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fresh expressions of church

George Lings concludes with his wish for them:

To have confidence in the value of what they do. Their obviously chosen

task of encultured worship and less trumpeted element of building

community are both vital. It would help if they were seen by any sending

churches or parent bodies as a particular kind of church plant, and thus

encouraged to rejoice in their special identity and to be in healthy

interdependence with other ways of being church . . . They will need 

to search for ways of mission that are natural to them. Then once more

they could grow into increasing maturity and continue to be a valuable

part of the emerging varied missionary movement needed in the Church

of the West.

3, 4

Base Ecclesial Communities (BECs)

what's in a name?

Base Ecclesial Communities have their origin in Latin America, and trace

their origins to Brazil in the mid 1950s, although now they are found

worldwide. BECs are strongly identified with people at the bottom or edges

of society, and they offer a gospel of liberation: a church of the poor, for the

poor. BECs work so that people are empowered. They seek to bring hope

and challenge   hope to the oppressed, and challenge that together people

can work for a better society.

Revd David Prior, an English Anglican writer, has travelled the world to

observe BECs. His interest came firstly from dissatisfaction among Western

Christians with existing Church structures.

Our present structures both deaden and divide, and they also drive away

many Christians who want and ought to be properly integrated into local

churches but who find existing patterns of church life stifling and

unattractive.

5

The second reason for interest was disillusionment with the house groups

offering a rather trivial agenda   groups meeting the perceived needs of

existing members, rather than existing for the renewal of the Church and

engagement with mission.

Bishop Peter Price is another source of thinking on Base Ecclesial

Communities. In The Church as Kingdom   a new way of being church

he wrote:

The obvious implication of Jesus being with us is to enable us to fulfil

our vocation in following him   and that we are here to make a

difference.

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