jonnybaker

how did we get here?

this is a personal reflection on how we have got to where we are w.r.t. mission and the church. it was written for a think tank group in the church of england on mixed ecology (which means the ecosystem that can contain multiple ways of being church especially embracing new forms that relate to those outside of church cultures). in other words it is an english perspective, not attempting to give a global overview, and it is related primarily to the church of england. it was written as a discussion starter so reads as a set of notes rather than a crafted article. i wrote it in the wake of covid. but now seems a good moment to publish it prompted by the emerged podcast. after I had written a draft of this I came across a chapter written by graham cray in cultivating missional change which was a book published in south africa which gives an excellent overview. i have opinions on what i have written but have tried to resist commenting or critiquing at this juncture. i think it best to be generous and see these threads as part of a whole, a wider movement.

Mixed Ecology: How Did We Get Here?

This is inevitably a take and there will be many other takes and lots to fill in. So think of this as a conversation starter and something that others can add to or possibly write other takes. There is a question of how far you go back and why but I think 50 years is probably a reasonable window. 

Two environmental factors

Culture - the world changed significantly whatever way you describe it - post modern, emerging, post Christendom, post Christian even. One significant factor aligned with this is digital and communication technology which has changed so much more than we realise. Some writers see the change as a threat and some as opportunity but the change is not really contested.

Decline - I remember a staged walkout at an event in the 90s of 300 young people which at the time was the stat leaving the UK church each week. Whatever way you come at it church was declining which created anxiety and pressure.

Four tributaries

Urban areas - there is a long history of engaging in poorer areas - worker priests and so forth but the marker that sticks out is the Faith in the City report in 1985 which made an impact. The reason it’s worth mentioning is it raised questions about resourcing, liturgy, young people, race, culture, mission and so forth. It probably didn’t use the term but was asking contextual questions.

Charismatic renewal - there are various tributaries of this but a lot of the same issues we talk about now were in the renewal conversations though talk of new churches came later. Whatever your tradition that movement softened the church and generated openness to the Spirit in a fresh way, and emphasised ministry in the body of Christ rather than being too clerical. There was some threat in this too in that many left and set up other things but a lot stayed and quite a lot came back. Festivals and conferences led to various networks addressing questions of church and mission in a range of ways. The likes of Graham Cray, for example, were quite shaped by that movement. John Collins who was the modern founder of HTB was too. A later tributary though less Anglican was the coalition of youth led initiatives that were part of house church movements and mission agencies from the 1990’s. This included in particular Ichthus and Pioneer along with NGM, Youth For Christ, Frontier Youth trust, Oasis, New Wine and YWAM England. This was a fusion of alt worship exploration and mission impulse. Events such as Greenbelt and Remix explored the objective of reimagining faith in the cultural commons with art and justice themes. This laid the ground for catalysing a number of other significant sub movements including, cultural shift, 24/7, the Factory, Soul Survivor and so forth.

Global missions - Lesslie Newbigin is probably the most famous voice from when he returned to England from India (1974) and drew on issues of mission and culture to say that we needed mission that took the gospel and culture in the West seriously. Another thread from missions was contextual theology which is a relatively new concept growing either out of liberation theology in S America and S Africa. The postmodern turn questioned the West’s overarching domination and narrative in theology as much as in other disciplines so global voices and other voices from the margins became very important. Contextual approaches fit this new environment well. CMS first engaged in Britain as a mission context in the 1970s. And then engaged in a new way following a report in the 2000s recommending engagement with what it described as the emerging culture.

Youthwork - as noted above the decline in young people was a lightning rod for the church’s anxiety around decline. Pete Ward made the link between cross cultural mission and youth ministry in his book Youth Culture and the Gospel in 1992. Youth ministers began experimenting and developing youth church (which they were not able to call that at times). Oxford Youthworks and Frontier Youth Trust pioneered in that space, with some iterations of YFC on board.

Some chapters in the story

Decade of evangelism. The Church of England’s efforts in the decade of evangelism (1990s) haven’t gone down that favourably in history - a review said that it had probably slowed decline at least. There was a lot of effort but not a lot to show for it. That partly fuelled questions of what a better approach was and what might come out of it. At the conference ACE99 reflecting on it, a memorable moment was when John Drane shared a cross cultural approach with spiritual seekers at new age fairs using tarot cards that seemed to polarise the room - one half excited about contextual mission and the other thinking they were hearing some new heresy.

Theology. It was not just a pragmatic movement. A re-theologising was most certainly taking place, with a significant level of thought leadership and theological reflection. Missio Dei became a widely received theological idea that flipped peoples understanding (albeit it had emerged in the 1950s). More broadly there has been a turn to context and a new appreciation of the incarnation in theology – inculturation or contextualization are two ways of expressing it. Trinitarian participation is another way that has been opened up of understanding mission. There has been a new emphasis on the Spirit in mission. Ecclesiology is also an area that has had a lot of attention, notably Rowan Williams introduction to MSC setting the tone for that. And more latterly a whole conversation has kicked off around decolonising mission and deconstructing whiteness.

Church planting. There were several ways into this but church planting became a growing area of interest. Growing indigenous expressions of church was a logical outcome of mission that drew on cross cultural approaches - youth churches grew from this understanding in the 1980s. Anglican Church Planting Initiatives was founded as a charity in 1996 though I imagine was doing things from around 1991. Interestingly in the late 1990s and early 2000s (I think) the annual conferences that they hosted showcased anything and everything new - congregation plants, alternative worship, cell church, youth church. It was only much later that the language of planting became more polarising as it seemed to be the preserve of more conservative approaches to both theology and church.

Alternative Worship. This was a movement that engaged imaginatively with postmodern culture in quite radical ways in the 90s both in terms of the structure of church and worship but also exploring theology in ways that seemed to fit postmodern sensibilities - black, eco, feminist and liberation theologies were all at the table. Intriguingly it also seemed a playful turning away from modernising moves of the charismatic movement towards a blend of more ancient with urban club culture. Greenbelt festival was home to this and then a range of other new forms that were picked up and shared.

Emerging church. The issue named by emerging church seemed to be that it was not simply about changing worship but about the whole - discipleship, spirituality, church, leadership and so on all needed exploring in light of the new environment. In 2002 ACPI, Church Army, CMS and others to agree to start a web site to catch some of the stories of what was emerging and emergingchurch.info was set up to do that. Perhaps a significant book (though not well received by some Anglicans) was The Shaping of Things To Come by Hirsch and Frost which catalysed a lot of conversation about what being missional meant. Some started to call their church expressions missional communities, others drew on monastic patterns and claimed a new monasticism.

Mission Shaped Church. In 2004 this report named the surprise of the bubbling up of fresh expressions of church around the edge, said it was a good thing and named the mixed economy of church in the intro by Rowan Williams. Messy church started that year I think which became one of the most widespread fresh expressions.

Fresh Expressions. The Lambeth Partners funded fresh expressions under Rowan Williams wooing and persuasion and that quite quickly diffused across the church. For example at one time I think Mission Shaped Ministry, a course in fresh expressions had run in 40 dioceses. Other denominations got on board - Baptists, Methodists, Salvation Army, Congregataional Federation, URC to name a few. It also generated a lot of interest in other parts of the world. For example I know MSC was translated into Korean. FX was keen to appeal across all streams of the church and notably published books relating to the sacramental traditions. It has always struggled to shake off accusations of being overly evangelical which is slightly odd given Rowan’s leadership. Several years later the Church of England backed off funding FX - I think because the view was it had become embedded or mainstream but also the funding through Lambeth Partners stopped with a change of Archbishop from Rowan to Justin. Other denominations still support it. The argument in defence of this will be that it is embedded in the strategy now. I will resist commenting at this point.

Church Army and CMS (two of the mission communities or sodalities of the C of E) - Church Army and CMS have been players all the way through the above both contributing to the thinking and theological imagination as far back as the likes of John Taylor but also through publishing, being on the group that wrote MSC, developing training and so forth. Other newer charities or groups have since emerged (CCX, Myriad etc). Dioceses have really needed the sodal structures to call the church forward and to work in partnership with.

Pioneer Ministry. It was a recommendation in Mission Shaped Church that the kind of ministry that was starting new things should be seen as a new designation and pioneer ministry was what it was called. Another recommendation was that training for pioneer ministry should be done through a cross cultural lens which is why CMS for example were invited by the church to design training. Stephen Croft the first Fresh Expression worker under Rowan managed to do the policy work for a recognition of a designation of pioneer ministry and also worked to change the pastoral measure so that it was possible to plant church across parochial boundaries.

HTB. It is probably worth singling out HTB as a passionate advocate of church planting - hosting the church planting conferences above but also developing a model of planting in London by taking on churches that were low in numbers to revitalise them. I am less familiar with the timeline on this and how the trajectory developed into the Resource church model over time. 

SDF - the Church Commissioners shifted how they gave surplus money towards dioceses. Dioceses could bid but one large area of funding needed to be tied to mission and ministry that grew the church. Whilst there have been a range of bids Resource church has been in vogue with the SDF board so a lot of investment has gone into larger city centre church plants. 

CCX - London appointed a Bishop of Islington in 2015 to oversee church planting which was a fairly radical idea at the time. Out of that CCX and latterly Myriad have grown with a focus on encouraging planting.

July 2019 C of E Synod - A report was presented at Synod in July 2019 15 years on from Mission Shaped Church . Research from Church Army has been done at various points on fresh expressions and the report The Day Of Small Things showed that fresh expressions was probably the most effective means of reaching those outside the church that the church had seen for quite some time. A motion was presented and passed encouraging every parish to explore adding a contextual expression of church.

C of E Mixed Ecology Vision - The C of E has a new vision for a church of missionary disciples with Jesus at the centre and a mixed ecology of church. This seems a logical extension of all the above.

COVID. In July 2019 it felt like momentum was really there but the church is now emerging the other side of COVID more anxious and resource stretched. It remains to be seen how that vision is to be embedded and carried forward into the next 50 years.

[a slightly more expansive view of the last twenty years and my personal take on it is in this baker's dozen 13 reflections celebrating twenty years at cms]

emerged podcast

a new podcast series kicked off this week - emerged podcast

it is available on the usual platforms of course. hosted by tony jones and tripp fuller it is a look back at the emerging church movement in the usa - what was known as emergent back then. i really enjoyed the first episode - it's fast paced, lots of interviews, very well put together. i was interviewed by tony so imagine at some point  i will pop up to give a perspective of what was going on in the uk and how the two ran in parallel, collided, enjoyed friendship and exchange. i enjoyed those exchanges very much back then and occasionally my paths still cross with people who were involved. i look forward to following along. they are collating an archive which will be interesting - it will be accessible to members. in the first episode they look at where it all began or what catalysed the conversation. they point to the bigger postmodern shift in western cultures and the significance of youth ministry as critical factors. i am delighted they are doing it in such a rich way. i hope it sparks both wider conversation and catalyses some newness. that wider shift has not gone away, the death throes of the old order are still going on, and we need dreamers of the future living against the odds more than ever. 

i'd love there to be a similar conversation/reflection in the uk. it's twenty years since mission shaped church so i i expect there will be at least some opportunity for that though msc and fresh expressions came on the back of at least a decade of innovation in youth ministry, alternative worship and emerging church.

a new year begins...

i enjoy this moment at the new year of looking back and looking forward, a time to pause, reflect, dream, maybe even dare to hope against the odds.

it's a challenging time in the world. our hearts are breaking for gaza, ukraine, refugees, poverty, injustice, racism, greed, violence, a heating planet, truth decay, rising right wing fascism, a lack of imagination and courage around how to organise society differently. 

the world turns on its axis.

yet this photo makes me smile - a happy moment from last year canoeing the great glen - here with jon. thanks to john fleetwood for the photo. it's good to be alive!

as you journey into the new year with whatever it holds go well. i so appreciate all of you family, friends, artists, poets, pioneers, dreamers, creatives, photographers, alternative worshippers, fellow travellers, pilgrims. be kind, stay true, keep contributing to the world's healing in whatever way you can. 

adaptive church - webinar in january

i have got more and more interested in system change. the reason why is probably obvious. i work with pioneers who see new possibilities and create paths to make the possibilities happen. but they work in a bigger structure - usually the church but maybe a charity or organisation. and it turns out that if you want to see genuine newness and innovation you really have got to pay attention to both or you can get derailed. so i was really interested to come across dustin benac's research published in his book adaptive church. he researches two organisations or what might better be described as movements in the north west of america and does a deep dive on what is happening in the change process there. there are some really interesting insights and reflections - for example he maps what a range of leadership looks like in movements which i have not seen before. and the big takeaway really is the significance for a diocese or denomination of having another organisation that can help call them to the edges, to the future, to change. 

the good news is that dustin is doing an online session for us at cms on january 18 at 3pm. it's free and you can sign up here. i am looking forward to it. i think it's particularly relevant if you are leading at that system level (director of mission or ministry in a diocese or a fresh expressions enabler) and if you are working or leading in a community or organisation that works with churches to help them change and adapt in mission and i also think it would be really relevant if you are involved in allocating funding for mission or growth in denominations or organisations.

you can read details and register here.

another year another celebration!

pioneers graduating this year had the disruption of COVID and training being online for much of the journey. they have done amazingly well. what a gift for the church and locale to have people with energy, passion, imagination, wanting to be good news in their neighbourhoods, and growing new communities of disciples in the borderlands (as bishop lusa put it). we also admitted some lay pioneers into lay ministry in the church of england. i love what I do for a job and am so thankful to church mission society for being such a great community to hold this in. and for a brilliant team.

it is truly extraordinary and so encouraging to hear students say that this has changed their life (I assume they meant for the better!!!). if you are interested in imaginative mission, have ideas for starting new communities, enterprises whether in youth ministry, chaplaincy, new housing areas, your home, your parish, or any place else. if you are dissatisfied and want to do something about loneliness, poverty, injustice, the state of the planet, food, the disconnect with church, refugees, reclaiming the commons, inequality and so forth then jump on board .

every year at graduation pioneers are given a gift created by the wonderful iain cotton . Eech year is a different take on the idea of making a new path in a landscape. this one has a river flowing where the path has been made and a gold leaf, a sign of flourishing maybe? it’s also a riff on the scripture that was read of a river flowing and leaves of healing for the nations. it’s become an amazing series.

natalie has written a reflection on the graduation on the pioneer blog here

cms twenty: mission shaped church and fresh expressions

this is the sixth of a series of short reflections celebrating twenty years at cms

see also  1. gold | 2. emerging church | 3. blah | 4. new forms | 5. worship tricks 

what age do you become mature? we certainly celebrated our two lads birthdays at 18 in crazy style as that felt a moment of transition into adulthood. i had an email this week inviting me to something to celebrate fresh expressions of church becoming eighteen - wow! where did that time go?

looking back on my time at cms it was couple of years in that mission shaped church was published. here is my blog post when it landed on my doormat. this was a church of england and methodist report published in 2004 which was in response to the wave of new things bubbling up round the edges of the church. two members of cms were on the group that produced the report - chris neal and gill poole and i am proud that cms were involved in what was a seminal report really. it is very rare that a church report becomes a best seller but it caught the moment and maybe even a wave of the spirit! it said it was catching up with what was already happening through the likes of the emerging church. it coined a new term - fresh expressions of church - drawing on the declaration of assent where the church says it will proclaim the gospel afresh in every generation. there had been an earlier report called breaking new ground so this was a build on that actually. graham cray chaired it and there was a foreword by rowan williams in which he wisely described a mixed economy of church to suggest that the new and the old were all part of the church's household and he came up with a pretty radical definition of church which has not been bettered since in my view. you can dig it out to find the content but it was generous in what was welcomed into the mix. and it was brave - there would be a lot of work to do in the church of england around culture change if this was to have legs.

the report had a series of recommendations and the then archbishop rowan williams gathered together some people who got behind resourcing it as i think he realised he probably needed to bypass the central funding structures to act quickly. he was an absolute legend, an authority dissenter who was loved to bits by the movement that followed. it's so fun to read the blog post of that evening at lambeth palace which I was at telling the story of grace as an example of a fresh expression and the blog entry is titled bring on the angliCAN church . a fresh expressions team was appointed and they got to work speaking, develioping training, sharing stories and setting to work on policy such as creating a pathway for ordination , changing the regulations around church planting across parish boundaries and so on. the tenth anglican church planting conference that june 2004 sold out. cms were one of the sponsors. but reading my blog post on it you get a sense of the energy that was around. along with notes i took on rowan williams wisdom. it's also weird how small photos were then on blog posts - but i loved this one of steve collins, ben edson and adrian riley . other denominations joined in (urc, baptist, salvation army) and it was picked up internationally. for example i visited korea where it was translated and inspired new expressions. the relationship with emerging church was interesting - if you know the diffusion of innovation curve emerging church was in the early adopters but fresh expressions was more working with the early majority - at least that is my sense of it and stephen croft and i had a discussion at greenbelt one year to that effect i remember. and it really did diffuse to a significant degree over 18 years thus far.

in july 2019 it was 15 years on from the mission shaped church report and at general synod it was reported that this had been the single most effective thing the church had done to reach genuinely new people (at least for a long time). it was also futuring the church in its forms. a motion was adopted to encourage every parish to consider a contextual expression of church (contextual means that it is creatively related to the culture of the place it is in). others would know better than me how theior denoiminations hgave responded.

the diagram above i sketched at one of the later fresh expressions gatherings and jotted down what graham cray reflected on as the facets of its charism.

the weird thing is that it is at a funny moment right now. covid has been difficult for lots of things which is one factor. another i think was a change of archbishop so the funding changed perhaps rightly to things he was passionate about. but several people used language of it being embedded as if to say we've done that - which i think was pretty naive looking back. my own take is that the church has always needed a combination of its structural way of organising and a movement way of organising (the jargon for this is modal and sodal). if you just leave something like fresh expressions to the structural it will likely slide back into more internal agendas. you need those groups with particular focus and energey to help and continue to call the church to its edges. i also think that the nature of fresh expressions was broad church and ecumenical and it worked hard at that with book series in the sacramental tradition as well as the low church end. the more recent developments are located in a much narrower stream or at least that is how they are perceived. that inevitably means some people get on board but others simply won't. the church of england also stopped its central funding contribution to fresh expressions. it is now an independent charity. it's still doing good things but much smaller. i actually feel we're at a bit of a critical juncture to see what the way forward will be for the mission of the church in this regard. i am not saying we should turn the clock back, but in retrospect i think the church has not made the most of the huge opportunity that it was on the cusp of in july 2019 because it thought this was embedded enough. 

the good news is that all sorts of newness has bubbled up and multiplied. the church is most definitely looser round the edges. and cms and church army and other groups who were there before fresh expressions are still here and passionate about and involved in encouraging the mission of the church. we (cms) always seem to be perceived at the more radical end of things (which i don't mind) but actually we have been engaged front and centre in lots of ways. it has honestly been an absolute privilege to have been able to be part of that era and movement and i think cms was great in encouraging and helping resource it. we funded a couple of people on the fresh expressions team (bob and mary hopkins) for a good season as well as carving a furrow in the pioneer end of things (more about that later). fresh expressions is still going in a smaller format and we will carry on! i am so grateful to have been part of cms that has kept investing, kept at the table, kept drawing on lessons learned about contextual mission elsewhere, and shared stories internationally to help fuel this adventure of the imagination. ht to everyone involved. it has been a huge joint endeavour. 

cms twenty: blah...

this is the third of a series of short reflections celebrating twenty years at cms

see also  1. gold | 2. emerging church 

conversation as been at the heart of all the explorations and adventures in mission i have been part of. that conversation has been with all sorts of people round the world pondering the changes taking place and wondering what god is up to and how to join in. stimulating that conversation have been some amazing pioneers, practitioners, thinkers who have published articles, blogs, books. in many ways the movement co-incided with the ability to communicate via technology across the world. initially that was through email lists, then web sites, blogs, social media and so forth. back in 2003 we hosted an event called blah... which we described as follows:

liquid church on tap with pete ward

CMS presents the first in a series of open conversations reflecting on mission, worship, church and christianity in today's rapidly changing culture. the series kicks off with pete ward, discussing 'liquid church'. pete's recently published book is wonderfully provocative and argues for the need to 'liquefy' congregational life and ministry. in london this is the first major forum where those who have read the book can react and discuss it with pete and those who haven’t can find out what all the buzz is about.

thursday march 6 2003
6:30-8:30pm
drinks and refreshments provided
admission free

venue: CMS partnership house, 157 waterloo road

i love that the first one was pete as he has been such a great friend and had such significant impact on me through his thinking and writing. i think we did blah... simply because pete got in touch to say he had a book and could we do something. it went well so we did another. the second one was a book launch of alternative worship with me, doug gay and jenny brown. and it just kept going for several years with people passing through london. blah events also  started in other places like nottingham, sheffield, birmingham, oxford, manchester. in those days i got to go to lots of them and meet people, drink and chat. that was my job!

i don't want these reflections to simply be nostalgic. so i am trying to pick themes that have something about them that is of lasting value. the thing about blah... that was so valuable was it was a conversation - people sparking off ideas and sharing them. there was also wonderful thinking about mission and theology taking place and it was a delight to have people sharing from round the world as well as the uk guests chipped in from new zealand, australia, usa, france and so on as they passed through. i hope that everything now is still a conversation where we are curious, exploring, theologising, sharing practice and learning from it and one another. we still host an annual pioneer conversations day so in many ways blah... has never really stopped. 

trickster remakes the world exhibition in ealing in september

i am taking part in a photography exhibition in ealing as part of BEAT - the wonderful ealing art trail. it's called trickster remakes this world. the local photography group i am part of is putting it on. it is inspired by the book trickster makes this world by lewis hyde. those of you who have followed the blog may remember this being something i have talked about before at the inspiration of nic hughes and kester brewin back in the day. i presented on trickster's ruses at greenbelt a long time back, so it's fun to make that connection again, this time in relation to photography. the details are that it is at 

the rickyard, walpole park

sat sept 10th and sun 11th 12-6pm
mon sept 12th to fri 16th 1-6pm
sat sept 17th 12-6pm
sun sept 18th 12-5pm

as well as photography there will be a few other interventions in and around the park.

if you've not come across trickster, he or she is a character like coyote (see earlier post!) in myths and stories of various cultures. trickster is a difficult character in sone ways - breaking rules, living in inbetween spaces, messing with what's sacred and so forth. but trickster also tends to be revered because they are seen to be critical to cultures changing when they gets stuck. during lockdown so many people said we can't go back to the way things were and yet where is the imagination for a different way or a new world? so it felt timely to open up an engagement with trickster and trickster's ruses. hyde's book explores the way some art and artists plays the role of trickster. each photographer got randomly assigned a ruse of trickster and the photographs will be their responses. hyde\'s book is not actually organised in ruses - they are simply phrases or ideas that i lifted from the book - i hope hyde would warm to the aproach. the spinning wheeel of ruses is here if you fancy having a go yourself!

 

change - last in the pioneer practice webinar series this thursday

on thursday it is the final in my pioneer practice webinar series. i remember last year the series i did took over my january and this year's been no different but it's been fun and so many people have turned out! i have three guests - ed walker, betsy blatchley and tina hodgett. we'll be exploring change both in terms of how you create change in the world but also how you navigate systems or the powers that be which seem resistant to change. i'll be interviewing the guests and doing some exercises - one of the exercises will be trickster's wheel of ruses that i have created for a photo group i'm in but it's so good i want to try it out on the guests! 

it's not too late to register and if you do you'll get sent links to the first three webinars to watch. hope to see you there. 

i apologise that i have not managed to get my act together for any other blog entries since starting the webinars but i'll get back on it including an exciting announcement.

webinar series is back in january - pioneer practice

last january i ran a series of four webinars just imagine exploring creativity and imagination which was a lot of fun. i am pleased to say i am hosting another series this january on pioneer practice. it's a partnership with heartedge and the guests and conversations will explore the themes of pioneer practice and the areas heartedge focus on. register here (it's free). the dates are

• 13 January: Be You
• 20 January: See
• 27 January: Build
• 3 February: Change

here's the blurb...

As a pioneer, you see something — a possibility, an idea, a way that things could be better or new of different. Then you make something happen out of what you see.

This webinar series explores over four weeks how pioneering happens in practice. Its focus is how things happen on the ground. Each week Jonny will have two or three guests and get into the gritty day to day of how they pioneer. It’s ideal for you if you have started something or if you have an inkling or an idea you want to explore and get started. It would also be really useful to attend with a couple of others who you might pioneer something with. If you are a church leader it would be great for you too and do think of people in your church who might have the pioneer gift, whether they know it or not, and encourage them to come along.

That idea might be starting a new Congregation — the Church of England, for example, is encouraging every parish to pioneer one. It might also be an idea related to Compassion in your community. It might be related to Comerce as a way of making good in the world through enterprise. Or it might be related to Culture. These are the four Cs of the HeartEdge network.

recordings will be made available for those signed up to the series so if you can't make a session you can catch up. hope to see you there!

register here

ants in the pants of the body of christ - first expressions

steve taylor was celebrating the launch of first expressions last night. sadly i couldn’t join him as it was in new zealand (though i am hoping to see him next week as i am off on some travels!). first expressions is a reflection on some of the first wave of new expressions of church that back then were either called alternative worship or emerging church. the language of fresh expressions had not yet landed. steve researched these back when he was doing his phd in 2001. he then revisited the communities in 2013 and met with those involved. i have a personal interest as grace is one of the communities in the research, one of the first expressions, and steve came and had a meal and conversation with a group of us as part of that.

it’s so interesting and such a gift to have someone external take the time to research and write and reflect back to you on what they observe and notice in the sense making they do of what was really you and a bunch of others making some stuff up as you went along. steve posits that the birthing and becoming back then has contributed so richly to the wider life and mission of the church, to the becoming of the church in the west. steve is a creative thinker, writer, and theologian who is close to the ground as someone involved in mission practice and someone who also can navigate the theory. this is what makes it have such a ring of authenticity. 

he frames the whole book through a lens of innovation and the mission of god. i really like innovation as a frame. i have blogged about others writing on innovation and mission - it seems to be a growing conversation. steve takes four approaches to innovation - growth, ecology, indigenous and craft. this immediately begins to open up a broader ecclesiology than the usual narrow ‘gathered and grow’ one that seems to dominate (not that there is anything wrong with gathering or growing per se), what he calls a woven ecclesiology. in conversation with tim nash of nomad i recently explored the wider ecosystem of church life and think this broadening of the landscape helps see that trying new things, innovating, making fresh connections, building communities, sharing ideas and so on seeds all sorts of things in the wider environment. in the natural world it is entirely normal that things grow and age and die and seed other things. i can’t help wondering if a big part of our church challenge is there is not enough permission for dying as well as birthing because we have so many buildings we just seem to have to keep going for ever!!!

steve researches 10 first expressions. half of them no longer exist. steve explores this in detail as he too founded a fresh expression that no longer exists as a gathered community. and it’s lovely to read research that is able to show the immense value in birthing, trying and becoming and how it contributes richly to the wider church producing lots of good in and of itself. it’s hard to know what impacts what but these first expressions have been followed by an amazing amount of innovation and life through fresh expressions and so on. steve takes an organisational look with an interview with rowan williams, a reflection on fresh expressions and how that has helped institutional change, and also how mission is organised. i found the last part very interesting as i work for a mission organisation. it is interesting how challenging the way that first expressions structure and organise is for institutions to marry with their institutional ways ways of being and organising. steve comes back to this in a further chapter where he uses the eucharist as an example of the relationship between innovation and order and how existing governance structures might need to be broken and remade. 

there are so many layers and ideas and reflections in the book. this is really just a hasty blog post to say the book’s out and it’s really worth a read and conversation with others. i think it’s valuable for those of us who were involved at whatever stage, there’s loads to learn for those who have pioneered and are pioneering since, and there is plenty for the wider church in mission to ponder. steve concludes by suggesting that ecclesial innovation is the ants in the pants of the body of christ! 

Ecclesial innovation is the ants in the pants of the body of Christ. Ecclesial innovation enables a becoming as one, apostolic, holy and catholic church. It makes visible the reality that is the conversion of the Spirit in individuals, communities and organisational structures. Hence innovation has value as it makes the church be the church, awakening the essentiality of becoming as one, apostolic, holy and catholic church. Such is the mission of God through first expressions.

big thanks to steve for taking the time to do the research and offer this into the wider conversation. and it was a reminder to me of how much fun it has been to be part of a first expression grace, and my life since has been committed to enabling that innovation in mission to be encouraged and catalysed and multiplied elsewhere. i guess i have never thought of myself as the ants in the pants but it's probably fairly accurate :) . there’s lots of hope but also a long way to go, and a lot more becoming to be done.

grief and hope

the fiesta festival in earlsfield was great - it was so good to meet amd learn from the wisdom of alastair macintosh. grace curated a space to reflect on hope and grief - flip sides of a prophet's imagination - or flip sides of the road to newness perhaps. i have added some photos in an album here. it was good to suspend a block of ice for an installation on grief - last time we did that was 2001 apparently!

pioneering in europe

this week i have been at a conference in utrecht on pioneering and fresh expression sof church hearing stories of how people across europe are starting new things and working with their denominations to create space for that. i have written something about it on the cms pioneer blog including links to some of the strategy of the protestant church in the netherlands which is very helpful i think.

half way and more than half way!

fifteen days gone fifteen to go in the kickstarter campaign. i make that half way. the good good news is that we are now over 70% of the way to the total which is more than halfway :) . in fact right this moment there is £839 left to raise to reach our total. so we're feeling pretty good about it so far but we're not there yet and it's all or nothing. so as we start week three please back the project. if you have already big thanks! if you have meant to but haven't got round to it then please get round to it this week. and of course being the internet we all live in our own echochambers so please bounce it around your friends' echo chambers and beyond.

even though i feel we have talked about it quite a bit people have still asked me questions so here are a few FAQ

1. what is it? a zine
2. what's a zine - maga-zine but it will be more chunky, like a book but not a book, full colour, cool design
3. what's it about? dreaming of a better world in lots of areas of life - we asked contributors to imagine a different future and then think what we can do now to help that future arrive.
4. who are the contributors? - see the list in the image to the right
5. what does it look like? ah follow this link to see some spreads from the inside
6. how much do i have to give to back it? £10 is the price of a copy pre-ordered so it's a great deal for you
7. what if i am overseas? yes you can still order and back it only postage gets added. there's a great deal for 10 copies overseas btw
8. who is publishing it? proost
9. when will it be out? - assuming we reach our target we'll print straightaway so july
10. are you at greenbelt? good question - yes! we are seeing greenbelt as the official launch of it. greenbelt's theme is acts of imagination - a kind of perfect fit. so there should be a panel there on future present, and some kind of launch party 
11. where did you say i could go to back it? now you're talking - future present kickstarter

hope that helps!

on innovation 3: feeling your way

how does newness happen or emerge? i am fascinated by this question. one way it happens is through feeling your way. this may sound vague or airy fairy but I think it’s an essential part of innovation that is probably either invisible to many or at least hugely underrated. it’s part of a process or what some call a framework for innovation that is quite widely recognised (though not normally called feeling your way). the areas of process that tend to get more attention often come after this. the previous two blog posts focused on the kinds of people who seem to be able to see differently and make things happen and on the kind of environment that creates the air in which creativity and imagination flourish which will lead to innovation. paying attention to the framework and process out of which innovation emerges is a third way of coming at it. of course there isn’t one - there are multiple ways of naming and describing this. 

the thing that got me thinking about the value of feeling your way or at least made me realise how much I do this personally was reading mike moynagh’s latest book church In life. i really like this book. in it mike uses emergence and complexity theory to explore a framework of innovation and how newness emerges in relation to new ecclesial communities. i think this is a very dynamic way of approaching contextual mission. it is able to be responsive, flexible, creative, learn from what’s happening, and adapt accordingly. but whether or not that is the focus of your innovation it is really worth paying attention to. the innovation framework he uses describes six processes of innovation, which overlap and feed into each other. They are: 

• dissatisfaction
• exploration
• sense making
• amplification
• edge of chaos
• transformation

it’s great to read a book like this that names restlessness, dissatisfaction as a positive thing. lots of organisational cultures prefer to hide dissatisfaction. dave male suggests the same start point in his book how to pioneer. gerald arbuckle names it as grief but is essentially naming the same thing  transformation is the result of the other five processes working together in overlapping and interpenetrating ways. dissatisfaction starts you on the journey. you explore through trial and error alongside prayerful attention. sense making turns your exploration into a story i.e. you are reflecting on what’s happening, piecing it together and making sense of it. in other words feeling your way! 

crucially this involves plenty of conversation and feedback - so rather than having a solution you land and develop the important thing becomes listening and learning and adapting in the light of feedback. mike suggests it’s a move to ‘act and reflect’ rather than ‘predict and plan’. this reminded me of the iterative process outlined in the lean startup.

in innovation or pioneering in mission there is always a whole lot of uncertainty and feeling your way. In relation to leadership in the church the same point i made in the previous post is true. most preparation and formation in theological colleges is not focused on dealing with flexible, adaptable, responsive leadership - it assumes a much more fixed body of knowledge and practices that leaders will go and lead as they have been trained and all will be well. i think mike’s book is extremely helpful in offering a very different framework of innovation for leadership in mission. it imagines an environment where things are unpredictable, and unknown. i also think the edge of chaos is a fascinating insight. systems and organisations that are very fixed and stable don’t tend to cultivate creativity and innovation - they dampen it or squash it. newness is seen as a threat to order. now you don’t want total chaos but systems that are open to change and newness are nearly always less stable - inside the edge of chaos is the sweet spot. feeling uncertain, knowing things are unpredictable and not being sure what the future might look like whilst knowing the present can’t continue as it is turns out to be a good place to be, perhaps ideal even. It’s reassuring, though depending on your personality may be energising or anxiety inducing. i found it very helpful to have a process named that i feel i do instinctively.

mike has been a great reflector for the church in the uk on cultural change and mission and fresh expressions of church. this post isn’t meant to be a book review though I am writing one for anvil at some point soon which I will post a link to here when I have done it. but I do wholeheartedly recommend it. and in my view mike’s thinking and writing gets better and better.

on innovation [2] - the creative stance

my son joel studied at chelsea art college. i was really inspired by what i observed of the course he did - it was creative, assignments were stretching and nearly all done as teams, people from various sectors in the creative industries and arts would come and speak, students were encouraged to do real work alongside their training, and the graduate show was mind-blowingly good. i was also regretting having studied maths rather than art myself i think! he was there at the same time that i was designing training for pioneers and i remember thinking that i thought an art school or innovation school was more like what i hoped we could create than a theological seminary. of course we would teach theology, mission, ministry but the environment or air that students breathe needed to be risk taking, creative, free. so when i was last in the institute for contemporary arts bookshop in london i couldn’t resist buying the creative stance. this is a collaboration between art college teachers in london on what makes for a flourishing creative student who trains with them. through their reflection they have come up with seven behaviours and the book is laid out in a series of chapters on each behaviour with a short essay by an artist followed by a discussion on that behaviour with three lecturers often in relation to a particular course. i really loved the book. the seven behaviours are essentially a kind of formation for art students. they are:

rigour, risk, imagination, provocation, agency, resilience, and ambiguity.

i discuss these behaviours with rick lawrence on the podcast i blogged about a few posts back. but i’d like to reflect on them here thinking particularly about theological education because that was the discussion i was in this week - what’s the relationship between theological education and innovation (and by extension ministry and mission practice and innovation).

to take one behaviour, rigour has an essay by grayson perry in which he reflects on two internal characters - hobbit and punk. to be a good artist the hobbit is the character who puts in hours to develop brilliance in skill in a craft - in his case pottery. hobbit alone can make nice pots but in terms of art can be a bit boring. so he also needs punk who is the character who messes with things to make them interesting. this interplay between hobbit and punk makes for a creative approach to art that combines depth of skill with risk taking imagination and innovative practice. the essay is actually available in the latest edition of creative review and is free if you sign up. it’s totally brilliant! when asked what advice he would give to an artist student perry says - ‘turn up on time, be nice, and put in the hours’. you can see where i am going with this - this is so resonant with pioneers. i suspect they are more attracted to punk than hobbit. but in theological education (and in the church generally) i bump into a lot more hobbits than punks. but it’s a great idea to nurture both aspects.

i won’t elaborate on all the behaviours - you can get the book but here are a few quotes and ideas i jotted down that caught my attention.

curiosity is foundational. if you are not curious you’ll stay on a safe path. 

Curiosity is the substrate of creativity, overlaid by an appetite for risk, necessarily followed by determination

i fear that safety is a problem in theological education and the church - we are generally risk averse which is ironic because probably the theologians and saints we admire are/were curious and risk taking. but various traditions of theology have systematised it and made it about information and right doctrine rather than a quest that is creative in response to the tradition and context and the spirit. and i think there can easily be an atmosphere of anxiety and fear about getting things right rather than one of exploration and play. art school gives people the confidence to make a dangerous decision - does theology school i wonder?

risk is… 

the enemy of your own and other peoples certainty. A state of optimistic dissatisfaction, of relentless questioning. A preoccupation with quality without regard for the established order.

how do you involve students in risk? 

You show them things that they probably haven’t thought about before and that aren’t necessarily part of that central canon.

the authors suggest that art schools should be creating the kind of graduates that can rock boats rather than row boats, that question and push. and they lament that the curriculum is currently too related to industry because of pressures. has play been ruined because it has to be turned to money? we might say the same of ministry students who are under pressure from industry a.k.a. church growth. the authors suggest that playfulness should be applied to everything and every moment you’re alive… a way of being.

ambiguity is fascinating i think. it requires doubt and where there is doubt there is great space for imagination. art students need to learn to transgress rules and fixed boundaries and conventions forging new paths where no one has trodden before. this sounds like a mantra for pioneers and cross cultural mission. but i have not seen this in much theological education i have visited so far.

for a world that is changing and in need of change creatives need flexibility, adaptability, openness, vulnerability, resourcefulness, avoidance of monocultures (which are fragile rather than resilient). the church needs the same - it really does. 

and i found it interesting that the exact same challenge i described in the last post of people who remake the world in order to create solutions is nurtured in arts students. they

reshape the world to contain the artwork you make, to create a new reality - because it’s never been enough just to make the art

(substitute the word theology for art)

there is a lovely section where a lecturer from chelsea art college ponders the percentage of students who go on to be artists and make a life in it which is quite small. but he then lists what they do go on to do in a wonderful list of enterprises, community development, change agents, educators and so on. in other words a creative education enables them to have agency out of who they are to participate in making the world a better place. 

anyway you get the point. when you look at a formation that nurtures a creative stance there is so much for theological and mission education to learn. but the contrast with what is valued and in the air in theological colleges is stark. if we want innovation maybe we need students to breathe different air, art school air?!

this reminded me too of will gompertz's book think like an artist which i have blogged about before. in that he has a whole section on education generally and why it should be like art school which i loved. he says 

Art school or not students need to leave education as independently minded, intellectually curious, self confident and resourceful - prepared for and excited by the future and what they might be able to contribute to it. The future depends on us taking a different approach.

i couldn’t agree more.

(thanks to the baptist theological educators forum who invited me to reflect on formation and theological education with them earlier this year that enabled me to develop this particular sideways strain of thought)

on innovation [1] - we do things differently

i keep talking to people about innovation. i have a ton of thoughts that have been knocking around my head for a while in the areas of change, newness, innovation, imagination, pioneering, mission and changing the world! so i will try and find some space for some blog posts. life is sadly too busy to blog enough but i must blog! i was prompted by this today because i was having a conversation with some good friends about theological education and innovation and whether they do or don't go together easily. i'll come back to that in another post. several of the posts will be about books i have read. 

i have pondered several times in the last few years why i spend more money when i am in an art bookshop than a theology one - see a tale of two bookshops where i suggest that it's because they seem concerned with changing the world and not just art. i have found myself almost repeating that exact same experience only with a different set of books - all of which i hope i will say something about in these posts...

i love people who come up with ideas that solve problems. i especially love it when to solve a particular problem you actually have to reimagine the world in order to solve the problem because the paradigm itself is part of the problem. it's akin to the future present imagination that i have blogged about before.

we do things differently is a book of stories of outsiders rebooting our world by mark stevenson. i nearly didn't buy the book because it has a terrible cover but i am glad i got beyond that. it is an incredible book that filled me with hope. let me mention two stories from it to give you the flavour. one that i mentioned at the new parish conference is of peter dearman who has invented an engine that emits zero carbon. he initially began by messing around with his lawnmower and antifreeze. as an engineer he figured that what drives a piston is temperature change and you could drive a piston by moving the temperature from sub zero to zero if you used liquid nitrogen (along with isothermal expansion). i won't bore you with the details but he has invented an engine that is not oil dependant, and has a bi-product of refrigeration which in hot climates with a lot of food wastage is brilliant. you can read about the dearman engine here.

i also loved the story of the indian scientist samir brahmachari. finding new medicines is and has been a really interesting and potentially life saving area. turberculosis is a disease of the poor so drug companies simply haven't come up with new new medicines to treat the increasingly drug resistant types. further the way drug companies go about it is a multi billion dollar expense to find a new drug which involves thousands of failures. samir's approach was to find a new process by tackling the genome annotation for tb - over four million letters. for one person to do the work would take 300 years. so he effectively created a wikipedia for science students in india to work on particular aspects of the task. through this process they found 350 people who were good and to cut a long story short the results were amazing - the most comprehensively annotated tuberculosis genome in history completed in four months and published online free!!! through this he then found people to create a computer model of tuberculosis bacterium that he could experiment on virtually. once they built that (which was complex) they open sourced it. and through participation 11 weaknesses to explore in the code were identified and the latest was that a cheap drug which already exists for diabetes can be used for tb. i don't claim to follow the details of the science but i found this story compelling. it's compelling because samir who is clearly a genius has to break through the old ways of doing things and imagine very differently to come up with a solution. you would think that the drugs world would be all over it but unsurprisingly he meets incredible difficulty - he is maligned in journals, poo pooed by experts and of course his whole approach is a threat to the economics of the system. it's hard to argue with him though when he says -

'we don't believe in the western concept of knowledge being proprietary. i'm not in this for wealth but because i would like to see  reduction in death'

wow - i am on board!

the book is full of stories of such people who have to reimagine the way the world is organised in order to come up with a solution to the problem - the stories relate to energy, education, drugs, agriculture, engineering, the environment, food production, cities...

thank god for the gift of such seers/innovators - i love that they exist and it fills me with hope. of course i am reading a parallel with pioneers in my own context.

the amount of difficulty they all have is extraordinary - whether it's farming or oil or drugs industries they do not like a threat to the existing system even if it's clear that system needs to change because there are vested interests (and money!) and frankly a lack of desire to even listen to or see the new solutions. (so it's not just the church that is resistant to change as it happens - it's normal for  pioneers all over to experience this kind of resistance sadly and i think we should all wise up about that).

connecting people together becomes really important for support, for encouragement, for hope. this is why i was stressing the importance of getting yourself connected in my last post on the value of networks.

two web sites that are connecting people producing the kinds of futuring solutions in this book are really worth looking up - 

the league of pragmatic optimists and the atlas of the future 

dissent

i am teaching MA students today on a leadership module at cms pioneer training and exploring dissent for leadership. this has led to me re-reading gerald arbuckle's refounding the church - what a book! it is honestly the most helpful book i think i have read related to pioneering ever. here's a quote from the book for today's presentation...

simple eh?! 

only grief leads to newness - a reflection for the youthwork blog

i have written a reflection for this month's youthwork blog. it seems as though there is a mood in youthwork circles that some change s needed so i share a few thoughts gleaned from work with pioneers on how newness might come through a cycle of grief, dreams and building.

anyway it's over here - only grief leads to newness [HT brueggemann for that title lifted from his book hopeful imagination]

fear, courage and change - church of england welcome to the incoming future!

every organisation, institution, business has to negotiate change. the rapid changes in the wider culture and perhaps especially in technology in the last 30 years make it feel as though change is the new constant. i happen to quite like change and newness but i realise not everyone does. it can certainly generate anxiety and fear in good measure. and in many places there is a very real sense of pressure. the new environment seems to call for flexibility, adaptability and improvisation. however when the pressure is on there is always the opposite instinct at play - defence of what already is, the status quo, at all costs and resistance to change.

in the next few days the church of england governing body general synod is receiving several reports. they were published a couple of weeks ago - on discipleship, simplification, resourcing the future and resourcing ministerial education. they have a focus on mission, growth and investing better in those at the margins which in itself is encouraging (though i realise 'growth' is a complicated word that has had a backlash from those who see it tied to measures of success and effectivenes making the church sound like a business). the church of england is full of surprises! i realise a blog post about some church reports might not sound that interesting but in their own way they are putting before the church questions about the inevitable incoming future and whether the church of england will act on the basis of courage or fear. without question she has to change!

i won't go through all the reports here but the one of most interest to me personally and the pioneer leadership training at cms is the resourcing ministerial education one which stresses the need to train people for adaptibility and flexibility for the future. it is also the most far reaching in its proposals. in my view by far the most interesting and long overdue proposal is to rapidly develop lay ministries and increase numbers and to that end developing a stream of funding for lay ministry training especially to resource the future. this will be funding training in a similar way to ordinands. my own take on the various streams that have brought challenge and renewal at the edges of the church in the last thirty years is that they have been largely lay led - in many cases unpaid, untrained and not licensed as well! the majority of pioneers training at cms are in this category. this is genuinely exciting news. it will be for ministry that is licensed but at cms last year we admitted 8 people as lay workers in the church of england which we can do because we are a religious community of the church - i am one myself. i'm slightly pinching myself on this as it's as though we have set something up that has anticipated this future. if this goes through it looks as though people in the church of england could train with us to pioneer and get fees paid for.

there is also recognition that training that is on the job or in-context produces good results and they are trying to encourage development of more pathways like this that are within reach of people who are training whilst working which is a good model and will generate innovation especially if the matched funding proposed is agreed to. this is causing great anxiety amongst providers of residential training who will no doubt be on the defensive at synod. both have their place and as far as i can see a mixed economy of provision is envisaged but for pioneers, on the job training is both recommended and the only way i would ever be interested in training pioneers. it's also so much better value - i know people hate discussions around money but money is a real issue in pretty much every diocese. there will be opportunity for innovation here for colleges who have almost exclusively focused on training ordinands because that is where the money has been. the proposal on money is that there will be a standard grant allocation that a diocese will decide how to spend on approved providers.

the report proposes increasing ordination numbers especially younger and i hope that pioneer numbers will get back on the up - we'll see. dioceses will have more say about the training pathways. they want to review and streamline selection process, presumably for pioneers too so it is done in a year. individuals pathways for training will be more flexible. they are proposing tough limits on age by making dioceses pay for over 50s. there will be money available for leadership development beyond the first phase of training.

in other words it's proposing something of a sea change. i think it's exciting, challenging, and hopeful. it's not without its problems and more work needs to be done. for example i think the critique of business approaches and language is welcome. i liked linda woodhead's challenge in the church times and on tv to not collapse the church into a congregational paradigm or a clerical paradigm but to retain a vision of church in society and public life. decisions won't be made on details - i think it will be a discussion and then voting to give permission for the reports to be taken forward. the key issue for me is imagination. i have in my mind arbuckle's phrase 'culture eats strategies for breakfast' and hope that the culture of the church doesn't eat these up but has the imagination to see ahead. don't be afraid synod!