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changing contexts

the poor is integral to the Church of England's mission. The scriptural

command `that we remember the poor'

40

is given to all Christians, and 

so it is incumbent on all churches exploring church planting or fresh

expressions of church to consider God's call to the poor.

For the comfortable majority the current degree of mobility is a mixed

blessing. It offers freedom at a price. The consequences of fragmentation

are seen most clearly in the drastic decline in `social capital'.

41

`Without at

first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our

communities over the last third of the [twentieth] century.'

42, 43

There are two distinct social processes at work here. Community is

increasingly being re formed around networks, and people are less inclined

to make lasting commitments. While the two are not unrelated, the first is 

a change in the structure of community, with which the Church must

engage. The second is a corrosive force that the Church must resist,

because it undermines all forms of community. Contemporary initiatives 

to plant the church, or to express it appropriately within Western culture,

will need to establish social capital: ties of loyalty and faithfulness through

Christ.

44

Both the establishing of bonds within networks and the bridging

between networks will be crucial.

fresh expressions of church

Breaking New Ground recognized that `it is possible to see that it is

networks which are now the communities to which we feel a predominant

loyalty' and that `human life is lived in a complex array of networks and that

the neighbourhoods where people reside may hold only a very minor

loyalty'.

45

The implication was that churches needed to be planted into networks. 

In Breaking New Ground this was seen as an addition to the normal

territorial parochial system. However, it is now clear that the relationship

between neighbourhood and network is more complex. It is not sufficient 

to think of neighbourhoods being supplemented by networks, or of 

network churches as a supplement to geographical parishes. Not only 

are networks more dominant for many people, but parishes are not what

they used to be.

The perception of the working group producing this report is that many 

of the fresh expressions of church, explained in Chapter 4, are connecting

with people through the networks in which they live, rather than through the

place where they live.

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