Although
I say it myself, the course had gone very well indeed
It was a taster group, made up mostly of existing members of the
congregation, and the idea was for them to see whether they wanted to adopt the
package for their church.
People had been hungry for biblical teaching and seemed to enjoy the
worship each week. The
group discussions, which had begun as completely alien and outside people’s
experience, saw the punters gradually thawing and relaxing, to the point where
many regarded it as the highspot of the week.
The awayday had seen people meeting powerfully with God, and many
received prayer for the filling of the Holy Spirit. So it was downhill all the
way now, I thought. That
was until the final week.
The
notes told me I was supposed to do a
‘now-you-must-all-start-coming-on-Sunday-mornings-or-you’ll-lose-the-plot’
kind of a talk, but sadly I no longer believe that, and in any case they already
did come on Sunday mornings.
In fact the last time I ran the course I told the new and unchurched
converts that whatever they did they should not even consider coming on Sunday
mornings since they’d hate it.
I only went because I was paid to! Instead we planted ‘Alpha Plus’, a
new congregation which continued to meet on Thursday mornings following the same
format.
So
I thought I'd use the opportunity to rewrite the talk and explore ‘Fresh
Expressions’ of church. I
explained how traditional services, however lively, were unlikely to connect
with any significant numbers of people out there in the real world, how church
culture was increasingly alien to non-churched (as opposed to de-churched)
people, but that fantastic work was being done by Archbishop Rowan’s Fresh
Expressions team to explore how we might do church differently.
I showed a couple of clips from the brilliant ‘Expressions’ DVD,
defined church simply as ‘God’s people getting together with Jesus to do
“Jesus things”’, tried to explain from Acts 2 what I thought some of those
‘Jesus things’ might be, and then sat back to see what hit the fan.
Two
things happened. The younger people there thanked me and said that it had all
been music to their ears and when could they begin? But some of the older people
immediately got all defensive about their wonderful church, and explained to me
that in fact people would start to flood to their Solemn Parish Mass since it
was so brilliant, friendly, welcoming and so on.
Alien? No
way! I just didn’t
understand!
Now
this particular church, which actually is pretty welcoming and friendly, would
not by any stretch of the imagination call itself ‘renewed’ or
‘charismatic’. But
I noticed there that evening a tendency which I have seen a lot in my travels
around the Diocese. Many people seem to be in utter and complete denial about
the sheer irrelevance of most of what we call ‘church’ to those outside the
club.
Every
church I visit tells me how friendly it is: none ever tells me that they see
this as a danger, since the more we love one another
the harder it can
be for new people, and particularly new people who are different, to penetrate
the circle. As
I talk about new ways of being church, many people appear simply not to see the
need, or what the problem is with church as we have it.
As
Director of A.R.M. England I spent five years keeping a close eye on the renewal
scene, and it’s my conviction that the Holy Spirit has entered a new phase of
his work. Since the 60s (and even earlier) it has all been about personal
renewal. His
job was to get as many Christians as possible filled with his power, and the
results have changed the church scene worldwide, through what one sociologist
called the ‘megatrend’ of worldwide renewal.
There simply has never been a movement like it in the history of the
world. The results have included new styles of worship, greater effectiveness in
evangelism, and phenomenal amounts of social action programmes.
Some of the stiffness and formality of church life has been melted down,
and there is new joy and community.
But
I believe that the Spirit is now doing something new.
It isn’t that he’s stopped doing personal renewal: he’s still in
that business. But
I believe he is wanting to do for church what he has been doing for individuals.
I see ‘Fresh Expressions’ as being at the cutting edge of God’s
work, and already the same kinds of results are showing: new forms of worship,
relaxation of the formal structures, new power in evangelism, and so on.
How tragic, then that people (including, sadly, some charismatics) are
reacting in the same ways we saw people reacting against personal renewal forty
years ago: we don’t need this, it’s too messy, where is that
in the Bible, we’re
perfectly fine as we are, thank you very much, it’ll divide us so it can’t
be God: you know all the stuff.
People
usually got filled with the Spirit in the past, I believe, when they became
aware of the poverty of their Christian experience and began to long for
something more from God. The
Spirit did indeed fill the hungry with good things, but sent the self-satisfied
away empty. I
believe it’s time to get hungry for our church.
The greatest factor preventing Fresh Expressions from taking root is the
same self-satisfaction which robbed so many individual Christians of the
Spirit’s power in the past.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves that our services, however much we love
them, are ever going to connect with anything more than a tiny minority, and
lets learn from the Fresh Expressions boys and girls about how we might do
something new. Now
that’s what I call renewal!
You
can find details and order the DVD from www.freshexpressions.org.uk
(Revd.
John Leach is the Parish Development Adviser, Monmouth Diocese.)