ALEXANDRIA, Va.—An increasingly diverse Western culture requires Christians to rethink the way they define “church,” an Anglican bishop told participants at the March 16-17 inaugural national gathering of Fresh Expressions.
“We have to stop assuming that the learned models are the only way to do it, or that past experience will give us absolute clarity about what to do next,” Bishop Graham Cray told about 300 church leaders meeting at First Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. “Beware of being blinded by previous experience. Whatever context you’re in, learn to listen to the Holy Spirit.”
Cray, who has served parishes and dioceses in the Church of England, was a catalyst in developing in 2004 an initiative—eventually called Fresh Expressions—to help established British churches engage their postmodern culture through new creative communities of faith.
Bishop Graham Cray (right) discusses missional issues with participants at the inaugural national gathering of Fresh Expressions. At left is Chris Backert, coordinator of Fresh Expression US.
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The movement caught the attention of leaders in the Baptist General Association of Virginia, who believed North America’s mission challenge resembled the United Kingdom’s. About two years ago they developed Fresh Expression U.S., a collaboration of the BGAV, Anglicans in the U.K. and other American denominational groups.
“All around my country it seems God’s spirit is on the move,” said Cray. “Christians are trying new things. There’s a new imagination for mission. New congregations are coming into being.”
At the core of the Fresh Expressions movement are three characteristics, he said:
- A strong mission focus
- A willingness to re-imagine church.
- A commitment to both existing and new communities of faith. “It’s not either/or, it’s not competition, it’s a partnership.”
Though the new faith communities take a variety of shapes, each “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,” Cray said. “They come into being through the principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.”
Examples might include gatherings in coffee houses or apartments, small missional clusters or so-called “Messy Church,” aimed at young families with small children.
On one level, Fresh Expressions can be defined simply, he said. “You enter the world of the people to whom Jesus is calling you. You take that world as seriously as they do. You don’t use it to get them to love Jesus. You honor their world, and help them transform it instead of necessarily drawing them into your world. You help them find Christ in their world.”
But the process is also costly, he warned.
“It’s not just the incarnation [of Christ] which we are to imitate. It’s also the sacrificial death of the son of God. … The church must always be willing to die to its own cultural comfort.”
And it will take time, he added.
“There is no quick fix. A few years of doing Fresh Expressions is not going to change the culture. It must be a long-term incarnational ministry.”
That theme was echoed by Reggie McNeal, a Dallas-based missional leadership specialist who told the gathering Fresh Expressions entailed “a massive shift in church culture.”
“This isn’t a tweak to the fall program,” McNeal said. “This is a fundamentally different way of thinking about church. We have to think about church as a ‘who,’ not a ‘what.’”
Such a seismic shift will require thinking carefully about the kind of language used to describe church—“If you can’t talk about it differently, you can’t think about it differently”—and will demand church leaders “change the scorecard.”
“We [currently] celebrate church-centric activity and goals and participation,” he said. “We have to start celebrating a different set of things if we want to see change.”
Chris Backert, who along with two other Virginia Baptist Mission Board staff members—Ben Jamison and Gannon Sims—coordinates Fresh Expressions in the United States, said the “journey has been one of unlikely, but wonderfully surprising, occurrences and Spirit-guided activity.”
“Each step along the way, we continue to be affirmed that Jesus is up to something new and dynamic that we believe will lead to the renewal of our existing congregations and hundreds, if not thousands, of new expressions of church that are capable of connecting with people who are beyond the reach of our more typical church services or programming,” he said.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.