Pioneering Ministries

NEWS RELEASE
7 July 2008

Church seeks ‘pioneers’ to reach out to young adults

The Methodist Church has approved a major new initiative designed to reach out to those with no experience of church, especially young adults. The Pioneering Ministries scheme will see the establishment of new Christian communities and congregations in a variety of locations from city centre and suburban areas to more rural settings.

There will initially be twenty new projects, with the first beginning as early as possible in 2009. Each project will be designed to serve the spiritual and practical needs of those who have previously had little or no experience of Church.

Although the projects are envisioned as eventually becoming independent, the scheme will involve a major investment of Church resources and funds, with an initial setup cost of more than £4.3m.

Revd Graham Horsley, Secretary for Evangelism and Church Planting, says; ‘This is clearly a risky strategy, but sometimes the Church is called to take risks. In saying “yes” to pioneer ministries the Church is sacrificing control for the sake of creativity. Rather than setting the agenda for evangelism and mission centrally, Pioneer Ministers will be free to discern the shape of their mission in their particular context. What grows may not look like a traditional “church” but will enable young adults to worship God and be equipped as disciples.’

The Church will seek to recruit as Pioneer Ministers lay and ordained people who demonstrate vision, motivation and the ability to inspire others. They will be offered support and training and will be able to build new, viable independent Christian congregations rooted in the Methodist tradition.

2000+ groups still needing Scriptures in own language!

Kirk Franklin was selected by the Board of Wycliffe International late in 2006 to take over from Dr John Watters upon his completion of term in office. Kirk has spent the past year preparing for the transition and officially began on January 1, 2008.

Kirk, a citizen of both Australia and the USA and has spent most of his life in the Pacific region. He has served with Wycliffe since 1980, most recently as Executive Director of Wycliffe Australia. He previously served in various media, communications and leadership roles.

Kirk spent 25 years of his youth and adult life in Papua New Guinea (PNG), is fluent in the Tok Pisin language of PNG, and has traveled extensively in 25 countries, meeting with mission organizations and speaking in churches and mission events. He and his wife Christine have three adult children.

Kirk comments, “Our entire leadership team is eager to serve as catalysts. We want to increase awareness of the need and impact of Bible translation. Many more people of all nations need to be involved; Bible translation is a key facet of the overarching mission of God. We face tremendous challenges. More than 2000 of the world’s minority language groups still need access to Scripture in a language and format they can readily understand. The raising of resources for Bible translation takes place in a rapidly changing social, cultural, economic, political and religious environment in each nation and globally.”

Franklin is a graduate of Intercultural Studies from Tabor College, Victoria, Australia. He currently serves on Tabor’s board of directors and has been a guest lecturer in mission studies. He was a board member for Wycliffe International from 2002-07. In 2001 he was a founding member of Bible Agencies Australia. Franklin was on the board of the Australian Evangelical Alliance Missions Commission (Missions Interlink) from 2001-05.

Wycliffe International is an association of 48 member organizations worldwide that have agreed to work with each other and with partners around the world, promoting and participating in local and international Bible translation movements.

Source: http://www.wycliffe.org.uk

A Changing Church for a Changing World

On Wednesday most of our house group went to the Fresh Expressions Roadshow which was visiting Thatcham, a few miles from here. I liked the prayer on the front cover of their brochure. It read, 'Living God, set our hearts on fire to risk ourselves for your mission to change the world.' The key questions being posed during our time together were -
What are the loud words of Jesus to your Church community now, which speak to you of God's call to journey to new people?
What are the possibilities that are emerging for new initiatives in your situation?
What particular gifts/charisms has God given to your Church community? (What is the essential nature of your Church?)
In what ways is your Church responding to changing times?

Right at the start we were reminded that 'It is not the Church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world.'

First we were startled by a presentation that vividly depicted the situation in the UK today, where 10% are 'regular' at church (attending monthly or more), 10% are irregular at church (less than monthly), 20% are open to come back, 20% are never coming back and 40% are non-churched (who have never come). It was then explained that until now we've tended to work with those on the fringe of the church, only to come to a stop when we reach those who declare that they are never coming back. So the suggestion was that we should work anti--Church-wise and employ alternative radical new initiatives which go out to the unchurched, allowing new forms of church to emerge. This approach certainly makes sense!

The suggested starting point was loving service, and it was emphasised that there are many ways in which we can show the people in our community that our Church really cares about the community and wants to share its love for the people in it. Becoming involved with the community is vital to fresh expressions of Church, because from that loving involvement spring opportunities for evangelism and discipledhip. We explored three possible routes to discipleship - building in Christianity from the start, building in spirituality from the start or creating a separate group. We were reminded0 that there are 4 dimensions of a mature Church -
UP - towards God
IN - fellowship
OUT - mission
OF - connected to the whole body of Christ.

Then we each chose two of a number of 'taster' sessions in which we learned more about recently established forms of Fresh Expressions. I chose 'The Liquid Church' or 'Cafe Church', in which an ordinary coffee shop is used to get alongside the people and gently introduce them to the Good News of Jesus. This is what some of us in our Church have vaguely talked about and it seems to be the most likely for our community. Time will tell whether we actually take the risk and put this into practice. Then I went to the session on 'What makes a healthy Church?' to learn more of the 4 vital dimensions of a healthy church.

Other possibilities that were presented to us were,'What do they say about your church?' - and our attention was drawn to Bridge Builders, a Christian organisation dedicated to providing training for mediation and facilitation services to equip Christians with appropriate skills; Global Mission Network who can offer a trained consultant to use consultancy skills in the Church so that Ministers and Church Workers can explore their work together to find the right way forward; Godly Play which is built on the Montessori tradition of religious education and can be used in a variety of settings; the Positive Parenting Course which lasts 8 weeks and is produced by The Family Caring Trust; a 'Holiday at Home', designed for those who don't normally have a holiday and specially useful at times when the normal church activities shut down in December and August; the Essence Course, which is a 6 week course exploring contemporary spirituality at quite a deep level (a very rich experience); Hope 2008 which provides ideas and practical examples of initiatives for Christians engaging with their communities; and the faith development potential of the small group.

Fresh Expressions has so many possibilities and is so flexible that each Church should be able, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to find the right way forward for their particular community. It involves faith and risk-taking, just like the first disciples, but we are challenged to try it. The Fresh Expressions roadshow booklet ends with the wise words 'Start with the Church and the mission will probably get lost. Start with mission and it is likely that the Church will be found.'

'Lost For Words'

Last night we held the first of 6 sessions of the CPAS course 'Lost For Words' at our church, with the Minister, two Local Preachers and myself as leaders. As its title suggests, this course starts where the ordinary Christian people are in their Monday to Saturday daily lives and helps them to see that whatever their personality - bold or reticent - everyone is capable of sharing their faith naturally, just as they would share any other good news with the people they meet.

Many Christians feel inadequate or even guilty about sharing their faith because they believe it involves door-to-door knocking, handing out leaflets or speaking on street corners but I am reminded of the saying that 'Christianity is caught, not taught'. So it is a very natural face-to-face evangelism, as we come across people in our daily lives, that we are looking at in depth in this course, and to do that we had to identify and examine our own hang-ups that prevent us sharing our faith.

First, we must recognise that God is the evangelist, not us. Our role is to live a life of prayer in tune with God and to make ourselves available to him, as we make the most of every opportunity to speak about Jesus. FEAR is one of the most common reasons given for not sharing the faith - fear of looking a fool, of not knowing what to say, or of damaging a friendship. The key is to be honest with ourselves and with God. Love overcomes fear, so if we have a genuine concern for people, wanting to help them, fear can be held in check. We need to remember to rely on God and his love for us. We need to equip ourselves, so that we are as informed as we can be, we need to share our fear with other Christians, and we must pray about our fears and for the people to whom we want to talk about Jesus.

WRONG IDEAS about evangelism sometimes prevent Christians from speaking of Jesus. One of these is that evangelists are all of a certain extrovert type of personality whereas God made us all different for a purpose, so that he could use each one of us just as we are. We can't emphasise too much that God wants us to be ourselves.

Others say that they are too busy and have no time to spread the Gospel outside the Church, but this course helps them to understand that we can use our normal time - the time sitting next to someone on a bus, or standing next to someone in the supermarket queue, etc. Still others say that they are struggling with their own faith and so have nothing to share, forgetting that it is often in sharing our doubts that we suddenly realise that our own faith has been strengthened. Besides, it is often those who have 'been through it', as we say, who 'ring a bell' with someone who happens to be in that same situation.

We stressed that HELP is at hand -
H Honesty: admitting our inadequacies, sharing them, being honest with God.
E Explore the issues, learn from one another.
L Learn new insights and ideas on how to share our faith, what to say, etc.
P Prayer for ourselves, others on the course and in the church, and 'outsiders'.

Then we looked at Prayer clues in Colossians 4: 2-6 and stressed again the Key Principle - Be yourself, with God, for others. We asked those doing the course to think about all the human contacts they had had this week and helped them to see that we all have many more contact people than we realise. So there is plenty of opportunity to speak about Jesus if we keep our eyes and ears open enough to be sensitive to the openings or questions that occur naturally and which give us the chance to speak. To help us select which of several often-asked common questions we will deal with in future sessions, we briefly tackled the question 'Hasn't science disproved Christianity?' before asking our friends to select, from a list of common questions, which 5 questions they would like us to discuss and in which order of preference. This gives us a chance to prepare adequately and to tackle the questions that bother local people most.

We ended by praying that we may have the courage to respond to those opportunities and the wisdom to know what to say, so that we may learn to speak about our faith with anyone, in a relaxed, natural, helpful way, so that they may discover and respond to God's love for them.