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mission shaped church

cultures and groupings that are not reached by existing churches. (Further

comment and examples are given in Chapter 4 of this report.)

an explosion of diversity

There were hopes in the early 1990s that church planting would continue

to increase in quantity, but the reality has been an increase in diversity.

Many different strands of church planting and other ways to explore being

church arose in the 1990s. Chapter 4 will examine their dynamics and

characteristics.

The sheer variety of fresh expressions of church has been a welcome sign

of continued spiritual creativity in the context of a rapidly changing mission

climate. Not all fresh expressions of church would themselves use the

words `church' or `plant'. They also revealed, across an untidy spectrum,

some common perspectives around the growing question `What is church?'

Assumptions about forms of worship and community, day of meeting, size

of key unit, and the starting point in mission, have all been challenged.

Greater flexibility of approach, and the need for principles beneath practice,

have been revealed. These insights are explored in Chapter 6.

Within the diversity of fresh expressions, a number of common themes

have emerged:

  The Church derives its self understanding from the missio dei, the

ongoing mission of God's love to the world.

  The Trinity models diversity as well as unity.

  Creation reveals God's affirmation of diversity.

  Mission to a diverse world legitimately requires a diverse Church.

  Catholicity should not be interpreted as monochrome oneness.

  Election and incarnation reveal God daring to be culturally specific within

diverse contexts.

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create don't clone

The Anabaptist writer and practitioner, Stuart Murray Williams, has been 

the most trenchant critic of the tendency of older church plants to copy 

the outward forms and style of their sending church, without asking 

whether the new mission context was different. This can result in failure 

to let the shape and form of the new church be determined by the mission

context for which it was intended. The call for new kinds of churches can

become subverted into the production of more churches.

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