Intro

Fresh Expressions and the Eucharist in a cultural context.

In this second year of curacy, mission is our focus, and the subject matter for our presentation came about from issues that have risen in personal experience. In particular, the potential crunch points of how and if the Eucharist and Fresh Expressions can live in harmony. We will show with reference to a specific case study and two other incidences what issues have arisen, we will examine them biblically, and then suggest some potential solutions - and what other practitioners in this area are doing and saying in this context. We acknowledge that there will still be questions left open at the end of the presentation - not least of which in areas which we realise that this subject touches on but we have put outside the remit of this presentation.

We want to begin by stating how we define the terms we will be using.

What is mission?

The late South African Theologian David Bosch suggests that ‘the Christian faith is intrinsically missionary,’ yet he refuses to define ‘mission’ within too narrow a confine. Primarily he considers that the missio Dei is rooted in the ‘dynamic relationship between God and the world’ and within the reality of the Incarnation. If we are willing to accept this premise, we will then be working with the widest possible definition of Mission.
Mission is the revealing of God’s action and activity in the world, and as such it must be in Bosch’s phrase ‘multi-dimensional’.

What is the Eucharist?

There is an increasing recognition across the denominations that the Eucharist is the distinctive worshipping event for the Christian Church. Its central elements of bread broken and wine poured out witness powerfully to the reality of the human condition, and the incarnate love of Christ. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper no.111 from the World Council of Churches identifies a number of characteristics of the Eucharist
The Eucharist as Thanksgiving to the Father
The Eucharist as Anamnesis or Memorial of Christ
The Eucharist as Invocation of the Spirit
The Eucharist as Communion of the Faithful
The Eucharist as Meal of the Kingdom
It is within this description that we place the Eucharist.

What is church?

The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms defines church as ‘the community of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ. In the New Testament it is used in a limited sense for local communities and in a universal sense for all believers.” In the Anglican context, whilst agreeing with the Westminster Dictionary definition, for a church in the local community sense to be described correctly as church, it needs to be sacramental, in particular offering baptism and regular Eucharist. If there is no sacramental ministry, it could be argues that it is simply a group of Christians meeting to encourage each other - as Mike Volland of the Fresh Expression FEIG community in Gloucester says, there’s nothing wrong with that but it falls a little short of a fully orbed 'church'. Rowan Williams suggests that church is an event - a calling together, and when this calling together has happened, what follows is a set of acts and words that get us walking in step with Jesus. We pray his prayers, live his life, not as a matter of historical reconstruction but as a kind of singing in tune with his eternal relation with his Father. The sacraments of the Church are not there as mysterious rituals to deepen our sense of of group identity - though of course they do that among other things. They are there to us what story it is that defines the shape of our world, and to take us further on our journey, on our following out the Son’s journey. Something is needed to anchor what we are doing in what God is doing - in the event that is God’s actions, not ours. And the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist, that I mentioned earlier, simply announce that here, as church, something is being done that isn’t our work.

What are Fresh Expressions:-

The official description of ‘fresh expressions” by the Fresh Expressions group is

"a form of church for our changing culture established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church.
• It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and making disciples.
It will have the potential to become a mature expression of church shaped by the gospel and the enduring marks of the church and for its cultural context.”

Fresh Expressions of church have been described as being characterised by an absence of formal adherence to traditional patterns of church life, language, liturgy and places in which to meet. The movement is an attempt to make the Christian message relevant to people who are not already part of an established, or mature, expression of church. The people who are members of fresh expression groups seek to re-interpret what it is to be church and aim to create new ways of connecting with the communities among whom they live or work or socialise. The 2007 statistical returns from the Church of England reveal that several tens of thousands of people are involved in such groups attached to the Church of England.

However, The difficulty with what we have come to call ‘fresh expressions of church’ is that we may be ready only to dress up old structures in new clothes, calling ourselves Café Church or the New Monasticism, or Alternative Church but never really engaging with the changed realities which face us.

Within the limits of this presentation, we intend to confine our discussions very firmly within a particular context, a very real context. How would a Mission-shaped Eucharist ‘work’ in an informal and recently established church-plant, meeting in a local school, and with a worshipping congregation of people who are relatively new to the Christian faith?