might open up?
Regional and local cooperation
A third pointer to the new attractor is evidence of growing cooperation between churches at regional and local levels. Fresh Expressions is encouraging the formation of FEASTs, Fresh Expressions Area Strategy Teams. These are groups of key individuals who encourage fresh expressions of church across a wide area. Several are coming into existence, with the Lincolnshire FEAST especially showing how effective they can be.
Although there is a long way to go, the appetite for church collaboration at a more local level seems to be growing. Hope 08 encouraged churches in 1,500 areas of the UK to undertake joint projects in 2008. Initially viewed as a one-off, the initiative was sufficiently fruitful for its life to be extended as Hope Together. The aim is to encourage local churches to work together for mission, in which starting new contextual churches will have a place. Milton Keynes illustrates how churches can cooperate effectively on mission. Among several initiatives, the churches have formed an ecumenical group to oversee the development of Christian communities on new housing estates and elsewhere.
‘Temples’, ‘synagogues’ and ‘tents’
Fourth, a growing number of contextual churches are emerging in the settings of everyday life – in leisure centres, among groups who share a common interest such as reading books, going to films or outdoor activities, in the workplace or among friends. Some have close links to a parent church nearby, but in other cases the ties are looser.
Fresh Expressions wants to support lay-led initiatives beyond the reach of the local church as a priority in the years ahead. How these new communities connect with the wider body will be of major concern. Will they exist as isolated groups for a while and then wither away through lack of outside stimulus? Or will members attend two ‘local’ churches, one ‘in life’ during the week and another, perhaps larger one at the weekend?
In her study of four Church of England fresh expressions, Louise Nelstrop found that a significant proportion of those involved had retained ties to their existing churches.
Some had intended to leave but the initial fragility of the ‘fresh expression’ had meant that they had waited to see what would happen. Once they discovered that they could do both, much to their surprise, several actually felt more integrated into the parish system now that their sense of church wasn’t limited to it (Nelstrop, 2008, p. 101).
What will happen where communities in everyday contexts, perhaps including people from different denominations, have weaker connections to a local church? Might this be where collaboration between churches becomes crucial? Might ‘coalitions of the willing’ provide prayer retreats, study days and the like to help new believers grow in the faith?
What seems to be emerging is a reconfiguration of church into ‘temples’, ‘synagogues’ and ‘tents’. ‘Temples’ are where individuals connect with the whole body of Christ – conferences, retreats, celebrations, pilgrimages, websites and much else. Like Jesus, believers go up to the ‘temple’ from time to time. ‘Synagogues’ are the conventional local church, where worshippers are nourished in Scripture and the Christian tradition. Again like Jesus, believers attend ‘synagogue’ regularly. These local churches may continue to multiply through fresh expressions.
‘Tents’ are church in life – small worshipping communities that concentrate on practical discipleship by serving their contexts and drawing others into the faith. Some may not have a long existence because of changing circumstances, but be fruitful for a period. This transience perhaps resonates with the tents the Israelites inhabited as they moved through Sinai.
If this sort of pattern emerges, it will not be a rehash of the church growth cell–congregation–celebration model. It will be more fluid (‘tents’ will come and go) and the boundaries between the components will overlap. A large local church may in some respects double up as ‘synagogue’ and ‘temple’. Whereas church growth theorists linked cell and congregation closely together, the ties between ‘tents’ and ‘synagogues’ could be looser – members of a ‘tent’ may attend different ‘synagogues’. Central direction in the whole will be weaker and there will be a stronger emergent feel.
Downward causation
This possible configuration of church suggests a fifth characteristic of the emerging attractor. In today’s network culture, church will increasingly be characterized by criss-crossing ties. Not least, ‘corridors’ will intersect with regional FEASTs and local ‘coalitions of the willing’. As is already happening, networks of churches will encourage considerable movement – members leaving one gathering and joining another, for example – as individuals and groups access networks and travel along them.
Emergence theorists believe that when new levels of organization come into being, they exert ‘downward causation’ on the levels below them (Goldstein, Hazy and Silberstang, 2008, p. 105). If church reorganizes along mixed-economy lines, corridors of founders and other new forms of organization will change behaviour throughout the church. Already we are seeing hints of this. One person commented about her local church, ‘Introducing fresh expressions two years ago has really changed us.’
Recombination/self-organization may involve
the mixed economy;
corridors – networks of fresh expressions that clear space for new churches within the denominations;
regional and local cooperation, such as FEASTS and ‘coalitions of the willing’;
‘temples’, ‘synagogues’ and ‘tents’;
downward causation – new levels of organization change the levels below.
Stabilization
A fourth component of the Lichtenstein/Plowman model is stabilization. The more that leaders and members of a system adapt to local constraints, the easier they find it to stabilize the emergent order (Lichtenstein and Plowman, 2009, p. 625). Sensitivity to social rules and values shapes novelties ‘in a way consistent with the system’s accumulated history and learning, preserving the system’s identity and core behavioural patterns’ (Chiles, Myers and Hench, 2004, p. 502). Innovations get clothed in the familiar, which makes other people more willing to learn from them and reduces resistance.
Adapting to the denomination
Fresh expressions of church have sought to adapt to local constraints in two directions. One has been the denomination. An example was the Methodist Church’s embrace of the Fresh Expressions initiative, which appealed to evangelical Methodists’ commitment to evangelism and to Methodists’ strong commitment to ecumenism. Ticking both boxes greatly helped the church to get on board. Within the Church of England, Archbishop Rowan has connected emerging church to the parochial system by suggesting that ‘both assume that the Church must show itself credible by being where people are, literally and culturally’ (Williams, 2006, p. 54). He has linked fresh expressions to the Anglo-Catholic tradition, noting that ‘catholic’ is ‘that dimension of the Christian life which is concerned with speaking the whole truth to the whole person’
