Church for Every Context

Michael Moynagh

Description

The first comprehensive textbook on the theology and methodology of Fresh Expressions, one of the most important developments within the contemporary church.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780334048077
• Langue: English

Extrait

Church for Every Context
An Introduction to Theology and Practice
Michael Moynagh
with Philip Harrold
© Michael Moynagh 2012 Chapter 2 © Philip Harrold 2012
Published in 2012 by SCM Press Editorial office 3rd Floor, Invicta House, 108–114 Golden Lane, London ec1y 0tg
SCM Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd (a registered charity) 13A Hellesdon Park Road Norwich nr6 5dr , UK
www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press.
The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

978-0-334-04369-0 Kindle edition 978-0-334-04472-7
Typeset by Manila Typesetting Company Printed and bound by Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire
To Liz
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1 Past and Present
1 Saint Paul’s New Contextual Churches
2 Contextual Churches in History
3 Fresh Expressions of Church in Britain
4 Sociological Perspectives
Part 2 Towards a Theological Rationale
5 What is the Purpose and Nature of the Church?
6 Should Mission be a First Step for the Church?
7 Mission by Individuals or Communities?
8 Why Church with Many Shapes?
9 Are Culture-specific Churches Legitimate?
10 Are New Contextual Churches Faithful to the Tradition?
Part 3 Bringing Contextual Churches to Birth
11 How Do Contextual Churches Emerge?
12 Gathering a Mission Community
13 Researching Opportunities
14 Engaging Partners
15 Action-based Learning
16 Team Awareness
Part 4 Growing to Maturity
17 Discipleship
18 Worship
19 Community
20 Sustainability
21 Towards the Mixed-economy Church

Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Actors often give credit to their scripts, and I have been fortunate to work to an inspiring script written by numerous church founders in the UK. I have learnt from their experiences largely through being a member of the national Fresh Expressions team, which supports and encourages new and different forms of church. I owe a great debt to stimulating and wise colleagues on the team. Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, has been a kind and friendly place in which to write. I am grateful to Natalie Watson of SCM for encouraging me to write the book.
Thanks are due to Simon Cuff, Christopher Shaw and Cara Singer for being excellent research assistants for periods of time, and to the following who have commented on sections of the emerging draft and are not to blame for any remaining shortcomings: Andy Angel, Ian Bell, Mette Bundvad, Adrian Chatfield, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Graham Cray, Steven Croft, Simon Cuff, John Drane, Andrew Davison, Bob and Mary Hopkins, Norman Ivison, George Lings, David Lyon, Stuart Murray-Williams, Louise Nelstrop, Andrew Roberts, Christopher Shaw, Janet Tollington, Steve Walton and Joseph Wolyniak. Special thanks to John Flett, who read a whole draft, made innumerable comments and ensured that it became a much better book. Biggest thanks of all go to my wife Liz, whom I admire continually and who has been wonderfully patient, not least when I have been physically present but mentally distant. The book is dedicated to her.
Introduction
New expressions of the church are springing up in many parts of the global North. Going under a variety of names – church plants, emergent church, fresh expressions of church, missional communities and many more – they are making a significant mark on the ecclesial landscape. Though notoriously difficult to count, they have attracted a growing literature, generated extensive debate and changed denominational strategies. It is widely recognized that something significant is afoot. Church for Every Context offers a theological rationale of what is becoming a global trend. It proposes some methodologies for starting these new types of churches and growing them to maturity.
A report for the Church of Scotland declared that the emergence of these churches ‘has every appearance of being one of the most significant missional movements in the recent history of Christianity in these islands’ ( Drane and Drane, 2010 , p. 3). Alongside an expanding flow of nonacademic books, the academic literature is taking steadily more notice of the phenomenon. Academics have begun both to critique it, such as – in the UK – Hull (2006) , Milbank (2008) , Davison and Milbank (2010) and Percy (2010) , and to provide more sympathetic treatments, such as – again using UK examples – Ward (2002) , Williams (for example 2006), Dunn (2008) and Drane (2010) . Fresh expressions of church have become a topic of study in many of Britain’s theological colleges and courses (Croft, 2008a, p. 47), and the subject of a growing number of MA and PhD dissertations. 1
We begin with an introduction to these new types of church – what I shall call ‘new contextual churches’. It describes four ecclesial currents that are giving rise to these churches. It offers a definition of new contextual church, provides some examples and supplies a rationale for the definition. It then summarizes the concerns these churches are raising, and against this background outlines the purpose and shape of the book.
Four tributaries
‘New contextual church’ is used here as an umbrella term to describe the birth and growth of Christian communities that serve people mainly outside the church, belong to their culture, make discipleship a priority and form a new church among the people they serve. 2 They are a response to changes in society and to the new missional context that the church faces in the global North. In contrast to when it dominated society (what is known as ‘Christendom’), in most parts of the economically advanced world the church now finds itself in post-Christendom, among populations who increasingly have little or no Christian background. Four overlapping tributaries, representing different responses to this new situation, provide the streams from which new contextual churches are emerging.
Church planting
The first is church planting, which has a long history in the UK. It stretches from churches built in new urban areas during the industrial revolution, to the planting of daughter churches, to the beginnings of a new phase of church planting in the 1970s. During that decade, Patrick Blair started to develop his seven satellite congregations in Chester-le-Street, and Roger Forster began multiplying churches across south London in what became the Ichthus movement.
The tributary started to flow more rapidly in the early 1990s largely as a result of church growth missiology. The latter included an emphasis on evangelism and encouraged a new wave of church planting, inspired by the international DAWN (Disciple a Whole Nation) strategy. The strategy represented a shift from ‘come’ to ‘go’ evangelism. Rather than invite people outside church to existing congregations, new gatherings were planted in the hope of attracting those who did not attend.
However, many of these church plants suffered from having a dominant gene 3 that saw church primarily in terms of Sunday worship, albeit done differently. They started down the contextual road, but did not travel far enough to reach people who were outside the church. Largely for this reason, a number of these plants were short-lived, while others had little effect on the surrounding community. ‘Many new churches failed to thrive. Some closed after years of struggle. Many more are small, weak and making little impact’ ( Lings and Murray, 2003 , p. 4).
A deep desire to connect church with people outside, missional reflection on postmodern culture and in some cases ‘post-evangelical’ angst encouraged more contextual and diverse forms of church planting in the late 1990s, often involving small groups below the radar of the wider church. The momentum has built up since. In addition, churches serving ethnic minority communities have proliferated, but have generally not expanded to include other cultures.
The emerging church conversation
Originating in the United States, this second tributary consists of a smorgasbord of groups and individuals who want to find what they consider to be more authentic ways to live the Christian faith. Found mainly among the Gen X and Gen Y generations, participants in the emerging church conversation seek to connect with popular culture, postmodern practice and philosophy, and reflect a widespread disenchantment with evangelicalism ( Cox, 2009 , p. 132; Jones, 2008 , p. 68). The conversation, in which ‘Emergent’ is a prominent sub-group, comprises ‘a network of networks’ ( Drane, 2008 , p. 90) and has an extensive presence online and in print.
Some of those who would identify with the conversation have started new ‘emerging churches’. Based on an extensive study between 2000 and 2005, Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger (2006 , pp. 44–5) found that three core practices were common to all these churches – identifying with the life of Jesus, transforming secular space (rather than separating the sacred and secular) and living as community (as a way of pursuing the kingdom within the church and beyond). These central practices combi