Flexible Church

Being the Church in the Contemporary World

Morris

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780334058151
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

Flexible Church proposes an ecclesiology for innovative expressions of church that is grounded in biblical texts whilst self-consciously and intentionally developed for the contemporary Western milieu. The result is a framework serves as a guide and auditing tool for pioneering church planters.

Part 1: A Church in Transition

1. Re-Thinking Church

In obedience to the commission that Jesus gave to his disciples the Church’s vocation is to proclaim the good news afresh in each generation. As disciples of our Risen Lord we are called to be loyal to the inheritance of faith which we have received and open to God’s Spirit so that we can be constantly renewed and reformed for the task entrusted to us.1

The title ‘Fresh Expressions of Church’ is derived from the Church of England’s commitment to ‘proclaim the good news afresh in each generation’. For the authors of the Mission-Shaped Church report (hereafter Mission-Shaped Church), and re-contextual thinkers across a range of denominations, statistics indicating church decline suggest that the ‘afresh’ has grown stale. Moynagh notes that there was a 30% decrease in church attendance in England in the 20 years leading up to the millennium. The decline has since slowed, but is still marked among traditional denominations, with membership of Methodist churches decreasing by 33% between 2005 and 2017, Anglican churches by nearly 25%, and Baptist churches by 15%.2

The diminishment is starkest among the younger generations. In the decade between 2005 and 2015, church attendance among the under 30s decreased by 25%. Extend back to 1980, and the figure exceeds 60%, from over 2 million Sunday attendees in 1980 to less than 800,000 in 2015. Conversely, over the same time period (1980 to 2015), church attendance among the over 65s increased by 20%.3 This decline in child church involvement is particularly significant given the role that childhood church attendance plays in adult churchgoing; over 90% of regular adult churchgoers went to church as children. Most newcomers to church are returning to a childhood faith or church experience. As Walker notes the diminishment in child attendance is thus a ‘time bomb’ for church decline as there become fewer adults with a faith to return to. Without churches enhancing their ability to attract children and those with no previous church experience, church attendance will diminish apace. Concurrently, the average age of the UK church will carry on increasing.4

Despite churchgoers being in the minority, the 2001 Census reveals that seven out of ten people consider themselves ‘Christian’. As Fox notes, though, national surveys consistently show that around 15% of self-identifying Christians do not believe in God. For many, being ‘Christian’ means holding to an ill-defined collection of morals and principles, only some of which are based on the Bible. ‘Cultural Christianity’ is thus still present in England but the UK’s post-Christendom context means that those who, in yesteryear, might have been nominal churchgoers are now less likely to be involved in church. Therefore, the figures indicating church decline reflect, in part, the dropping away of nominal believers leaving a more devoted, but smaller, core. Significantly, however, two-thirds of people pray, a quarter doing so weekly, suggesting that spiritual openness is prevalent. Moreover, 6% of UK adults who are not regularly involved in church are open to attending. Therefore, although increasing numbers are not involved with church in any form, there are ways that churches can engage effectively in a culture that is more open to God than is often supposed.5

Re-contextual authors note that current generations are as interested in faith as those in previous eras, if not more so – although the challenges and barriers to accepting Christianity’s tenets are different. However, they contend that the church has not adapted adequately to recent cultural changes, making it increasingly detached from people’s everyday lives. The alienness of church culture and language to those not brought up in the church hinders people’s reception of the gospel message. This inertia and irrelevance is exacerbated by the over-assimilation of the church into culture in the past, specifically modernity and Christendom. This assimilation, they argue, has dented the health and impact of the church in the present. Re-contextual proponents thus have a twofold goal; they urge the Western church to re-embed itself in its Christ-centred foundations while innovatively embodying this message in its contemporary context.6

Notable anomalies to the overarching picture of decline demonstrate that church diminishment is far from inevitable. Attendance at Fresh Expressions churches increased fourfold between 2005 and 2015, and nearly two-thirds of newcomers were previously unchurched or dechurched. Messy Church saw numbers double between 2012 and 2017. Other church expressions have also seen marked growth. Two-thirds of denominations have grown, with the fastest-growing 19 denominations increasing their membership by over 50% between 2012 and 2017. Immigration has been a significant factor, but a focus on evangelism and revitalization has also proved effective for church groups such as Vineyard and Hillsong. Church growth has been especially high in London, particularly among black, Asian, ethnic minority communities, and new churches. In addition, the church is more popular among certain demographic groupings than others, namely the older generations, females, professionals, and those of black ethnicity in contrast to the younger generations, males, and lower-skilled workers.7

The overall picture of the church in the contemporary world is complex. Among an overall trend of decline, areas of the church are seeing notable growth. However, the challenge to engage the younger generations remains strong. To best respond to this complexity, re-contextual authors argue, the church must be flexible and innovative in its engagement with different groups.

Notes

1 Justin Cantuar and Sentamu Ebor, ‘In Each Generation: A Programme for Reform and Renwal, GS 1976, January 2015’, Church of England website (https://churchofengland.org/media/2140062/gs%201976%20-%20a%20note%20from%20the%20archbishops%20giving%20an%20overview%20of%20the%20task%20groups.pdf). This call to ‘proclaim the good news afresh’ is also contained in the preface to the Declaration of Assent.

2 M. Moynagh, Changing World, Changing Church, London; Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch, 2001, 10 citing figures for 1979 to 1998 from P. Brierley, The Tide is Running Out, London: Christian Research, 2000, 27; cf. 12; P. Brierley (ed.), UK Church Statistics 2005–2015, Tonbridge: ADBC, 2011 and UK Church Statistics No.3 2018 Edition, Tonbridge: ADBC, 2018; J. Walker, Testing Fresh Expressions, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016 (2014), 7 and 42.

3 Although the population of England aged during this period, the shift in church attendance is disproportionate (Brierley, 2018). Going back further still, the percentage of the UK child population attending Sunday school dropped dramatically from 55% in 1900 to 4% in 2000 (G. Cray [ed.], Mission-Shaped Church, London: Church House, 2004, 41 drawing on statistics from P. Brierley [ed.], UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends No. 2, 2000/01 Millennium Edition, London: Christian Research, 1999).

4 Walker cites the Northern Ireland Social Attitudes (NISA) and British Social Attitudes (BSA) surveys to show that, in 1991, 91–95% of weekly adult churchgoers had gone to church weekly as children (Walker, Testing, 111). He notes that the 2001 International Congregational Life Survey (ICLS) supports this strong correlation between child and adult church attendance (Walker, Testing, 112). In addition, more recent BSA data (1998 and 2008), shows a decrease in the percentage of adult churchgoers who went to church weekly as a child, but more than 90% went at least occasionally as a child. He concludes that 2008 results show that ‘any attendance, not just regular attendance, as a child of 11 or 12 is a significant factor in later adult churchgoing’ (Walker, Testing, 114–19).

5 K. Fox, Watching the English, rev. ed. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014 (2004), 487–91. The nominal 15% in the 2001 Census probably accounts for the lower percentage of UK adults (53%) who affiliated themselves with Christianity in Tearfund’s research; the phrasing of the Tearfund researchers’ question, ‘Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion?’ was intentionally designed to exclude those willing to tick ‘Christianity’ in response to a question asking their religion, but reluctant to see themselves as ‘belonging’ to the Christian faith (J. Ashworth et al., Churchgoing in the UK, London: Tearfund, 2007).

6 Drane argues that, with perverse irony, contemporary generations often see the church as not spiritual enough (J. Drane, The McDonaldization of the Church, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001, e.g. 54, 71). See also, for example, J. Thwaites, The Church Beyond The Congregation, Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999, 5; Walker, Testing, 7; M. Frost and A. Hirsch, ReJesus, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009, 5–6.

7 ‘Unchurched’ describes those who have never been involved in a church and ‘dechurched’ those who were previously part of a church but subsequently moved away from church involvement. For the relevant statistics see Brierley, 2018; Brierley, 2005–2015 and D. Goodhew, ‘The Death and Resurrection of Christianity in Contemporary Britain’, in D. Goodhew (ed.), Church Growth in Britain: 1980 to the Present, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, 253–7; Ashworth, Tearfund.

2. Re-Contextual Church

The desire to be faithful to the ancient Christian message and accessible to particular contexts is defined by the missiological term ‘contextualization’. All churches are contextual – no churches transcend culture. The label ‘re-contextual church’ is thus an apt umbrella term for those who, in literature and/or practice, are readdressing the nature an...