What Are Fresh Expressions of Church?

Part Two: A Vine of Many Branches

Church is always better with burritos. Can I get an amen?

Last night, a crew of us gathered in Tijuana Flats for Burritos and Bibles (B&B). At B&B, we eat great burritos and have spiritual conversations. We conclude the gathering with the Lord’s Supper, taking, blessing, breaking and sharing the tortilla, passing around a chalice filled with Hi C from the Coke machine.

During the conversation, one of our twenty-something-year-old first-time attendees shared openly about a harmful experience of church she had as a teenager. She came because a friend invited her to a “not sketchy church.” Her friend April convinced her that even if she found the Jesus stuff strange—the burritos, chips, and hot bar, were worth a try. Greg, the store manager, gives us a discount on the burritos, so it really is a win-win.

“I don’t want to believe that there’s no afterlife, but I just am so turned off to Christianity and the church,” said our new friend. Others around the table shared having similar struggles, but some talked about how pursuing a relationship with Jesus had recently shifted their quality of life. After months of attending, some are experiencing the grace of God in a sustained and profound way.

We call this gathering a Fresh Expression of Church. Burritos and Bibles lives in a symbiotic relationship with a network of other fresh expressions, all anchored to an older inherited congregation, St Marks UMC in Ocala, FL.

It might seem like a new or weird idea, but what’s happening in Tijuana Flats on Monday nights has ancient origins.

Indeed, most of the great spiritual renewal movements across history start outside the space of conventional religion. Beginning in the Book of Acts, the faith flourished in new (and disturbing) ways in Antioch. In Antioch, Jewish Christians established a network of house churches, in which gentiles were fully welcomed into table fellowship. Jerusalem recognized the radical nature of this development and calls together the first church council (Acts 15). Yep, the first church committee meeting! They decided to adapt, celebrate, and support the new emerging faith communities.

Maybe St Marks and Burritos and Bibles are a twenty-first century version of Jerusalem and Antioch? Perhaps we find ourselves in an Acts 15 moment once again?

Indeed, as long as the Christian faith has existed, there have been movements that bear the marks of what we call today… Fresh Expressions of Church. Perhaps across the span of our Christian traditions we can find common ground and unity in our mission. Across the ecumenical spectrum, we may forge new allyships in our commitment to see a movement of new Christian communities that spring up amid everyday life. We might recover the fresh expressions elements at the core of the story of our own traditions.   

The Spirit is up to something out on the edge with the “nones” (people who claim no religious affiliation or practice) and “dones” (people who once practiced a religion, but no longer do) of our post-everything society. Fresh Expressions is an ecumenical movement with churches across the theological spectrum.

The structures of society are engaged in massive transformation. Much of the inherited church is not connecting with the larger population or engaging the culture in transfiguring ways. How are we to respond?

The preface to the Declaration of Assent that all incoming Anglican clergy must confess says,

“The Church of England is part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, worshipping the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation.” (italics mine)[1]

The phrase “Fresh Expressions” emerged from the conviction in this statement, with the team led by Bishop Graham Cray, who produced the Mission-Shaped Church (MSC) in 2004. The report became an international bestseller, is credited with transforming the ecclesiology of the Church of England, has catalyzed the development of thousands of fresh expressions, and released similar initiatives in Australia, Canada, mainland Europe, South Africa, the United States, and elsewhere.[2]

A fresh expression is a form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of those who are not yet part of any church. We cultivate these communities through an adaptive process of listening, loving, building relationships, exploring discipleship, church taking shape, repeat. These are forms of church that are:

·       Missional: birthed by the Spirit to reach not-yet-Christians.

·       Contextual: seek to serve the context in an appropriate form to the people in it.

·       Formational: focused on making disciples.

·       Ecclesial: a full expression of the “church” not a stepping-stone to an inherited congregation.

The Mission-Shaped Church team was insightful to recognize the massive shift in the structure of society and the need for new forms of church. As Cray put it, “The Western world, at the start of the third millennium, is best described as a ‘network society.’ This is a fundamental change, ‘the emergence of a new social order.’”[3]

Pioneering sociologist Manuel Castells posits that at the end of the second millennium, a new form of society arose from the interactions of several major social, technological, economic, and cultural transformations: the network society. We have just undergone a period of historical transition moving from the Industrial Age into the Information Age. The network society consists of a social structure made up of networks enabled by microelectronics-based information and communications technologies.[4]

In sociology, field theory refers to the environments in which interaction between individuals and groups take place. We often think of fields in terms of markets, academic disciplines, musical genres, etc. But fields simply refer to the social space and various positions that social actors can occupy.

The “fields” of today can be more fully understood by an examination of the “space of flows” and the “space of places” in a network society (flows are the means through which people, objects, and information are moved through social space). Multiple layers of networks, digital and physical, intertwine, connecting people in nodes and hubs. In fresh expressions, we envision the space of place as the first, second, and third places of local communities. We will explore the work of sociologist Ray Oldenburg more fully later, for now:

·       The first place is home space.

·       The second place is work or school space.

·       The third place is common, neutral space of communion, play, and recreation (burrito joints, parks, tattoo parlors, coffee shops, EV charging stations, and so on).

These are the new “fields” of the Information Age.

Fresh Expressions are a powerfully effective way to engage this emerging societal milieu. The Mission-Shaped Church team didn’t initiate the fresh expressions movement. They observed how the Holy Spirit was reaching non-Christians and forming disciples of Jesus Christ where they already shared life. They provided language and began seeking to understand the movemental process of something God was initiating. By realizing the Holy Spirit was once again up to something out in the fields, the Mission-Shaped Church helped birth a cross-denominational movement, tethered to and alongside the institutional church.

The Fresh Expressions movement is emerging before our eyes in real time. Increasingly more Christian traditions are paying attention to what the Holy Spirit is doing within it. Now we have new processes, language, and resources to join in. Entire conferences, denominations, dioceses, and networks are catching on, embracing the movement, and entering strategic partnerships. We are catching this wave of the Spirit together.

I am a Methodist. More specifically I am a continuing United Methodist. Wait, don’t stop reading!

I know this self-description will elicit different images and stereotypes from many readers, many which are not positive. Let me explain what that means to me. I am writing as someone who has been nurtured, formed, educated, and supported by a denomination that loved me into being. This love reaches back to my experience as an abandoned child. In my infant baptism, a United Methodist congregation became my orphanage. In fact, it was St Marks UMC in Ocala FL that nurtured me in a community of love and forgiveness as a child. Now I am back to serve as their pastor.

I am also someone who sees deep flaws in the denomination that I love. It seems I have become an equal opportunity offender. I draw critique from both sides of the theological and political polarization that marks our age. But I have chosen to be a person who reforms from within, and as a Wesleyan, this is an essential trait of our movement.

I’m offering this series for people who love their tradition, want to steward it well, and see the need for deep reform and renewal. I see Fresh Expressions as a pathway to bring forth the best of our core stories for the renewal of our traditions. While I can’t lay aside my Methodist-ness, what I am attempting to do is show how this is a movement for all of us. It also serves as a wake-up call. If we do not discover how to reach new people, in new places, and in new ways. The fate of the traditions we love is in jeopardy.

In the next post I want to explore the why of Fresh Expressions. Stay tuned!

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[1] Graham Cray, Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions in a Changing Context (New York: Seabury, 2010), 100.

[2] Michael Moynagh, Church in Life: Emergence, Ecclesiology and Entrepreneurship (London, UK: SCM Press, 2017), 2.

[3] Cray, Mission-Shaped Church, 4.

[4] Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), xvii–xviii.