• Missional Listening Workshop Slides (PDF)
• Missional Listening Exercise Questions (PDF) to be answered based on a demographic segment from this handbook.

Bob Jackson

Church of England consultant, Ven. Bob Jackson, proposes an answer to his own question in a recent paper.

“Once upon a time we thought we knew what church was and how to measure it. Church happened when we gathered in a consecrated building for a public act of worship with a priest on a Sunday. So we measured the size of the church by the number of people who attended the public act of worship. Until the year 2000 we counted ‘Usual Sunday Attendance’, and since then we’ve also used ‘Average weekly attendance in October’, including weekdays.

But attendance & electoral roll measures have never done full justice to what we think church really is. So today I want to pose the deeper questions: ‘What is church?’ & ‘How do we measure it?’”

Read complete text

* Ridley Hall, Cambridge and Cranmer Hall, Durham, UK

Both have hired experienced practitioners of fresh expressions of church to head up their pioneer training—Mike Volland (who started FEIG in Gloucester) at Cranmer and Dave Male (who started The Net in Huddersfield—and will be the speaker at VCP in a couple of weeks) at Ridley.

* Trinity College, Bristol UK

This is where I trained a hundred years ago. The present principal, George Kovoor, has turned the traditional model of training on its head. The college bought houses in poorer parts of the city. The students live there in community and serve their local parish. Professors then work with the students in the parish. And, from time to time, they come into the college for classes! But the emphasis is on on-the-job training.

* St Mellitus, London, UK

A fully authenticated seminary that began as an offshoot of Holy Trinity, Brompton (home of Alpha). The whole college has an emphasis on pioneering of different kinds. It was the Principal, Graham Tomlin, who told me, “Pioneers need more theology than pastors of existing churches, not less: pioneers are often the sole bearers of the tradition in their context, so they need to get it straight!”

* Oak Hill College, London, UK

When they began a missionary training program some years ago, they thought it was great that missionaries could be trained alongside clergy. Now they realise it’s equally significant that clergy be trained alongside missionaries! When I took a tour of the college last summer, I met five students, quite separately, who all told me they expected to be involved in church planting at some point in their future. Impressive.

* The Church Missionary Society, Oxford, UK

CMS is not a seminary, but they do know about missions. Their hands-on pioneer training program (in conjunction with Ripon College, Cuddesden) has just been approved by the Church of England bishops as an official route of training for ordination.

* Tyndale Seminary, Toronto

Tyndale offers an In-Ministry M.Div for those currently in ministry. This takes three years, one day a week, and then one year full-time. The program has a strong missional, church planting emphasis. Wycliffe’s own Peter Robinson was one of their faculty until he came to us.

I am interested to know what ideas you might have. What is the best way to equip a new generation of pioneering leaders with the skills they need, without skimping on theology, Bible and history? Does one of the models I have described particularly attract or intrigue you? What would help you most? Let me know, and we’ll feed it into the discussions.

Pishoy is a Coptic Orthodox priest who leads the multicultural congregation of St Maurice and St Verena in north Toronto. (You can read about it here.) The fact that I can use the words “Coptic” and “multicultural” in the same sentence ought to give you a clue as to why this whole thing is unusual, since Coptic is normally a synonym for Egyptian.

A few years back, Pishoy became grieved that when young people from the Coptic Church married outside the Orthodox faith they were automatically excommunicated, even if they were marrying a Christian from another denomination. At the same time, he heard stories of non-Egyptians being made to feel unwelcome at Coptic churches—simply because they were not Egyptians. No wonder Coptic young people were going elsewhere to marry their non-Coptic fiancés and fiancées!

He decided that what was needed was a Coptic Orthodox Church that was intentionally welcoming to people of all ethnicities and nationalities. You won’t be surprised to hear that he ran into opposition. (“We’ve never done it that way before”—the seven last words of many churches.) Then, however, he got a call from the Pope’s office, inviting him to an interview in Alexandria. Yes, that is not a misprint: the Copts have their own Pope, Shenouda III, 117^th Pope of Alexandria (OK, I confess: I googled him), now 88 years old. To Pishoy’s amazement, the Pope was totally supportive of what Pishoy wanted to do, so on his return he took steps to begin a church plant—from the very first both authentically Coptic Orthodox and authentically multi-cultural.

You doubt whether it is possible? Pishoy told me today that the average Sunday attendance is presently 400, most of the congregation is under the age of 35, and 45 nationalities were present at the last count.

Oh, and the unusual defence? Well, about 20 friends, family and well-wishers from the church attended, including three other Coptic Orthodox clergy (their cassocks, long beards, and large pectoral crosses were a subtle clue) and a bishop (his diocese? North America) who just happens to be Pishoy’s brother. When the result was announced—Pishoy was successful in his defence—Bishop David presented him with a new and splendid pectoral to mark the occasion, and made a speech about the importance of Pishoy’s work for the future of the Coptic Orthodox Church in North America.

With many D.Min theses (including mine), you wonder if anyone will read ever read them or do anything about their recommendations. With this one, it is obvious already that it is making a difference, and will continue to do so, not just for the Coptic Orthodox Church but for the Kingdom. You can see why Pishoy is one of my heroes.

photo Jill Homer

FXCA update january 2012

Happy New Year everyone!

The Fresh Expressions Canada (FXCA) Team, is a team of committed volunteers, who in addition to each following their chosen careers, also lend their significant gifts to our shared goal, “to encourage the development of fresh expressions of church alongside more traditional expressions, with the aim of seeing a more mission-shaped church take shape throughout the country.”

FXCA team member and web manager Ryan Sim,  has been busy for the last year leading reconnect, a new church community of young professionals in downtown Toronto with little or no Christian background, based out of St. Paul’s Bloor Street. The New Year sees him embarking on a new project which he describes in his blog, Adventures in Church Planting. “For the next six months, I’ve been asked to research a new church plant in Ajax, Ontario, a suburban community in the Greater Toronto Area.  All sorts of people have asked me great questions:

• What kind of research has to happen?
• What do you hope to learn?
• How do you go about building a team?
• What will the church be like, and where?
• When/where will you start Sunday services?
• and more.

So I’ve decided to start blogging, in hopes that others can follow along and support me, pray for me, challenge me, and maybe even learn something (whether from successes or disasters!).”

Another team member, John Bowen MSM coordinator, is on sabbatical from Wycliffe College this semester. Two of his projects are:

(a) Editing a book of fifteen essays by various authors on the church’s mission in Canada today. This will be published by Wipf and Stock, hopefully early in 2013. (John is the editor of  “The Missionary Letters of Vincent Donovan. 1957–1973“, also published by Wipf and Stock.)

(b) Reviewing the evaluations from those who field-tested the Reimagining Church course in the Fall, and making appropriate changes. The revised course will then be available to all who want to start mission-shaped conversations where they live.

Sue & Andy Kalbfleisch have been hard at work for much of 2011 filming and editing “A Missional Road Trip,” a 30 minute documentary  for the Diocese of Toronto. Watch it here. In addition Sue is the  Messy Church Canada coordinator, as well as coordinating Vision Days for FXCA.

The team really appreciate your support. Please pray for us as we go into a FXCA Consultation with Dave Male Feb. 1st & 2nd in Toronto.

Vital Chuch Planting Conference, Toronto, Feb. 2-4 2012

The Missional Roadmap. The conference will be taking a deliberately practical focus this year to help dioceses, parishes and teams begin new missional projects, church plants and fresh expressions of church. Watch a short promotional video here.

• dream dreams
• ask questions
• share your story
• think about what it is to be church
• find out about fresh expressions
• discover resources
• build networks and relationships

The first Fresh Expressions Vision Day to be held in Saskatchewan, will happen on Saturday February 25th in Regina. This will be a wonderful opportunity for all members of the Christian community in that city to join in a highly interactive and inspiring day. For more information and to print out a registration form click here.

The next Messy Fiesta will be held at Christ the King – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Lutheran Church in Thornhill ON on February 18th – click here  for more information. For more information about Messy Church in Canada, please contact Sue Kalbfleisch at sue.kalbfleisch@freshexpressions.ca and check out www.facebook.com/Messy ChurchCanada

That’s about it for now! Check at our website www.freshexpressions.ca for the latest news.

Please keep us in your prayers.

God bless,

Nick

Nick Brotherwood

FXCA team leader on behalf of the FXCA team

The kind of leadership that was required for established, healthy churches in a Christendom setting is radically different from what is needed in a post-Christian, postmodern setting where churches may not even exist. The church now needs not only visionary, mission-minded pastors, but also pioneers, entrepreneurs, and missionaries who can take the Gospel to cultures and subcultures in North America where Christ is not represented, and found new Christian communities.

So far, some fifteen students have been involved in the stream to a greater or lesser extent.

I want to address two questions today. Firstly, a theoretical or theological question: What exactly is a pioneer, and how do pioneers relate to our understanding of church? Is it a concept with any theological traction? And then the second question: what does a pioneer look like in practice? The first part is a kind of preliminary apologia for the idea of pioneering ministry, and the latter a case study.

1.  How does the idea of pioneering ministry relate to our understanding of church?

Many of you will be aware of the 2004 Church of England report to General Synod called Mission Shaped Church, which was unanimously adopted, and which has shaped developments in the Church of England ever since in quite radical ways. One of the innovative recommendations of the report was:

The Ministry Division of the Archbishops’ Council should actively seek to encourage the identification, selection and training of pioneer church planters, for both lay and ordained ministries. . . . Patterns of training should be appropriate to the skills, gifting and experience of those being trained.[1]

Several points are worth noting here: pioneering is equated with church planting, pioneering is an “equal opportunity” ministry for lay and ordained; and there should be specialized training for these pioneers.

So what is this about? Is this just another “flavor of the month” fad which wise leaders will ignore because it will disappear as quickly as it arrived? What I want to attempt is not a theology of pioneering, and not even a Bible study on pioneering: it is more an attempt to stake out a theological field, and say, I think this is the area in which we need to dig in order to figure this out.

So where to begin? We begin with God—of course!—and with the activity of God in the world we have learned to call the missio dei. Here is how Jurgen Moltmann explains the missio dei and the church:

Mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God. It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.[2]

So how do pioneer ministries relate to the missio dei? All ministry begins in the ministry of Jesus Christ and flows from the ministry of Jesus Christ, and pioneering is no exception. Let’s begin with scripture. The term pioneer occurs in the NT several times: the Greek word is archegos, which is variously translated originator, author, founder and pioneer[3] and is always applied to Jesus Christ: “God exalted [Jesus] at his right hand as Leader and Savior” (Acts 5:30-31); “you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:14-15); “It was fitting that God . . . in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10); and (perhaps the best-known):

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses . . . let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

There is another related word, however, which is applied to Jesus and to his followers, and that is the term “apostle.” Jesus is only called an “apostle” once (in Hebrews),[4] but in the Gospel of John the idea of being sent (which is the meaning of the Greek word apostello) is central: Jesus is described as being sent by the Father no less than forty times.[5] Then, at the end of the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21): for John, this is the point at which the disciples become “the apostles,” sent by Jesus as he was sent by the Father.

The question has dogged Christian history, however, whether the twelve are the only ones legitimately called “apostles.” Most agree that the twelve have a unique role as apostles: as John Stott puts it, they were “a very small and distinctive group . . . personally chosen and authorized by Jesus, and had to be eyewitnesses of the risen Lord.” He adds, “in this sense there are no apostles today.”[6]

But there are other senses. For example, Stott also says, “The verb apostello means to ‘send,’ and all Christian people are sent into the world as Christ’s ambassadors and witnesses, to share in the apostolic mission of the whole church.”[7] In between these two meanings (the twelve and all Christians) is a third sense. Michael Griffiths cites New Testament scholar John Goldingay as pointing out that the word ‘apostle’ is ‘etymologically equivalent to missionary,’ and that ‘apostles are perhaps the pioneer missionary evangelists through whom Christian communities are founded.’  Griffiths adds, “It does not seem biblically necessary to deny the continuing existence of apostles in this secondary sense of pioneer church-planting missionaries.”[8] It is interesting to note that in both Catholic and Protestant tradition, this is the way the term is popularly used: St Francis Xavier, “apostle of the Indies and Japan,” William Carey, “apostle to India,” and so on.[9]

The term “apostle” in this sense was little used during the centuries of Christendom, and it was not a ministry that was recovered by the mainline Protestant Reformers. Indeed, most scholars agree that the Reformation lacked any significant missionary impulse. [10]  Unfortunately, missiology is not just an optional extra, like heated seats in your car. Ignoring mission is more like leaving the chili powder out of your chili recipe: everything is affected and the chili is just not the same thing.

So, for example, the Reformation’s understanding of ministry is different because of the absence of missiology. Case in point: the Reformers do not consider the possibility of apostles as “pioneer missionary evangelists.” Lutheran theologians, for example, believed that the Great Commission of Matthew 28 had been fulfilled by the Twelve, and was no longer the church’s responsibility. Calvin similarly sees apostolic ministry as having come to an end. In his commentary on Ephesians 4, he writes:

[O]f the offices which Paul enumerates [apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher], only the last two [pastor and teacher] are perpetual. For God adorned His Church with apostles, evangelists and prophets, only for a time . . . But without pastors and [teachers] there can be no government of the church.[11]

For him, the main issue is whether pastor and teacher constitute one gift or two.

Newbigin summarizes the effects of this lack of missiology like this:

[T]he period in which our thinking about the Church received its main features [that is, the Protestant Reformation] was the period in which Christianity had practically ceased to be a missionary religion. . . . It was in this period, when the dimension of the ends of the earth had ceased to exist as a practical reality in the minds of [Protestant] Christians, that the main patterns of churchmanship were formed. The congregation was not a staging post for world mission but a gathering place for the faithful of a town or village. The ministry was not understood in terms of mission but in terms of guardianship of those already in the fold.[12]

As a result, whatever the reasons for this blind spot[13], it remains the fact that Reformation ecclesiology does not help us much with thinking about mission or apostolic ministries or pioneer church planting.

However, among those who have picked up Newbigin’s challenge to the church has been a group calling itself the Gospel and Our Culture Network.[14] Their most significant contribution to the conversation is a book called Missional Church (1998). In one chapter, the authors tackle this specific issue of the need for a renewal of apostolic ministries as crucial to rediscovering our missional calling:

Pastoral gifts are important, but in the current setting of the North American church, the apostolic gifts need to be called forth and equipped. While Ephesians 4 outlines a series of leadership gifts [apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher], the contemporary church focuses most of its energy on identifying, training and credentialing that limited section of those gifts related to the pastor-teacher. This indicates the levels at which the model of the settled parish culture continues to prevail. In the marginalized, missional setting that lies ahead for the church in North America, this pastor-teacher model is insufficient.[15]

All this is what lies behind the decision of the Wycliffe College, following the lead of the Church of England and its theological colleges, to introduce the pioneer stream to the M.Div program, not instead of training leaders for existing congregations, but alongside them. I am happy that we are not trying to introduce the term “apostolic,” because it would sound pretentious and presumptuous, even elitist. But if we understand apostles in this sense to be “pioneer missionary evangelists through whom Christian communities are founded,”[16] then technically it is what we are seeking to do.

That’s the first question. But then we ask what exactly is this unfamiliar animal called the pioneer minister? The second part of this paper addresses this question:

2.     What does a pioneer look like?

Here I want to draw on my work on Vincent Donovan, and particularly his letters.  Donovan lived from 1926 till 2000. For sixteen years, from 1957 till 1973, he was a Roman Catholic missionary in Northern Tanzania, and for two of those years (1966-1968) worked among the Maasai. He belonged to a missionary order, the Order of the Holy Ghost, begun in the 19^th century and more commonly these days called the Spiritans. In 1973, he returned to the US, and in 1978 wrote a book about his experiences called Christianity Rediscovered (Orbis Books, 1978, 2003), which has become something of a classic in missiology,  cited in works as diverse as Adrian Hastings’ A History of African Christianity, 1950-1975 (1979), George Sumner’s The First and the Last (2004), Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder’s Constants in Context (2004), the Church of England’s Mission-Shaped Church report (2004), Brian McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy (2004), and Dorothy Hodgson’s The Church of Women (2005).

Let me suggest six characteristics I see in Donovan which I think may be fairly said to be typical of those with this apostolic charism of pioneering.

(1)  Pioneers are restless at knowing that people have not heard the Gospel

I suspect this is the basic motivation for pioneers. You see it clearly in the Apostle Paul:

I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him shall see, and those who have never heard of him shall understand.” (Romans 15:20-21)

Most Christians who see themselves as communicators of the Gospel spend their time preaching to those who have already heard the name of Christ, and are content to do so. Paul is different: so is Donovan. In June 1960, he writes:

I personally am responsible for preaching the gospel to seventy-thousand Arusha tribesmen, and further up the line, together with another priest, I am responsible for doing the same to fifty-thousand Meru tribesmen. That’s 120,000 people on the conscience of Reverend Vincent J. Donovan of Winston Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. . . . Perhaps you understand that it is not easy to get on a personal first-name relationship with all of my parishioners, especially since some of their names are so difficult, that it develops an extra muscle in your tongue if you pronounce them often. (June 1960)

Notice how he starts: “I personally am responsible for preaching the gospel.” There is already a Catholic church among the Meru with thirty-one members, and some would be satisfied to minister to them—but not a pioneer. Here is one of his clearest statements of why:

For a big group of people in our own diocese [the Meru] whose tribal ground covered an unbelievably large land area, the gospel was an unknown quantity. They had never heard it. . . . How I longed to go to them! (April 1963, emphasis original)

Donovan, like the Apostle Paul, is a pioneer in the sense that he has a deep yearning to go to those who have never heard the gospel. This is the deepest desire of his heart.

This is why, as he looks at the church’s deployment of its resources around the world, it grieves him that:

out of the forty-thousand missionaries of the world . . . less than one thousand of them [are] assigned to evangelize the four-fifths of the world that is pagan. . . . scarcely eighteen percent of the world  . . . has heard of Christ, nearly two thousand years after the Resurrection.  (July 1970)

As a result, the conviction grew on him during his early years in Tanzania that, for him at least, other ministries had to be secondary. Early on, he is proud of the fact that missionaries need to be generalists. He (and the great majority were men) needs to be “pastor, principal of school, architect, mason, carpenter, painter, plumber, mechanic, judge, doctor, cook, employer, administrator, accountant, diplomat, explorer, lawyer, beggar, [and] priest” (August 1959). But by 1965, he is bemoaning the fact that “many of the priests and other missionaries who were working in East Africa were doing everything but teaching religion. And you know, that is actually why they came to Africa—to teach religion—or ‘to preach the Gospel,’ as it says in the Bible.” (April 1965) In December of that year, he writes, “I have been involved in many kinds of work out here, building, transporting, medical, social, educational, and searching out new sections where the church has never entered.” Then he adds a very revealing note: “but it was in catechetical work that I truly felt I was closest to the heart of the matter.” It’s the work of evangelizing those who have never heard the Gospel that engages him most fully.

This impulse leads to a second characteristic of pioneers:

(2)  Pioneers are more centrifugal in their ministry than centripetal

Here’s how he summarized one stage of his work:

Most of my time is not spent around the little mission church, but outside the mission. Most of my work is not with the Christians, but with Pagans and [Muslims]. It is an entirely different atmosphere, and calls for entirely different methods. (June 1960)

Later on, thanks to the influence of Anglican missiologist Roland Allen, he begins to understand the Apostle Paul’s method of missionary work, and contrasts it with what other missionaries have been doing for decades, and you will notice his use of the terms centrifugal and centripetal:

Paul  . . . neither built nor established a mission [meaning a “mission compound”]. He himself was the mission, he and his companions, a mobile mission, a temporary mission in any one place, a team in motion or movement towards the establishment, not of a mission, but of an indigenous church. Paul founded churches. We found missions. . . . In the latter case, it is no longer a centrifugal force reaching out forever as far as it can.  It becomes instead centripetal, attracting everything to itself. Instead of symbolizing movement towards another thing (in this case, church [that is, a new congregation]), it becomes instead, itself, the end of the line. . . . The word missionary is really a misnomer in this context. The command to go out and preach the gospel has become subtly transformed into “Stay here; take care of what you have. Let others come to you.” Missionary movement comes to a dead stop.  (July 1970)

Of course, as soon as you decide to “go” and get involved with “the other,” questions arise. We know how to relate to those who are similar to ourselves. Derek Warlock, former Bishop of Liverpool, once defined culture as “the way we do things round here.” When we meet “the other,” we find they “do things” differently, all the way from a different language to a different understanding of God, and we are faced with the question of how to communicate the Gospel in this different culture. As a result, pioneers by the very nature of their calling are faced immediately and urgently with what we call for short “Gospel and culture” questions—rather more than those of us for whom church is our normal environment.

It is clear that the Apostle Paul wrestled with this question:

Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! . . . [T]hough I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. . . . To those outside the law I became as one outside the law . . . so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, [why?] that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings. (1 Corinthians 9:16-23)

This leads me to suggest another characteristic of pioneers:

(3)  Pioneers seek to sit light to their own culture

I don’t know if Donovan ever encountered the writings of twentieth century Sri Lankan missiologist D. T. Niles (1908-1970), but he would certainly have sympathized with Niles’ advice:

When the missionaries came to our lands they brought not only the seed of the gospel, but their own plant of Christianity, flowerpot included. So . . . what we have to do is break the flowerpot, take out the seed of the gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and let our own version of Christianity grow.[17]

Donovan’s Order was sensitive to this issue from the beginning. Their founder, Francis Libermann (1802–1852), had advised them, for example:

Put off Europe, its customs, its spirit. . . . Become Negroes to the Negroes, in order to form them as they should be, not in the fashion of Europe, but allow them to keep what is peculiar to them.[18]

Having said that, however, Donovan and some of his colleagues were dissatisfied with the way the Order was living out its charism in the late 1950’s. In an early letter, Donovan notes, without comment:

Several [Spiritan missionaries] have built their own houses; one of which could have come out of the pages of “Better Homes and Gardens” at half the professional price. One of them  . . . without any training whatsoever, designed himself a beautiful, magnificent Gothic Cathedral—and has almost completed it.[19] (August 1 1959)

A Western flowerpot was governing the shape of the African plant. Some of the dissatisfaction had to do with the Diocese of Moshi, where Donovan was first placed. Although it was under African leadership by this time[20], the church there had taken on a particularly European coloring, at least in Donovan’s eyes. They were, he reports, “Western in education, western in dress, western in the Christian names they bear, the churches they worship in, and the hymns they sing” (October 1967). Libermann had explicitly warned against imitating “the fashion of Europe,” so no wonder Donovan and his colleagues were dissatisfied. However, in 1963, a new diocese, the Diocese of Arusha, was carved out of the growing Diocese of Moshi, a Spiritan bishop (Dennis Durning) was appointed, and most of the Spiritan missionaries were transferred there. This gave them scope to put into practice their convictions about enculturation.

By 1965, Donovan has begun to use the phrase “naked Christianity”—that is, Christianity without any cultural trappings. He comes close to Niles’ analogy by saying, “I had to plant the seed in the Masai[21] culture, and let it grow wild.”[22] He says the goal of the Spiritans is:

to examine our religion itself, strip it of all the accidentals that have accrued to it throughout the years and centuries; see if we could get back to a kind of naked Christianity. People have a tendency to cling to accidentals and forget essentials. We wouldn’t give our people a chance to cling to accidentals, because we wouldn’t teach any. (June 1965)

Most these days, I think, would agree with David Bosch, who says, “There never was a ‘pure’ message, supracultural and suprahistorical. It [is] impossible to penetrate to a residue of Christian faith that was not, in a sense, already interpretation.”[23] Newbigin suggests that to try and separate what is cultural in our understanding of the faith from what is “authentic” is “like pretending to move a bus while you are sitting on it.”[24] It cannot be done. The closest we can come, he suggests, is through studying scripture with people of other cultures and learning to respect their perspectives and thus question our own—as might happen, for example, at an international conference.

In Christianity Rediscovered, Donovan actually describes how this happened for him: for example, in his work among the Maasai, he assumed that candidates for baptism would be examined and baptized one by one—whereas the Maasai assumed that whole villages would be baptised together as communities. Donovan could have insisted that his way was the right way, but was sensitive enough to realise the Maasai were right and he was wrong: whole villages were baptised.[25]

Even though it is impossible to distinguish “naked Christianity,” yet the awareness that all of us have cultural biases in interpreting the Gospel, and the willingness to accept correction from someone of another culture, is crucial for our spiritual health—and especially for those who are pioneers.

Fourthly, if pioneers want to take the Gospel to those who have never heard it, and are sensitized to cultural differences, then a major characteristic will be that:

(4)  Pioneers have a desire to translate the Gospel

Not long after he arrived in Tanzania, Donovan was struck by the fact that many of the hymns the African Catholics sang were Swahili words set to “Alsatian, French and German” tunes. The most Westernized of the tribes, the Chagga, seemed to be satisfied with this, but the Maasai were not: he writes, “They do not like Swahili . . . And they do not understand or like European melodies.” So Donovan began to collect Maasai tunes, and set the words of the Mass (Latin, of course!) to those tunes. The result was dramatic:

After the Mass, the Masai . . . in the blankets and skins came to me with tears in their eyes, to thank me for bringing to them, in a way they understood, the message of God and the worship of God.

The mark of a pioneer is not just that he or she does this, but that they find joy in doing it: “Would you think me strange if I told you that that day there were tears in my eyes, too—if I told you that there is nothing—nothing quite like missionary work?” (Aug 9, 1960) Not surprisingly, he adds, “I became half Masai myself” (July 1960).

It’s an interesting historical footnote that around this time he asked his bishop for permission to do the whole of the high mass in the Maasai language. The bishop, a Chagga by the name of Kilasara, had no choice but to say no but, Donovan comments, “I was told such permission will be granted at the Ecumenical Council soon to be held.” (August 9 1960) That “Ecumenical Council” was what came to be known as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), at which the Spiritans and their concerns were well represented.

This passion for translation is actually one way that a pioneer safeguards against imposing his or her own culture. Lamin Sanneh is an African teaching at Yale, who has written extensively on the effect of translation. He puts it this way:

[T]he gospel is potentially capable of transcending the cultural inhibitions of the translator and taking root in fresh soil [the seed image again!], a piece of transplanting that will in time come to challenge the presuppositions of the translator [—precisely what happened with Donovan’s revolution about communal baptisms] . . . When one translates, it is like pulling the trigger of a loaded gun: the translator cannot recall the speeding bullet.[26]

Perhaps it is obvious by now, but the fifth characteristic is worth spelling out:

(5)  Pioneers are willing to take on a challenge

The desire to share the Gospel with those who have never heard it means that pioneers are prepared to make sacrifices. On two occasions, Donovan’s bishop asked him to take on a pioneering challenge. The first was in 1961, when Bishop Kilasara sent a message asking Donovan to leave the Senior Seminary in Kibosho, which he had been directing, and to go to Usa River to begin a mission among the Meru tribe. Donovan writes:

The Meru! They stretched out from the south east corner ofMountMerudown into the plains far below. I remembered hearing back in 1958 that in the whole Meru tribe, there were only eleven Catholics. I asked the vicar general if he knew how many Catholics there were in the tribe now. He said according to the latest statistics there were now thirty-one. Thirty-one Catholics in a tribe of fifty-thousand! They were one of the most stubborn tribes we had ever come in contact with, rejecting every advance we ever made towards them. The vicar general was smiling. (April 1963)

Most of us would not be excited at such a challenge. Donovan is different. His immediate response? “Mission to the Meru! Mission to the Meru! My heart began to sing” (April 1963).

For a pioneer like Donovan, the challenge of a pioneering assignment like this is precisely what gives him joy.

Five years later, his bishop (now the Spiritan Bishop Durning) wanted him to apply the missionary strategy that he had developed among the Maasai to another tribe, the Sonjo, and again Donovan rose to the challenge:

The Sonjo! The Sonjo are a tribe more primitive than the Masai, mysterious in their origins . . . almost completely impervious to any outside influence. . . . Because of [this], they can be an extremely difficult people with which to work. . . . Of course, this is what I had been dreaming of, what I had been saying we not only can do but must do—evangelize one tribe after the other, and move on, never settling down, never letting the word mission be changed from the active, moving, dynamic thing that it is supposed to be into a static, settled down, comfortable, turned-in, institutional, end-of-the-line type thing that it usually becomes. . . . I took the job—and a stiff drink the bishop offered me. (September 1968)

In light of the first five characteristics, I do not think the final one will come as a surprise:

(6)            Pioneers are often considered trouble-makers

Donovan himself does not seem to have been labeled this way, but this is because he was a part of a missionary Order. But the Order itself was often considered a thorn in the flesh by the national church of Tanzania. When the new Diocese of Arusha was created in 1963, for some it was seen as a way to accommodate (and perhaps isolate) the ethos of the Spiritans, who were regarded as uncomfortably radical. Donovan comments on what happened at national church gatherings:

We in Arusha . . . are pretty far out on a limb in many things. . . . Opinions and thoughts from Arusha always caused much commotion, and were inevitably received with much suspicion and fear.

One thorny issue concerned the possibility of ordaining married men. As Donovan worked among the Maasai, he was very struck by how natural leaders emerge from the community—and he would like to have ordained them.[27] But, of course, in the Catholic system, they would first of all had to do seven years theological training, and be committed to celibacy. Even if the churches could wait that long, by the time they came back, how far would they be able to relate to their own people? Donovan describes arguing the case at a national conference:

[T]he hostility from the local clergy of other Dioceses and from Bishops towards the idea of married priests was incredible, we almost thought insurmountable. After a year of meetings, discussions etc., the change in mentality is just as remarkable. I think everyone agrees that something must be done and although everyone is not yet prepared to go as far as we want to go, they are at least willing at last to discuss the problem.  (Dec 30, 1969)

Usually it is an individual pioneer who is a thorn in the flesh for the institutional church. What is amusing here is that it is a whole pioneering diocese (not to mention its bishop) that creates a problem for the national church. One correspondent told me that other Tanzanian bishops tried for twenty years to get Durning to resign: in fact, he lasted 23 years!

Conclusion

You will not be surprised to know that I think we need to do more to nurture pioneers and pioneer ministries. Strangely enough, the two Christian traditions that have taken this kind of ministry seriously are the so-called evangelical denominations on the one hand, and the Roman Catholics on the other. It seems to have been harder for Protestant mainline denominations—Anglican, United and Lutheran, for example—to read the signs of the times and act accordingly. Maybe we had more invested in Christendom than either of the other groups, and are still in denial about its death!

If I am right, then there are three fronts we need to work on: firstly, developing a fuller theology of pioneer ministries and an understanding of how it relates to our missiology and our ecclesiology; secondly, looking for models—starting with the Apostle Paul, but including those like Vincent Donovan, who have exercised the charism of pioneering ministry over the centuries and who have much to teach us; and thirdly, we need to work on finding ways to identify, cultivate and deploy those who have the potential for this kind of ministry.

But let me give the last word to Vincent Donovan:

An inward-turned Christianity is a dangerous counterfeit, an alluring masquerade—is no Christianity at all. . . . Christianity must be a force that moves outwards.  A Christian, in his community or out of it, must, like Christ, be essentially a “man for others.”[28]  Not for himself.  And the Christian community is basically in existence for others.  That is the whole meaning of a Christian community. . . . Christ did not say, “Be good and the world will come to you.” He said, “Go out to all the world.”   (May 1970)

Let us be imitators of Vincent Donovan as he was of the Apostle Paul, as he was of Christ. To the glory of God.

Lecture given on the occasion of John Bowen’s promotion to ful professor

January 11, 2012

This spring, May 1-7, there is an opportunity to encounter Scripture—which is to say to encounter Jesus in Scripture—which will be unique and life-changing.  My friend Dr Al Anderson has for some years taught a one-week intensive course on the Gospel of Mark for IVCF students from across Canada. The more I have heard about it, the more I have coveted (I hope in a good sense) this experience for Wycliffe students. Through this past summer and Fall, Al and Marie and I have been figuring out ways whereby Wycliffe (and other TST) students could take this course and get credit for it. This has now happened, and the course is available—thanks be to God!

So how does the course work?  Here’s how Al describes it:

Over the course of seven days we will study half of the Gospel of Mark. Students will spend over 40 hours in study time, first in individual study, then in small groups and finally as a whole group. An inductive method is used, following a “manuscript” version of the text (that is, printed on 8 x 11 sheets without chapters or verses). The emphasis is on asking questions of the text and wrestling together to come to answers. The process is exhilarating, refreshing, and tends to unlock insights in the passage that have never been seen before. Ultimately it is life changing, as the new understanding of scripture tends to change students’ viewpoints and lifestyles.

I think you can tell from that that this is not like a NT course. Nor is it like a group Bible study, nor is it like listening to a sermon, nor is it like following a study guide.  If it is like anything, it’s most like a week’s immersion course in a foreign language—except that the language is scripture.

So . . . what’s not to like? Well, the price, that’s what. One of the requirements is that you live in community for the week—at Glendon College (on Bayview in Toronto). This costs a further $500 on top of the College’s charge for the course. Oh wow. So I guess that means you can’t do it after all, even though it sounds really good, right? Almost $1,000 for a one week course? Get real!

But wait a minute. Doesn’t God come into this equation somewhere? I love what I’ve heard Peter Patterson, Business Director of the College, say more than once: “If we think God wants us to do this, we’ll find a way to pay for it.” (Not many business managers talk that way, trust me.)

The first question is not, “How would I ever pay for it?” The first question is, “Does God want me to do this?” If the answer to the second is Yes, then the next answer (also a prayer) is, “How on earth are you going to enable me to pay for it?”

It might be one of those occasions when a cheque appears out of the blue. (“I felt the Lord wanted me to give you this. I don’t know why, but maybe you do.”) Such things do happen.  There might also be some “natural” ways to think about this. When people ask you what you want for Christmas, why not say, “Well, as you know, I’m an impoverished student. Money is actually the most helpful thing!” Or what about your church? Many churches have discretionary funds for people in particular need, or for students, or for youth ventures. James warns us, “You have not, because you ask not.” (James 4:2)

I hate to say it but, in the large scale of things, $500 is not that much. You will have greater needs at various points in your life. Not bad to start developing that muscle of faith now with some relatively small exercises, so that it’s strong when the real needs come along.

That experience reminded me of how important preaching is, because what happens if people really believe what we are saying and begin to order their lives around it? Imagine if they do that with sermons about money.

Clergy are often reluctant to raise the subject of money. They know it is a sensitive area and people might get upset. Good church members are hard to find. Why risk losing them by raising a provocative topic? Clergy are also sensitive to the fact that there is an element of self-serving in their talk and preaching about money. After all, the point of such sermons is usually to increase the income of the church which pays their stipends and benefits. And clergy are sensitive to the reputation of the church in many quarters that “the church is only after our money.”

For their part, the members of the congregation often have an uneasy, maybe even a love/hate relationship with their finances. They work hard for their money and sometimes find it difficult to make ends meet. Many are stretched to the point of discomfort and worry over the state of their personal finances. They are, after all, deeply influenced by a culture that encourages them to live on 120 per cent of their income. And they know they should be saving for retirement. Often they feel that they really should be giving more to the church and charities, and probably wish they could.

It’s not hard to understand why talk about money and giving might make them feel uncomfortable, and maybe even guilty and resentful.

So how do we acknowledge this reality and move to healthy ways of talking and preaching about money in our churches?

 Move away from the customary fund raising mindset in which we talk mainly about the needs of the church and how we need everyone to step up and do more to meet these needs. Such conversations do have their legitimate place of course, but they should not be given priority in our talking about church and money. We are charged with the leadership and spiritual care of congregational communities, and so our work is to help our people as individuals — and our congregations as communities — to grow to maturity as followers of Jesus who are learning to live their lives to the glory of God. This involves learning to make the connections between our faith – our commitment to follow Jesus – and all the various areas of our lives: our character, our worldview, our roles, our relationships and our responsibilities.

 Help Parishioners to make the connections as a key part of the great adventure of faith. One of the really important connections has to do with the role that money plays in our lives. Jesus knew that this connection was so important that he spent a lot of time talking about it. Not because he was looking for donations for his ministry, but because he knew that people needed a new way of thinking about money. They needed to be free of its power, in order to live the new life of the kingdom he proclaimed.

Help people understand the role that money plays in culture and the power it has in our lives. Money is about far more than purchasing power in our world.  It is closely connected to ideas about success, living a useful life, being clever and talented, security, fulfilment, satisfaction and joy to name only a few. The spirit of money, what Jesus called Mammon, is one of the most powerful idols in our culture. It is the ultimate measure of almost everything and it is behind a lot of what we do and think in life.

In helping people to follow Jesus and live the life of his kingdom we need to help them to name these issues, to understand them, to see through them, and to put them in their place. We need to acknowledge that these are also issues for clergy and the Church. None of us is immune to the power of money.

 Before we preach any sermon on money we should always ask ourselves, “What is the good news for my people in this sermon?” When we teach these things about the power of money and its place in our culture and our lives with kindness, understanding and empathy, many of our people will hear it as the good news it is intended to be. They will hear it with relief and gladness rather than discomfort and resentment. Our goal in this teaching is to help them to name and understand these things so that they might be set free from this oppressive power in their lives, and enter into the joy of freely living the life of Jesus’ kingdom.

 Empower people to see that generosity is one of the defining traits of a growing follower of Jesus. If our goal is to follow Jesus closely and represent him well, surely generosity will be an important part of that. Not a grudging agreement to give some of my money here or there when pressed or pressured, but an authentic generosity that finds joy in giving. People come to see that all the contentment and joy that they have been taught they will find by acquiring and keeping money and things, they will actually find in becoming more generous. They have been designed by God to give, not to amass. The scriptures are filled with exhortations for God’s people to be thankful, and to live lives of gratitude.  When people are encouraged to think of their lives more in terms of gratitude and contentment as they grow in this adventure of following Jesus, they are free to think more seriously about generosity.

 Offer practical suggestions. A follower of Jesus should avoid developing a life style in which he/she cannot afford to be generous. That has been my answer to questions like how large a house should a follower of Jesus live in, or how large a car should they drive. Give enough that you feel it stretch you and make you wonder if it is too much, has been my response to questions about how much to give. I suggest people try to add an additional one percent of their income each year, and see how that goes for them. Encourage people to always be growing, to never think they have arrived, and to enjoy the process!

 Harold Percy is a Congregational Coach with the Institute of Evangelism. He served at Trinity Anglican Church in Streetsville, Ont. for 19 years, helping to grow it into one of the largest congregations in the Anglican Church of Canada. Harold is the author of three books.

“Northern Lights,” by Christer Mattson in Turku, Finland.

december 2012  update

Hello there!

December already. I am sitting down to write the last Fresh Expressions Canada update for 2011. There is a very light dusting of snow outside. Amazing! Where did those eleven months go? Some of you  will be reading this update for the first time especially those who were at the various Fresh Expressions Canada related events over the past month or so. It has been a very busy few weeks, with trips to Winnipeg, for the National Church Planting Congress; to Fredericton, for a day with clergy, a Vision Day and then preaching at the Cathedral ; to Toronto for teaching in the MSM course and various meetings. Other members of the FXCA team have been hard at work making this year’s Mission Shaped Ministry happen, testing our new resource with the working title  Re-Imagining Church, and designing the next Vital Church Planting East conference.

Over the past year as well as talking about being a church shaped by and for God’s mission, I have found myself saying that we need to be an increasingly Jesus-centred church in order to become more mission-shaped. This always begs the question, “Well, aren’t we?” Which I think is a very good question. Of course all Christians think that we should be, and hope that we are, Jesus-centred, but if I am honest I have to admit that the reality of my life is often far from the cherished ideal. As we approach the celebration of the incarnation, God becoming one of us, God’s “moving into the neighbourhood”, as Eugene Peterson puts it, it is salutary to compare the story of that becoming with our own lives. God the Son leaving the heavenly glories to enter life in all its messiness, where others often make decisions for us, and limitations abound. God’s Son willing to enter into our lives motivated by love. How does that contrast with the way I live my life, and what motivates my choices? Not so much “comfort and joy”, more like, “ Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith.”

So we can choose to use this time to reflect on the progress of becoming more Jesus centred, and how we ourselves are being shaped by and for God’s mission in this his rebel world. Not to beat ourselves up, but to be realistic about how far we have come and how far there is still to go. At the same time remembering that, “The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it!”

“Re-Imagining Church” course undergoes testing.

This brand new course is nearly finished being road-tested and the evaluations will soon be in. If early indications are anything to go by, it could be a winner! In fact one bishop who has tested the course, is threatening to give the course in three locations next year. Watch the FXCA website for news.

Some interesting events to plan to be part of in 2012!

Vital Church Planting East Conference 2012

The Missional Roadmap

Where do we go now?

February 2-4, 2012

St. Paul’s Bloor Street, Toronto, Ontario

Everything seems set for another high quality VCP conference in early February.  The speaker (Dave Male from Cambridge UK) has booked his ticket, focused and practical workshops are falling into place, and registration is up and running on the website.  There is even an early bird rate of 10% off the full price if you register by the end December. Full details are on the VCP website here.

Messy Church (MC) is growing across Canada as a wonderful fresh expression that reaches families with young children.  Messy Church aims to create the opportunity for adults and children to enjoy expressing their creativity, to gather together for a meal, to experience worship and to have fun within a church context – generally on a weekday evening.

Since April 2007, when Nancy Rowe started Canada’s first Messy Church at St. George’s Anglican Church in Georgetown ON, there are now Messy Churches in every province. Anglicans, Lutherans and United Church folks are learning about Messy Church through workshops and Messy Fiestas (a full day MC workshop) and there is now an ecumenical MC in Thorold Ontario with five denominations partnered together (Anglican, Presbyterian, Christian Reformed, United Church and Baptist) meeting in a local Community Centre.

The next Messy Fiesta will be held at Christ the King – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Lutheran Church in Thornhill ON on February 18th – click here  for more information. For more information about Messy Church in Canada, please contact Sue Kalbfleisch at sue.kalbfleisch@freshexpressions.ca and check out www.facebook.com/Messy ChurchCanada

The first Fresh Expressions Vision Day in Saskatchewan!

Regina Vision Day on  Saturday February  25th 2012.

All Saints Anglican Church
142 Massey Road
Regina SK, S4S 4M9

306.586.442

Thanks for all your prayers, comments and encouragement throughout this past year. We greatly value them, and you!

God bless,

Have a good Advent  followed by a joyful celebration of Christmas!

from the Fresh Expressions Canada Team

Ryan Sim

Thomas Brauer

Sue Kalbfleisch

Connie denBok

John Bowen

Jenny Andison

Are you looking for a way to reach families who are not in our churches on Sundays? 

A ‘Messy Fiesta’ is a Saturday workshop to experience and learn about Messy Church.

Messy Church aims to create the opportunity for adults and children to enjoy expressing their creativity, sit down together to eat a meal, experience worship and have fun within a church context.

Reach out to children & young families in your community through Messy Church. This event is both for people who are new to Messy Church and for those who’ve already started up Messy Churches. Connect with others, share ideas and figure out what’s next when you join us for a great day of fun, learning & networking.

To find out more about Messy Church, visit the website where it all started and check out the video at http://www.messychurch.org.uk

Join us at Christ the King – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Lutheran Church in Thornhill ON

on Saturday Feb. 18th from 10 to 3, doors open at 9:30.  Cost is $25.00 each (includes lunch).  

Presenters: Rev. Nancy Rowe (MC Practitioner for over 4 years) & Sue Kalbfleisch (MC Regional Coordinator)

Information and Registration

The first Fresh Expressions Vision Day in Saskatchewan!

The Regina Vision Day on  Saturday February  25th 2012, 9.30am-3.30pm, will take place at-

All Saints Anglican Church
142 Massey Road
Regina SK, S4S 4M9

For more details and to register click here.

The way OM worked was simple. We were sent off all over Europe in teams of a dozen or so with several boxes of Bibles and other Christian books, which we then went door to door trying to sell. If we sold enough books, we had money to buy our daily bread. If not, not. So we prayed, and we went door to door (with our halting French—using phrases I still remember), and we sold books. And each day we had enough to buy food and other necessities. So far, so good.

But the exercise got more complicated towards the end of our time, when we needed not only enough food for one day but for three days, since we were heading back to HQ in Belgium, a drive that would take two days, during which time we would not be stopping to sell books. Added to that, two of our team had to leave early, so we needed extra money to pay their train fares—and lost two of our modest sales force. Then, on top of that, on the last day, we only had half a day to go selling before we had to leave. All this meant that, in a shorter time than usual, with fewer team members than usual, we were in need of three times our daily income. Suffice it to say: our prayers were answered. Suddenly everyone wanted to buy Bibles. We were all amazed. And (as you gather), I have never forgotten the experience.

All this meant that when I joined IVCF staff in 1973, and was told that staff were only paid whatever was sent in for their support, that didn’t seem as scary as it might otherwise have seemed.  And, in fact, during 25 years or so of working for IVCF, there was only one month when I received less than I was supposed to receive. (There was a salary scale, but of course it was more of an ideal than a guarantee.)

I told my spiritual director about this a little while back, and his response was interesting: “Oh yes, that kind of thing has always been a part of the training of the Jesuits. They would be given $5 and sent off to find their way to the other side of the country.” As with Operation Mobilisation (in some ways the opposite end of several spectrums from the Jesuits), the intention was that Christians learn in very basic and practical ways what we say we believe: that God takes care of us.

Not everyone is called to live this way in the long term, though undoubtedly some are—I think as a witness and reminder to the rest of us and to the world. But I believe all of us would be more confident in our discipleship, not to mention more joyful in our witness, if we each had at least one notable experience of having God very obviously provide for our needs when there simply was nowhere else to turn.

This would change the way we approach regular congregational life, where there are always financial stresses; and it’s even more important in pioneering ministry where there isn’t (yet) a faithful congregation you can simply appeal to to dig a little deeper.

God loves us. It’s the most basic of Christian claims, isn’t it? But in what concrete (and financial!) ways have we actually experienced the love of God? Something to ponder. And pray about.

Vital Church Planting East Conference 2012

The Missional Roadmap

Where do we go now?

February 2-4, 2012

St. Paul’s Bloor Street, Toronto, Ontario

Everything seems set for another high quality VCP conference in early February.  The speaker (Dave Male from Cambridge UK) has booked his ticket, focussed and practical workshops are falling into place, and registration is up and running on the website.  There is even an early bird rate of 10% off the full price if you register by the end of this month. Full details are on the VCP website here.

Instead of the usual Tuesday through Thursday time slot, the conference this year runs from Thursday through Saturday (February 2-4), to make it more possible for lay people to attend. Workshops on the Saturday will concentrate strongly on equipping teams for mission. There is also a special rate of $65 for those who can only attend on the Saturday.

“But,” you say, “I’m not thinking of planting a new church. Why would I come?” One reason is that the principles of church planting in a post-Christendom age—thinking missionally, learning to discern where God is at work, creating vision, team building—are applicable to any church that wants to be revitalized and move ahead in mission.

But the theme is also a reminder that there are segments of our society which will never be reached by existing churches, however warm and welcoming. The hope is that some fresh expressions of church will do more than reach out to new people and draw them back into existing  churches, valuable though that is, but that they will over time grow into self-sustaining new churches.

It’s the “mixed economy.” As Archbishop Johnson said recently, “Missional focus, that is what we are about. . . . moving towards a mixed-economy church, a healthy inherited church alongside new church plants and fresh expressions, new ways of doing things.

So the conference is really for anyone interested in the church health and growth—and that will be worked out in many ways, one expression of which will be new churches.

You will find all the details on the VCP website here. Hope to see you there!

.

For centuries, the Advent/Christmas seasons have been a time for folks to automatically come into Church, perhaps for the only time in a year. However, in this post-Christendom, and some would argue post-Christian age, all bets are off. The days of expectation that people will naturally come into events in our churches simply because it is Christmas, are rapidly dwindling. This is not an urban, suburban, or rural issue.  This is not a church size or denominational issue. This is the new normal of every local church in our increasingly secularized age.

It is not a time for despair. In fact, it is an exciting season of opportunity and hope for those in Christian leadership who are willing to fully engage the challenges of our day. In Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the magisterial Prologue in John’s gospel that is read every Christmas, we get a glimpse into the missional heart of the Incarnation:

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish. (Jn. 1:14, The Message by Eugene Peterson)

God moves into our neighbourhood. We have an opportunity to step back and re-think all we intend, practice and believe about our engagement with Advent/Christmas and with our culture. In whatever way your Church makes decisions, I am going to suggest that we gather, and consider six fundamentals of Advent/Christmas planning, before we look at some practical applications.

Ditch the complaining about the hyper-consumerism of our culture or the lack of religious practice in our society. We follow the One who not only is the Word made flesh, but also the One who breaks the back of death, evil and our sin by his atoning work on the Cross. Our world needs the good news of the Gospel as we share our hope that is grounded in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ — the Gospel imperative.

Who needs to be part of this conversation? How can the conversation be expanded to include those not typically in the decision-making process? Engage those who only come at Christmas. Talk to those in your community who do not attend at all. Ask your youth and young adults about their expectations and experiences of what the Church can be and do at Christmastide.

Consider every aspect of your Advent and Christmas practices. Ask yourself the simple but exceptionally difficult question—why? Why do we do what we do during Advent and Christmas? Are these events aligned with the gospel imperatives of the Incarnation?

Consider what it will mean to engage your community this Christmas, versus expecting your community to engage your church events.

Think through when your Advent and Christmas events are held. Are attendance patterns changing? Do we need to change our event times to engage more people more effectively?

Where is the best expression of the Advent and Christmas season? Would it be more beneficial to change locales, to actually ‘move into the neighbourhood’ instead of offering events at our local church building?

These six elements of re-thinking and re-framing our understanding and practices of Advent/Christmas in our churches is the hard work of Christian leadership. You will find very quickly that “Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.” (Hyman Rickover)

Historic methodologies and practices feel good to us, but do they connect the Gospel and our culture? If we have done our homework, and prayerfully thought through these six fundamentals, then we might be surprised by the need for the church’s historic gospel tradition, versus our own local traditionalism. In the context of your local community, remember theologian Jaroslav Pelikan’s famous dictum: “Traditionalism is the dead religion of the living. Tradition is the living religion of the dead.”

At St. Paul’s, as we have sought to consider these Advent/Christmas planning fundamentals, we have discovered some simple and effective things to engage and connect with the communities we serve. We are a work in progress, always trying to pray and think through what, why and how we are doing and being the Church.

Here are some things to think about for the Advent/Christmas seasons:

Advertise early and widely with the message that you want to engage with your community, not simply get them into church at this time of year.

Use social media to get the message out. Even if you have no experience or are personally wary – seek out those who regularly use Facebook or Twitter and learn. The cost of your usual advertising -—newspaper, flyers etc. – is increasing while their effectiveness is diminishing.

Undertake a prayer ministry to pray for your visitors, for your events, for gospel proclamation.

Ensure one clear theme in the music, preaching, and prayers so that your message is coherent, concise and consistent.

Through the Advent/Christmas seasons, place the incarnation in the context of the whole of salvation history. For example, a traditional Lessons and Carols service embodies the great sweep of Creation, Rebellion, Israel, Jesus, Still Being Written and The End.

In preaching, beware of the urge to bury people in scriptural volume. Do not overestimate the biblical literacy of our culture or our church communities.  Just because you know the implications of the incarnation, do not assume everyone does.

Beware of the urge to find new meaning in the old text. Allow the Gospel and the text to shape your preaching.

But do preach! Please do not offer a Christmas devotional or read someone else’ thoughts. This is a prime opportunity for you to connect the biblical story with your community in an authentic and meaningful way.

Offer an evangelistic, relationship-based program that people can sign up for immediately, on the spot that will begin right after Christmas. Use Alpha or Christianity Explored. We use Christianity 101 (C101), which for us starts first thing in the New Year.

Put your best foot forward with preaching, liturgy, music, and hospitality. Think of the famous title of Oswald Chamber’s daily devotional book—My Utmost for His Highest. To offer your best to the Lord Jesus is to do just that, offer your best. Whether we like it or not, people are used to high quality production values and they expect your practice to be aligned with our message that the Gospel is the most important good news in the world.

Consider giving your visitors a small and inexpensive gift that explains Christmas, such as Nicky Gumbel’s “Why Christmas?”

Work to reframe your understanding of Advent as much more than a liturgical season.  Be a community that truly seeks to reshape yourselves and society’s worldview from one of consumption to one of compassion. The Advent Conspiracy (adventconspiracy.org) is a brilliant resource to highlight, particularly at this time of year, that you are blessed solely to be a blessing to others.

Offer opportunities to serve at Christmastide. Perhaps you might offer a Christmas dinner to those who are alone at this time of year. You might encourage everyone in your church to offer one hour to your local food bank or one hour to visit a nursing home. Even the smallest churches will have an impact. To engage your community means to serve your community in some capacity, particularly at this time of year.

Throw a party. If you have a children’s or family service, build a festive venue with cupcakes and balloons. Visitors and their children relate to a birthday party for Jesus. For your Christmas services, provide opportunities to build relationships (not just a coffee hour), where your faith community can genuinely engage the community by not only serving, but also simply having fun.

 We live in a changing world and this time of year can be a season of challenge and over-extension. With Advent and Christmas—we have been given an opportunity to connect with our world. As Christopher Wright wrote in The Mission of God:

 It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission.

 As church, we are made for such a time as this.  We are made for God’s mission, which is to proclaim in word and deed the reality that “the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.

Barry Parker is rector of St.Paul’s Anglican Church, Bloor St., Toronto. Check out their website —and how St.Paul’s is presenting Christmas to their community— at www.stpaulsbloor.org

Does he have anything to say about pioneer ministries or fresh expressions of church? It would be nice to say yes, but the truthful answer is not really. He lived just as the first cracks in Christendom were beginning to show. He did recognise that Britain could not by any stretch of the imagination be called a “Christian country,” and was actively involved in the (re)-evangelization of Britain through his writings, his lecturing, and his broadcasts.

But as far as the institutional church was concerned, things still seemed pretty stable. Every Oxford and Cambridge College had its chapel as a central part of its life. (One of Lewis’ first deliberate acts of witness to his new faith was to start attending college chapel daily.)

Every village had its Anglican parish church and priest. Lewis and his brother faithfully attended their local church in Headington, on the north side of Oxford, although their involvement was somewhat quirky.  You can still see the pew where they sat—almost hidden behind a pillar. They didn’t hang around at the end of the service either. (Coffee hour had not been invented, but they wouldn’t have gone anyway.)

They were deeply conservative about liturgy. Their favourite time of the church’s year was “Ordinary Time” (between Pentecost and Advent) because the rhythm of worship wasn’t interrupted by annoying festivals like Easter and Christmas. Lewis did acknowledge that liturgical change was necessary (“the ideal of ‘timeless English’ is sheer nonsense”), but recommended that it be at the rate of “one obsolete word replaced in a century.” You get the general idea.

At the same time, he was an active evangelist—a ministry that was really not on his church’s radar. Apart from his broadcasts and writing, he was a popular evangelistic speaker. During the Second World War, he was invited to give lectures at RAF bases around Britain, and learned there the sort of questions that “ordinary” non-church folk were asking; he also learned the art of translating theological truths into the vernacular.

Many of his letters are to people who had written to him to ask for spiritual advice. There he shows himself to be a wise, patient, conversational, and caring evangelist. And he prayed for those he counseled. He wrote to a friend:  “I have two lists of names in my prayers, those for whose conversion I pray, and those for whose conversion I give thanks. The little trickle of transferences from List A to List B is a great comfort.” That’s not a bad model for any Christian, whether in an existing church or a fresh expression of church.

Does he give any indication that there might be changes in the way church is done? In another letter, he makes the distinction between the wine of church and the wineskin of how we do church:

The only rite which we know to have been instituted by Our Lord Himself is the Holy Communion. . . . This is an order and must be obeyed. The other services are, I take it, traditional and might lawfully be altered. But the New Testament does not envisage solitary religion: some kind of regular assembly for worship and instruction is everywhere taken for granted in the epistles. So we must be regular practicing members of the Church. [my italics]

What would he have thought had he been alive today? We can only guess, but my hunch is that he would say something like this: “Well, this fresh expressions business is really not for me. But I can see it’s important for the growing number of unchurched people, and I rejoice if it is going to contribute to the re-evangelization of a nation.”

Happy 113^th birthday, Jack. Farther in and farther up!

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What expectations should we have about permanency for these “fresh expressions of church”?

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What king of training is required?

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