Pioneer Ministry - a few years down the line

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the CofE book "Mission-Shaped Church" was published....Well, it was 2004 and peaking into the next decade, it seems worthwhile to take stock and review where mission and church planting is at, particularly for the Church of England. Ben Edson, who has been one of the key leaders of Sanctus 1, a church community sponsored by the Diocese of Manchester, is moving on to new things and is helpfully posting some important reflections on what he has learned. Ben, for me, is a significant voice in connecting inherited church with radical forms of mission and community, and consistently brings critical reflection both ways so these reflections are invaluable. This specific milestone of reflection is mirrored by a number of "Pioneer" initiatives I know around the country, many because of the time-limits on funding. 18 months ago, the first wave of formal Pioneer ministers was ordained. Fresh Expressions, as a hub of resourcing and encouragement, has been collating stories and endorsing new engagements for some years now. Here area  number of questions that seem to me to be worth considering at this important juncture:

1. are Pioneer ministers being appropriately trained for the mission they are encountering and engaging with or are they essentially still being equipped for inherited church ministry with a certain degree of freedom that "traditional" ministers do not have? If it is the latter, how does the church endorse and affirm the pioneering (with a small "p") outside current structures?

2. to what extent has the setting up of a Pioneer stream created a gap between them and mainstream clergy so that the latter are deemed not to have a responsibility for mission?

3. there have been some legitimate critiques of Mission-Shaped Church that have highlighted the emphasis on church rescue as opposed to genuine mission into our unchurched cultures; to what extent is the Pioneer and Fresh Expressions movement focussing on "church" as opposed to kingdom?

4. what commitment is there to long term sustainability of pioneering church plants or is there a simple formula being applied that drops financial support after several years?

5. Mission-shaped Church and Fresh Expressions are releasing great permission to innovation and creativity...some of these things are not necessarily "new" but we have to rejoice in the opening up of boundaries that have often been so prohibitive...But is there a clear sense of the relative gulfs between church and various communities in contemporary culture and respective missional engagements? Or are people content to see anything "new" (cafe church, prayer on the streets etc etc) as sufficient to the demands of contextualisation today?

6. what is the normative profile of the Pioneer minister's context and Fresh Expressions initiative? Is there sufficient attention to the inner cities, other faiths, rural poverty, young adults....or is this another exercise in retrieving the lost middle classes to the church?

7. In the permission for pioneers, what is the inherited church and its leadership learning from them or is there a two-tier ecclesiology being birthed?

8. for Pioneer church plants with a very specific demographic, to what extent are principles of broad church being applied so that relationships are being forged across the spectrum of the Christian family?

I could probably add to these questions, and I betray some of my own agendas with these prods. But i do believe these are important questions to be asked about a process that i see as generally liberative and vital. What do you think?

Comments

[gareth]

hey rich good thoughts, some of which tap into my research.

I think some other questions I would ask is how adequate the social theory the report draws upon for describing the context the church of england finds itself in at the present?

I would suggest that it is inadequate; lacking in both the depth of its enquiry, as well as an absence of theological reasoning about the ideological assumptions at work within contemporary social theory (for instance the critical assessment espoused by Milbank, Ward et al). For me without this critical approach we lack a theological hermeneutic to 'interpret' the social.

Secondly, does Mission Shaped Church pay adequate attention to the theological resources of the Anglican tradition to inform its mission? Again I would suggest there is sparse attention to this both in the report and secondary literature. Does sacramental – eucharistic and baptismal – theology have nothing to say to a society where consumption is the dominant metaphor for contemporary life (pace Bauman)? Does the parish principal have a missiological logic within it that cuts across the rampant individualism and tribalism that permeates late-modern cultures?

For me it appears that we need a new ressourcement from the tradition, and less of a focus on the fleeting fashions within contemporary [post]evangelical theology (re wisdom of the crowds, trickster, atheistic-theology et al). These, I fear, lead us down the same cul-de-sacs as modern liquid life, where we find ourselves rootless, adrift in an ocean where we have lost our bearings, yet totally unaware of this fact (a critique advocated by McIntyre though pertaining to culture).

I realise all this is a rather conservative theological strategy - but I find so much more that is resourcing in both radical orthodoxy and the rich resources of the tradition than I do in much contemporary theological discourse, and I find a worrying lack of attention to this in Fresh Expressions.

I would love to talk about some of this stuff with you Rich - as you seem to be someone who also wishes to attempt to stand outside this movement and offer a fresh perspective on it. You must come down to Cambridge soon :-)

[Ben Edson]

richard - I have a Q n A with Grahame Cray tomorrow...I will raise some of your questions.