e-xpressions August 2009

Welcome

Welcome to the August edition of e-xpressions. This month we've added new stories our website about starting a fresh expression in Wootton and messy church going to the beach.

In this month's podcast we report from the Church of England General Synod, have a FEAST at Telford and hear from the new Methodist President. Have a listen!

We've also launched our brand new Fresh Expressions page on Facebook where you can keep up to date with our news and thoughts and let your voice be heard. Pioneers told to take their time, the Church called to a new pioneer task, church for the next generation... let us have your wisdom by joining in the discussion (and 'become a fan' to get the updates in your newsfeed).

3Ms

The Fresh Expressions initiative has flourished in many parts of the church because of a combination of three factors:

New imagination about the church - we are planting congregations most of us could not have imagined a few years ago;
New permission from church leaders - in many places local church leaders can no longer say 'we can't do that, because the bishop or chairman or moderator would never allow it'. Rather our senior church leaders encourage it;
And there are new resources - from the Fresh Expressions team and other mission agencies.

Under God and following the Holy Spirit, this combination has enabled a remarkable degree of innovative mission. All three factors need to be sustained, but I want to focus on the 'permission' one this month.

Permission needs to be more than general goodwill. It needs to be embodied in the structures of our churches, in particular the structures and procedures which control limited resources. Each deanery and circuit should be encouraged to commit itself to the mixed economy, actively planning to encourage the planting of fresh expressions of church alongside the mission of our existing churches.

But on a larger scale - a diocese, district or regional synod - The 3Ms of church life: mission, ministry and money all need to be coordinated if the mixed economy is to flourish. Mission cannot survive alone. Ministry - the recruitment, training and deployment of authorised ministers - faces the challenge of staffing the mixed economy church, rather than adding a few pioneers to a team overwhelmingly engaged with inherited church. And there is no point in senior leaders supporting fresh expressions if the subject is not even on the agenda of their finance board or committee! Finance committees have a vital role to play in the mission of the church. Either they manage decline by spreading existing resources thinner and thinner - and thus further the spiral of decline - or they resource growth by investing in proactive mission, for which fresh expressions of church are key.

If, as we believe, 60% of the population would never be reached by our existing churches, it is simply good stewardship to invest in new initiatives to engage with the majority group in the population. The difficulty is that limited resources mean that planting new initiatives may have to be accompanied by pruning posts which are neither sustainable nor a priority.

We have the opportunity to re-evangelise our nation. Fresh expressions of church are a part of the resource that God has given us, but a mixed economy church will only flourish if it is a 3Ms church.

+Graham Cray

Eight thousand introductions

An estimated 8000 Christians have now participated in our mission shaped intro course. The six-week course takes people on a journey looking at the ever-changing nature of communities and why the church needs to rethink its approach to those communities in meaningful and relevant ways. Participants are invited to re-imagine mission, church, community, leadership, discipleship and worship. Learning is creative and interactive with the course combining presentations, group activities, film and music clips, worship and prayer.

msi is available as a free download from our website.

Vacancy

It's the final call for our Senior Writer and Media Officer vacancy - the closing date for applications is midday on Monday 24th August 2009.

Can you grab the attention of a journalist? Unearth and retell encouraging stories? Place those stories in the media and across our publications and sites? Our Senior Writer and Media Officer will research and record stories and increase our media impact. The post is salaried at £26,000 per annum plus benefits and application forms are available from our jobs page now.

A brand new section, 'What are some examples of fresh expressions?', has been added to the Share website. It contains pages on fresh expressions of church in different contexts and has designed to 'whet your appetite and feed your imagination'. It also suggests some things to bear in mind if you start a fresh expression of church in one of the contexts listed.

So far we've got pages on rural and urban fresh expressions, café church, workplace church, fresh expressions for under 5s and their families, children's fresh expressions and fresh expressions for older people. Other pages are planned on areas including young people and new monasticism.

If you have experience in working in any of these contexts, or want to suggest new pages for the section, please visit and leave a comment. You may have something to Share with others.

Action learning and fresh expressions

Are you:

an Ordained Pioneer Minister or a Church Army Evangelist?
enabling a fresh expression of church?
making it up as you go along?
finding yourself in new and challenging situations?

Then an action learning network might be for you. Action learning networks are a space to meet with 4-5 others at least 3 times a year and to bring something from your ministry situation that you'd like some help with. Ask questions and reflect on your practice, hear about what's happening to others and stimulate your thinking with outside input.

There's an introductory residential on 21st-22nd October 2009 in Sheffield to start things off and you can find out more on our events page.

Fresh Expressions where you are

Many of our training days have taken a break over the summer, but if you're at New Wine, Soul Survivor or Momentum over the summer months, do look out for Bishop Graham Cray there.

As we look forward to September, we will be hosting vision days in Scarborough and Skipton on the 12th and 26th of September respectively.

For those in Scotland, don't forget mission shaped intro: six thursdays from 3rd September 2009 in Edinburgh and six wednesdays from 2nd September in Glasgow. For further information and to register, contact msi@barclaychurch.org.uk or msi@whiteinchchurch.org respectively.

And finally

Got something you'd like us to talk about in these monthly newsletters or elsewhere? Why not tell us about it.

See you again next month,
The Fresh Expressions team.