1. The Mission context of
Mission Shaped Church
The working group

2. What is Mission-shaped Church ?
It’s a map of mission at home today
It’s a collection of short stories showing what’s already happening
It’s a round table for permission givers and pioneers
It’s a key resource for trainers of future leaders in mission
It might lead to deep re-imagination of church

3. MSC Ch 1 : changing contexts
Greater fragmentation & mobility
so no one kind of church will do
A network society with “place” and “territory” weakening
From “where” to “how”
So we need porous legal boundaries
Christendom is over
So the Jesus story is not known
Culture doesn’t bring people to our door

4. The going of “Come”
From the 4th century in the west, the surrounding culture brought people to the door of the Church.
What brought them ?
Baptisms / Weddings / Funerals
Questions of life / Pastoral Crises
Our church we don’t go to
Coming back to values or past known Church
The mission task was :
Respond well to their requests
Take them, from the door to the altar

5. The coming - of “Going” ?
With the ending of Christendom, and onset of secularisation, the culture no longer brings people to the door of the Church.
Few churches
have experience of this profoundly different shape to mission
know how to travel out from Church in “go” or apostolic mode
can envisage how to be fresh imaginings of church at the end of the journey

6. A surprising omission ? Post-modernity ?
Tolerance is tops, over personal convictions
Most agree Modernity is over
Choice, feeling experience are in
So religion is seen as choice

7. A consumer society A Changing Culture The right of choice
The unattainable pleasure cycle
The poor excluded
Responses : Debt or Crime
From religion of obligation to religion of consumption
We even “buy into” ideas
A culture to enter and challenge

8. Different Mission Fields
Regular attenders – at least monthly (10%)
Fringe - less than monthly (10%)
Non Churched (40%)
Open de-churched (20%)
Closed de-churched (20%)
MSC p 37-40

9. Dropping “UN-churched”
UN is equivocal language
change of state OR Never in that state ?
Its UnClear
UN is bad tactical language
Confuses two groups needing different responses
Its UnHelpful
UN betrays Christendom language
Suggests they are “Ours” – and coming “back”
Its UnTruthful

10. Mission to Dechurched alone won’t do
The % of people furthest away from living contact with or effective knowledge of the church is growing. They cannot be ignored.
De-churched: Approx 25%
Non-churched: Approx 65%
76% of New Christians came from the 25% De-Churched
Finding faith today 1992
The younger, largely non-churched are more likely to identify as ‘spiritual’ not religious
Hay and Hunt 2000

11. Conclusions for Church and Mission
The existing parochial system alone is no longer able to deliver its underlying missionary purpose
We need a mixed economy – no longer promoting one way of being church
There are only expressions – previous and fresh
Cf MSC p xi para 4

12. Something like this ? English Emmental ? Mixed Economy means
Fresh Expressions and Church Plants fill the holes the parishes cannot reach
English Emmental ?
Something like this ?
Mixed Economy means
being glad that
MSC p 35

13. The Big [tidal] Change
“Come” to church is flowing away
“Going” to others is flooding in

14. But God I liked it in Jerusalem
A 4th insight for all
All churches need re-shaping in this light
Mission-shaped Church isn’t just mission flavoured
But God I liked it in Jerusalem
The apostolic direction of the Church:Acts 1.8
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the end of the earth
From the familiar through the disagreeable to the unthinkable ?

15. From Jerusalem ….. to Judea … the familiar?
Fringe
Samaria … the disagreeable?
De-Churched
The ends of the earth … the unthinkable?
Non-Churched
Churched
PS – Notice what happens to the old centre