:

Very rural diocese, had first round of Diocesan strategy in 2003, trying to draw 500 parishes & 613 buildings (!) into 150 'mission communities' - clusters of local churches with a mission priority and plan.

2008 set a target of 25% growth in weekly attendance by 2013. There was quite a bit of harrumphing around the Diocese at the time. In the end growth 2008-12 has been 11%, which is short of the target (but, Exeter are the 2nd fastest growing diocese in recent years. Setting a target may have poked the diocesan culture with a sharp stick, but it seems to have been a catalyst for growth)

A Million for Mission: the diocese chose to give away £1m of its historic reserves to churches to use in mission. Grants from £1,000 - £100,000 were offered, in two waves over the course of 9 months in 2011-12. Nearly 200 bids came in, and 87 grants to mission projects were made. "there's nothing like throwing some money at Anglicans to arouse interest"

The projects are currently being reviewed, 12 months in. The first 26 have been looked at: these are engaging with 2,146 brand new people, as a direct result of the projects the money has enabled, that the church had no contact with before. Half of these are children (the majority of the projects were aiming at children or all ages) with roughly 500 youth and 500 adults. Already 60 have made a clear profession of faith (e.g. confirmation, a decision to follow Christ following a course) - considering the time that the process of coming to faith takes, that's a very encouraging start.

Giving money away from the Diocese was a "hugely impacting p.r. exercise". Parishes are so used to the  diocese taking money away from them, the idea that they were being offered money and asked to come up with ideas was a real novelty, and communicated powerfully that the Diocese was on their side. It also got churches thinking about mission that had previously been asleep.

"being cautious with money is not something the Bible exhorts us to do" (Chair of Finance at Exeter. That's the spirit!)

The biggest impact is with families. The Diocese now has 63 Messy Churches.

What next? A new set of priorities from 2013:
 - "create and develop pathways into deeper discipleship and sacramental membership of the church for all those reached through new missional initiatives" i.e. the whole diocese is now addressing the question of discipleship in fresh expressions of church. There's work being done to find the right resources for people on the fringe of faith, Alpha is too far away from the starting point for many.
 - leadership training, including asking CPAS to run the leadership training programme (great call)
 - developing ministry teams in the mission communities, this can't all be done and run by clergy.

The Million for Mission video is an excellent bit of diocesan communication, and an encouraging 6 minutes viewing!

use the diocesan church growth strategies tag below for other posts from the conference, including the ABofC on evangelism and renewal.

Diocesan Church Growth Strategies Quotes 2: George Lings on Fresh Expressions and Church Planting

Fresh Expressions research in 6 dioceses, with 6 others in process, gave us a blitz of stats and insights from the Church Army's George Lings in session 2. Here's some of the highlights and quotes:

"representative accurate information will serve the church better than national guesswork"

361 Fresh Expressions identified in the first 6 dioceses studied (Liverpool, Leicester, Derby, Norwich, Canterbury, Chelmsford), total attendance over 14,000. "in all cases the growth from the fresh expressions of church more than reverses he decline in these dioceses in the 5 years of reported figures 2006-10"

Lots of the fresh expressions of church (fxc for short from now on!) start small - about 3/4 begin with a team of 3-12 in size, and most have a membership in the 20-50 range. It's 'many small things, not a few big ones'. Lots of them grow quickly to 30-50 members, then plateau, there seems to be a natural size limit. Finding the natural size is important. 

Over 50% of them meet on a Sunday, big variety in how many meet weekly, from 28% in 1 diocese to 65% in another

About 20 different types identified, Messy Church is the most popular, and most are aimed at all ages, very few really specialised ones (such as skateboarder or surfer church, as featured in the early fxc dvds)

The research excluded a lot of things which claimed to be fxc but werent, in some dioceses 60% were ruled out. Some were existing things rebranded as fxc. "a bicycle could be called a fresh expression of horse, but that wouldn't really help us"

There seems to be a clustering effect "what is veiwable starts to become doable", so if there are some fxc in a locality, other local churches are more likely to have a go. 

There are a significant proportion of members who are either de-churched or non-churched. Only around 25% of the membership are Christians who were already church members, and many of these were from the initial set up teams. For every 1 church members sent to set up a fxc, 2.6 are added to the church. That's an amazing multiplier. For most of us 10% growth over 5 years would be great. Fxc are seeing 250% growth in the same timescale. "There is nothing else like this effect in the whole Church of England"

Fxc are working in a whole range of settings, from UPA to suburban to new town to rural. The majority of people who come are from the immediate area. More and more fxc are being set up to enable the church to reach into cultural diversity (e.g. different age groups) rather than to reach 'unreached' part of the parish or geographical areas: "parish works nearly perfectly with area, but it is not designed to recognise or respond to cultural features" but fxc can.

The vast majority of fxc are doing discipleship in one form or another - courses, mentoring, small groups etc. Those that don't tend to have a higher mortality rate. 

About half take place in church buildings, though it varies - in Liverpool 60% occur in more neutral venues. It's all about what makes for most accesibility.

So far in the 6 dioceses, despite finding quite a few fxc which went across parish boundaries, 'we met no serious conflict over this issue'

The majority are lay led, and this is a growing trend. There are an increasing number which are led by lay people with no kind of formal training/accreditation at all (e.g. Reader, employed church staff). "we are entering the era of the lay-led church" (hooray!!)

Only 48% of the leaders are full time (most of these men!) 33% are leading fxc in their spare time. 

That'll do for now. It was tremendously encouraging to hear, and raised a stack of questions as well - e.g. whether some of the questioning about the nature of church and mission that is put to fxc could be put to our inherited churches as well, and whether the level of experimentation and re-imagining of ministry that's going on can only happen in new forms of church. 

But who would guess, from the headlines and the media narrative, that across the CofE 1 in 10 of our worshippers is a member of a newly planted church, and that over 10% of our churches have been started in the last 20 years? It's an interesting contrast with the rate of closure of church buildings in yesterdays church commissioners report: I question whether we could do more pruning in order to create space for more growth. Or maybe it's better to sidetrack clergy with the care and maintenance of ancient buildings and traditions and let the lay pioneers just get on with it?

Justin Welby next post, use the diocesan church growth strategies tag for others from the conference.

Fresh Expressions - encouraging research on CofE church planting

Claire Dalpra, researcher at the Sheffield Centre, talking about research on Fresh Expressions recently done in 3 Anglican dioceses. Some of the key findings she mentions:

 - Out of every 5 members of a 'fresh expression', 1 was already a Christian, 2 are 'de-churched' (people who have been part of a church, dropped out, and now rejoined through the FX) and 2 had no church background at all. So they are clearly working in reaching folk not reached by traditional churches.

 - Fresh Expressions are being established in all sorts of different places, from rural to inner city urban, and over 1/3 are from 'central' or 'Anglo-Catholic' parent churches, which shows that anyone can do this, it's not an evangelical preserve.

 - In the 3 Dioceses surveyed, Fresh Expressions make up 20% of their worshipping congregations, and 10% of regular attenders. So a significant part of the CofE is worshipping in newly planted churches.

 - Over 80% have some form of discipleship development, e.g. small groups, mentoring etc.

 - Rates of church planting aren't slacking off - the fact that most were planted in recent years may reflect an attrition rate, that some of the earlier fresh expressions haven't survived.

It would be interesting to compare the closure rate we're prepared to contemplate for new churches compared with ones which have existed for centuries. I know of church plants with 20-30 members which were closed down because they were beyond the resources of the sending parish. But if you applied that logic to 'inherited' churches then over half the churches in my Deanery would be facing the axe.

You Want Pioneers? You Can't Handle Pioneers!*

 In many places the church is saying loud and clear that we need pioneers, which is great and true and I'm sure it is genuine. Pioneers then respond and often take risks in the process. But it sometimes turns out that perhaps the church didn't quite mean what it said, or there are some big 'buts'. In other places it is clear she's not interested in pioneers at all -  some dioceses still don't recognise pioneer ministry or they suggest that everyone is a pioneer and allocate no resources while their DDOs do their best to steer people away from pioneer ministry as a vocation. We have shed tears, expressed frustration, prayed a lot, and reflected that every journey to the new in the bible - and probably elsewhere - involves going through darkness, letting go, or experiencing wilderness on the way. It's unavoidable.

It seems that the kind of pioneering understood most readily by the wider church involves an outcome that looks something like what we have already; namely a community of disciples with worship, singing, preaching and money being paid back into the centre - preferably all happening within a very short space of time.

Jonny Baker, reflecting on his time leading training for pioneer leaders in the CofE. 

It's worth reading the whole of his article, very challenging and thought provoking. It needs to be heard both by pioneers, and by everyone else in the church. I still sense that pioneer ministry is something happening in a corner, that the central structures don't know what to do with it, and that it risks, like Fresh Expressions, becoming diluted currency by being applied to too many things. I hear of Pioneer curates in settings where hardly anyone else in the parish, including the training incumbent, really understands what they are about. This work is hard enough without the church at large providing additional headwinds. 

(*for those not versed in the movie portfolio of Tom Cruise or Jack Nicholson, the title of this piece is inspired by a line from 'A Few Good Men', which I think is on TV sometime this week.)

Cray: 5 key principles for mission leadership.

Some very simple and helpful stuff from Graham Cray on the leadership qualities required in Fresh Expressions and mission

a number of principles will ensure that the leadership is appropriate.


Fresh expressions are both birthed and sustained, through discernment, and obedience to the missionary Spirit who is always ahead of us. So prayer and attentiveness to the leading of the Spirit must be central. Whenever you are not sure, stop and pray. Even more important whenever you are very sure, stop and pray! 

Be a vision bearer. Help the fresh expression to remain true to its founding vision and values. Above all accept the responsibility to keep it missional, rather than settle into a pattern of life that is self serving. If possible ensure that serving others, beyond its own membership, is a regular and constitutive part of belonging to the fresh expression.

Don't mistake leadership for control. Hold it lightly, encouraging others to exercise gifts you do not have, and create space for those who develop gifts similar to your own. Invest in people so can one day do better than you, because they build on what you have established. Always be on the look out for the next generation of leadership, rather than always trying to fill vacancies. There is only one person in overall control of a fresh expression of church. He is called Jesus and he is present through the Holy Spirit.

Have the courage to challenge inappropriate behaviour by team members, if it is damaging the ministry of the fresh expression, but never forget how patient God is with you.

Above all, set an example. We never expect people to do what we are not prepared to do ourselves. In the New Testament authority in leadership comes by the power of personal and corporate example, rooted in the example of Christ.

Reading that list, it looks like pretty much the same list of leadership qualities that are required in any church. Because the CofE is being forced to think again about church, mission and leadership by the Fresh Expressions movement, the thinking from that should be informing all of the CofE, not just those bits that are involved in mission.

And none of these 5 qualities require that you have a dog collar.

Fresh Expressions in Liverpool: lay led, midweek, no church building, and growing.

In a timely response to my post yesterday on Fresh Expressions in the CofE, the Sheffield Centre have published a study on Fresh Expressions in Liverpool Diocese.

Liverpool are one of the 2 Dioceses quoted by a CofE paper this week as having 10% or more of their members belonging to a 'fresh expression' of church. The other is Canterbury. As Laurence commented yesterday, the study shows up a certain flakiness in the reported figures - around 40% of things reported to be 'Fresh Expressions' weren't. What's remarkable is that, with 202 parishes and 78 confirmed new churches, around 1/3 of Liverpools churches are church plants. They only equate to 10% of the Diocesan membership, but that's growing: these churches were planted with a combined total of 570 people, and now have a membership of over 2800.

Other interesting stats: 60% don't use a church building, only 29% meet on a Sunday, and a large proportion are lay-led, rather than clergy led. It's a very encouraging report to read, and hopefully the kind of thing that will have the bishops of the CofE sidling up to James Jones over the weekend and asking how they went about it.

If it's 3% Fresh, is it Fresh?

One of the papers for General Synod this weekend looks at the impact so far of Fresh Expressions:

The movement has produced over 1,000 fresh expressions of church in the Church of England and nearly 2,000 in the Methodist Church. The new people attending fresh expressions in the Church of England account for 3% of our national attendance figures; these are people who were not previously attending “inherited churches” (i.e. established patterns of church life and worship). In two dioceses in the Church of England, where the planting of fresh expressions has been adopted as a clear part of their growth strategy, 10% or more of their attendance figures are those attending fresh expressions of church.

Synod has a debate on the 'ecclesiology' of fresh expressions - I would argue we need to question the ecclesiology of all our other expressions of church too - but there seems to be a commitment to ongoing church planting and development of FX in the Anglican church.

A couple of things struck me about this:
 - how come the Methodists, a significantly smaller church, have got twice as many? It's reminiscent of 2020 cricket, invented in England but then England quickly got left behind as others realised more quickly the potential of the game. The CofE has 13,000 parishes, and only 1 in 13 (probably less, some churches will have several FX) has developed a new form of church. What can we learn from the Methodists?

 - our Messy Church is probably one of those 1000, but it happens monthly, with a month off in the summer, and whilst it has some of the features of the church 'event', it's not a congregation of Christian disciples. It might be called 'church', but it's not a new, self-sustaining congregation, it's series of branded events which might form a gateway to Christian faith for some. I wonder how many more of the 1000 are Fresh Expressions, but these are more expressions of outreach than of viable churches. Or am I being unfair?

 - I'd love to know who the identity of the 2 Dioceses mentioned in the last sentence. Again, strategic question: will other Dioceses be encouraged to take the same approach? How committed are we to this stuff? Will the national CofE step in if Dioceses are failing to plant new churches or promote mission? If we recognise that what we currently do is culturally limited, and tends only to connect with those who already have a church background (30% and shrinking), then as a mission strategy we need to be looking more at 50-70%.

It's a start, but there's plenty still to do.

CofE Mission Fund: £45m + 43 Dioceses = ?

Hidden in the background papers for this weekends General Synod is some analysis of how £45m of mission development money is being spent in the CofE. The Fund has been in place since 2002, and is used in a widely varying way between the 43 Dioceses. 10 years in, and we are just about to get some evaluation of how well this money is being spent. Ah well, the CofE never did things in a rush.

The totals by diocese are here, and a project-by-project breakdown for 2011 is here. (and if we can get a full run-down of all the 2011 projects and their funding by June 2012, why can't we do the same with membership data?)

There seem to be 3 different approaches to using the money
 - significant funds for a small number of strategic projects, usually a mixture of Diocesan and local (e.g. Bristol, London, Southwell & Nottingham)
 - fund a lot of small projects in as many corners as possible (e.g. Bath and Wells, Durham)
 - fund strategic Diocesan posts and initiatives to resource mission across the whole Diocese (e.g. Exeter, Ely)

There's an impressive array of different things going on and being tried out, as well as one or two things where it looks like money is being spent either on things which should already be in the budget, or things which aren't obviously to do with mission start-up costs.

It's obviously harder to evaluate lots of smaller projects than it is to evaluate one or two big ones. But it's also indicative of the way the CofE works. I can guarantee this: even if the evaluations demonstrate that one of the above 3 approaches is far more effective than either of the other two, the vast majority of Dioceses will carry on doing what they currently do. Why? Because the CofE may offer plenty of scope for experimentation, but there is no robust system for identifying, and then implementing, best practice. Every Diocese is its own kingdom, and every parish within them is a mini-Diocese.

Stop me if I've said this before, but until the CofE develops, and learns to accept, strategic national leadership, we will not make the best of the current window of opportunity for mission which the Mission Fund and Fresh Expressions gives us. If you want to get into that debate, look at the comments on this post from last week, on projections of vicar numbers.

Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own

When I was a young Christian all the emphasis was on personal disciplines, particularly of daily prayer and Bible study. Personal disciplines remain important, but I do not believe they are sufficient to form Christian character today.

In those early years of faith the Christian story was better known in Britain, and 'Christian' values taken as norms, even if they were not adhered to. Culture reinforced discipleship much more than today.

Today culture is more likely to be corrosive of discipleship as supportive. It is corporate disciplines and support which are needed. A Christian way of life - the daily practice of obedience to Jesus - needs a proactive supportive community. The term 'one another' appears frequently in the New Testament and it is persistent, intentional 'one anothering' which will enable lives of discipleship. I do not know how discipleship can be sustained without some regular, face-to-face small group for mutual support and challenge.

(Graham Cray in the latest e-xpressions newsletter, subscribe here)

New Online Library of Mission Research Papers

Yet more blessings upon the Sheffield Centre, who have gone live with an online library of research papers on mission, fresh expressions, emerging church and church planting.

The SCOLER library holds MA and PhD theses, and if you've done one on a relevant topic, it can be uploaded and added in. The portal links to abstracts of each thesis, and the full text where available. I'm already intrigued by Mark Rylands' 'Mission Shaped Cathedral'.

PhD in Messy Church

I kid you not.

This project will examine a rapidly-growing phenomenon called 'Messy Church', that is part of the wider movement called 'Fresh Expressions' within the Church of England. The aim is to explore the how Messy Church operates, how it is understood by those who run it, who it attracts, and how it can be understood theologically in terms of accepted models of ecclesiology.....

...Messy Church is an idea conceived by Lucy Moore in 2004 as a way of enabling the church to reach young people and their families more effectively. Children and their parents meet once or twice a month to engage in various creative activities, which often get rather messy… hence the name. There is usually a time of worship and some teaching about the Christian faith. It has grown rapidly, and is now run as part of the Bible Reading Fellowship ministries with over 800 churches registered in the UK alone (see  http://www.messychurch.org.uk/).

and the key line: Messy Church is not new in what it does (it mirrors what many churches do during holiday clubs) but it does represent a sustained effort to change the way that ‘church is done’. It is not necessarily a way of bringing people into traditional church congregations, but sees itself rather as a way of re-defining what church is.

Full details here. Looks quite exciting, actually.

Fresh Expressions: 'the task has hardly begun'

Fresh expressions are here to stay – for two reasons. First they are now a proven part of the mission of the churches in this country. The movement is making a substantial numerical difference, and helping hundreds of local church to engage in new ventures of creative mission. It is part of the emerging mainstream.
But it is also here to stay because the task has hardly begun. Six percent of Church of England parishes are involved. If they can engage 40,000 people, what would happen if 20% of parishes were to be involved – and the same with all of the participating denominations. There is a lot of work to do to help more local churches understand the possibility.

Graham Cray

How are Bishops Mission Orders being used?

The latest Resourcing Mission bulletin from the Church of England has a paper summarising where the CofE has got to with Bishops Mission Orders (BMO). A BMO is a way of legally recognising a new mission initiative that either doesn't relate to a geographical parish, cuts across them, or simply works best as a freestanding initiative rather than something answerable to a parish leadership/vicar.

BMO's came into existence in 2007, as part of the emerging mission agenda in the CofE, and following the experience of several 'Fresh Expressions' which didn't naturally fit into a system based on geographical parishes alone.

A few headlines:
 - there are now 22 BMOs in operation
 - a further 22 are being considered
 - 27 out of the 43 Dioceses either have a BMO in operation or are thinking about it.
 - the vast majority are in urban or suburban areas.
 - 5 are focused on youth/students, 6 on new housing areas, 3 on networks, and 2 on central business districs in cities. 8 have a wider remit across a town, area or deanery. So there's quite a bit of variety.
 - there's a variety of worship venues - 5 use a parish church belonging to someone else, several use hotels, pubs, schools or cafes, and there are cell churches too.

The paper gives a few examples:
Sorted  - youth congregation in Bradford run by a Church Army evangelist
Emmanuel Bristol - mission community planted by Christ Church Clifton, has grown from 50 to 180 adults in 4 years.
Glo - mission project from a church in Stockport based on community development on 2 large housing estates.
The Order of the Black Sheep - deserves a BMO for the title alone. Mission community for folk on the margins.
Exeter Network Church - reaching hundreds of people in Exeter through a variety of networks, like sport, prisons, debt counselling, youth, social projects etc. ENC has been running since 2005, and the BMO has given it the legal equivalence to 'parish status' that gives it an extra sense of legitimacy and 'proper church'.
Kairos - a network of small missional communities within a Deanery.
York Community Chaplaincy - a business/city chaplaincy in York, also involved in Street Angels.

As well as showing how BMOs can be used to creatively reinvent the CofE at local level, each story is also an encouraging account of mission in various settings, so even if you have no interest in Bishops Mission Orders, its exciting just to see what people are doing.

Rowan on Fresh Expressions

Good message from Rowan Williams on Fresh Expressions, for an upcoming conference in Canada. From the fresh expressions youtube channel. It's good to be reminded what we're about from time to time.

Insights from the Front Line

I'm working my way through the new Fresh Expressions DVD 'Making a Difference', which I'll review in a week or two (short review: it's good). But here are some quotes I wrote down from some of the church planters and pioneers.

“the greatest tragedy of our time is that we have kept our pews but we have lost our children”

“I love trying new things so I’m quite used to trying things that don’t work. Failure is the back door to success...We’re in a period of constant experiment..I don’t think that people are willing enough to say ‘this thing should stop’…I love starting things, but I love stopping things as well.” (Steve Tilley)

discipleship "is not so much a syllabus that people need to be taken through but a way of life that needs to be caught"

“I knew that it was really important to listen well, to listen well to God in prayer… and then listening to other people and to the context of the situation”