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Bulletin 96 Date : 14th May 2007
Hard Questions

Last week I attended a seminar at Birmingham University entitled ‘Hard Questions’. It was a theological reflection on the Fresh Expressions of Church movement and two prominent speakers were asked to give their considered opinion on the movement. The two speakers were Professor John Hull (The Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham) and Rev Dr David Wilkinson (Principal of St John's College, Durham). Both speakers had significant points to make but their styles were very different. John Hull spoke very academically with words and phrases which sometimes left me scrambling for my dictionary and thesaurus. David Wilkinson, in contrast, punctuated his talk with clips from The Simpsons and Lenny Henry

John Hull’s talk made the following points:-

The Church must be the AGENT of mission, not the OBJECT of mission.
The issue here is that we have tended to do mission with a view to simply getting people to come to church. A significant shift is taking place through the Fresh Expressions movement such that we are now seeking to ‘create church’ in places where it does not currently exist. That is why many Fresh Expressions of Church are in places like cafés, sports centres and schools. Reference was made to Jesus’ statements on the destruction of the Temple suggesting that the Temple had become the focus of mission, not the agent of mission.

Mission should be related to the pursuit of justice in the world.
Referring back to the 10 Commandments, the point is made that these were set in a context of setting people free (Deuteronomy 5:6). There must be no division between our inner experience of Christ and our outward actions. In other words, if our Christian faith does not lead us into actions to overthrow injustice in the world it becomes ‘spiritual eroticism’. Korean theology says “Jesus Christ was born among the poor, therefore go and find Him today among the poor.” The conclusion is therefore that God can only be found when we become involved in the sufferings of our neighbours. Prof. Hull also found the terms ‘Churched’ (those who go to church) and ‘Unchurched’ (those who don’t go to church) unhelpful. We should instead be distinguishing between ‘The Rich’ and ‘The Poor’. A reference was also made to Isaiah 65:1 where God shows His readiness to be found by people outside of the realm of what we might call ‘church’.

Also, rather than looking for new outlets for mission, why not affirm people in your church who work throughout the week with disadvantaged people – and pray for them as a church.

David Wilkinson’s talk made the following points:-

We need to affirm Passion
We are afraid of passion in the established church. However, many of those who start Fresh Expressions tend to be passionate about the gospel and reaching those outside of church. Also, our passion needs to mature into compassion (Matt 9:36) by being translated into action to liberate people.

Living with Risk
We need to accept that Fresh Expressions of Church are risky and if one fails we should be slow to point fingers of blame. St. Paul constantly took risks and sometimes he failed to make inroads with people, perhaps because of his approach. We need to be far more honest about our failures within the church. Mission is tough and leaders get burn-out. Therefore we need to be more supportive of one another.

Local and Global
When we start a Fresh Expression of Church we need to remember that we are part of a worldwide movement. It’s easy to become insular and forget that lessons can be learnt from the wider church.

Final Reflection

At the end was a question time and I posed the question, “What do you feel needs to die within the church before a new church fit for the 21^st century can be born?”

David Wilkinson responded with “We need to die to the illusion that we are still living in Christendom”. In other words, we must stop pretending that if we continue to do things the way we always have, that people will start to drift back into church. We live in a very different culture from 50 years ago and therefore need to relate the gospel and mission to today’s culture. As Victoria Wood once said, “Church is what we used to do on Sundays before Garden Centres”. The Fresh Expressions of Church movement is about presenting the gospel in a manner which is relevant to today’s culture.