However, having reflected on the Fresh
Expressions of Church work over the last decade, I wonder if we might have
missed a trick. It's all very well designing new forms of church but the real
problem we face is not that we do church badly. It's more to do with the fact
that people and culture have changed and the church in some quarters has failed
to keep abreast of that change. It is a fact that society's attitude towards
faith is still positive but the way in which people believe has changed and we
may be seeing a Fresh Expression of Christian emerging. This is the
first of 4 bulletins which explore the attributes of a Fresh Expression of
Christian and to offer suggestions
for how the church might respond to such people.
I sat in St. Barnabas Catholic
Cathedral in Nottingham to hear One Sound,
formerly the MAYC Orchestra and Singers, perform a concert. My eyes looked up
to the large crucifix suspended from the ceiling and which looks mournfully
over the entire congregation and I wondered what this might say to the vast
swathes of people in the country who have little or no faith. The glory and
majesty which we celebrate in the death and resurrection of Jesus is alien to
the majority of British people and one of the biggest challenges we face is
interpreting the gospel of Christ to a generation which has no appreciation of
what we mean by Good News. The
sorrowful frame of a man hanging on a cross during the last moments of his
earthly life does not easily translate into Good
News.
The mindset, worldview and general
outlook of modern day people is vastly different from 50 years ago. In this
bulletin I will reflect upon what a 21st century Christian might look like.
1 : They Walk the
Walk but don't Talk the Talk
I meet a number of friends who would
regard themselves as Christian and
yet be unable to put into words what that means. Many would not go to church,
either because they feel they are not good enough, because church does not fit
in with their life-style or because it doesn't scratch where they itch. To
become a member of the church we expect an acceptance of the doctrines of the
Christian faith and yet for a growing number of people, not only is that
doctrine foreign, it is also expressed in a language they can't relate to. Just
think of some of the key beliefs - Justification by Faith, The Atonement,
The Virgin Birth – there are widely differing views among Christians about
these and they are just as problematic for those outside of church. In a recent
address, the Archbishop of Canterbury urged people to emulate the life of
Nelson Mandela who suffered immense persecution without retaliation in his
quest for equality and justice for South Africa's black people. Many outside of
the church would say Amen (or words to that effect) to his urging but would
not readily relate this to a forlorn figure hanging on a cross.
2 : They don't like
labels
I held my new grandson in my arms
for the first time last year and felt a love and bond between us. He's half
Hungarian and half English but he didn't think as we hugged each other 'you're
a foreigner'. He will grow up without any recognition of the barriers which
have separated people of different races in the past. People growing up in this
generation simply accept the fact that Britain is multi-cultural and multi-faith.
They don't say to Muslims or Sikhs "you've chosen the wrong
religion". They accept that they were born into a different culture and
accept them for what they are. It's true that tension exists towards Muslims
because of recent atrocities and the Iraq and Afghan wars but overall people
recognise that these acts and conflicts have more to do with extremism than the
faith itself. Likewise, younger Christians don't tend to label themselves as
Methodist, Baptist or Anglican but simply see themselves as Christian.
Similarly, society at large can't
see what all the fuss is about in the church over women priests and sexuality.
Many look at the church as being behind the times and clinging to outdated
doctrines which no longer have a place in 21st century Britain.
3 : They don't do Nostalgia
as we do
As Methodists we love to sing the
good old Wesley hymns like And Can It Be or Love Divine all loves
excelling but for younger people, these hymns, excellent though they are,
do not express faith in a way they can relate to. The language is over 200
years old and uses words and phrases that even some Methodists would struggle
to interpret. Take lines like “… an
interest in the Saviour’s blood” or “For
me who him to death pursued”. It’s all standard atonement theory but to the
uninitiated it can conjure up some disturbing imagery.
In the new stream churches you will
rarely hear hymns like this sung. Most worship in these churches has been composed
within the last 20 years. Someone once said that ‘Tradition is the living faith of those now dead, but traditionalism is
the dead faith of those still alive’. Our challenge in this generation is
to make the past relevant to the present day, not to just assume it will happen
automatically. Singing hymns without an understanding of their meaning can
verge upon traditionalism.
In the next bulletins I will expand
upon this theme with some more insights into what I observe in modern-day
society and how the church might rise to the challenge of effective evangelism.
It is indeed an exciting time we live in and all is not doom and gloom.
Each bulletin in this series can be
used in house groups or other discussion platforms, like Lent Courses. At the
end of each is a set of discussion questions.
For discussion:
1. How easy is it for you to explain
your faith to non-believers? For instance:-
a. What is salvation?
b. What is sin?
c. What is heaven like?
2. Do you consider yourself to be part
of a denomination?
3. Which hymns do you find difficult to
sing and why?
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