DIOCESES have jettisoned using the word “church” in describing the “latest things” being established of their parishes, raising questions on what theology is being applied within the Church of England, an independent report says.
New Things: A theological investigation into the work of starting latest churches across 11 dioceses within the Church of England reports that, prior to now ten years, about 900 “latest things” have been began. None of the 11 dioceses used the term “church” as its principal description of such developments.
The report is published by the Centre for Church Planting Theology and Research, at Cranmer Hall, Durham, and draws on research carried out between November 2022 and June 2023, including interviews with representatives of every of the 11 dioceses. The creator of the report, which was published earlier this yr, is the Revd Will Foulger, Vicar of St Nicholas’s, Durham, a resource church within the diocese, and a former director of mission and evangelism at Cranmer Hall.
A key finding of the research is that every of the 11 dioceses was “working with a singular ecclesiology”. Six used the language of “worship” of their principal descriptor of “latest things”, two used “congregation”, and 7 used “community”. Some of the differences across dioceses were “stark”, the report says, “especially in the case of the difficulty of traditional ecclesial forms (worship, sacraments, etc.), with some dioceses recognising these as central, and others less so.” Only one diocese was working with a designator that was “rooted explicitly in Anglican sources”.
Among the questions posed is: “Whether it is feasible to carry together the Church if the local churches differ of their fundamental self-understanding.” There are, it says, “immediate inquiries to be asked in regards to the fragility of a few of this language, and the looseness of a few of the definitions”.
The emergence of this “latest ecclesial language” has happened “in a short time”, the report says, and is “affecting an operant theology inside the Church of England . . . the brand new language is shaping dioceses’ mission and ministry.” Among the questions raised is whether or not the emergence of those latest forms is “forcing us to redefine what we predict (a) church is within the Church of England?”
Setting the context for the research, the report notes that certainly one of the three priorities of the national Vision and Strategy for the present decade is: “To be a church where mixed ecology is the norm — where every one in England has access to an enriching and compelling community of religion by adding latest churches and latest types of Church to our parishes, cathedrals, schools and chaplaincies.” In 2021, plans to ascertain greater than 10,000 latest worshipping communities over the subsequent decade were announced (News, 2 July 2021). At least £82.7 million in Strategic Development Funding (SDF) was invested in starting latest churches.
The report suggests that the conversation about starting latest churches has “tended to be marked by a polarity: between those that are doing deep ecclesial reflection, and people who are looking for substantive impact”. The divide has, it says, “left certain parts of the Church — for whom fidelity to ecclesial forms and practices is central — feeling outside of the planting conversation”.
The aim of the report, which identifies several lacuna within the theological work underpinning national and diocesan strategies, is to assist the Church “higher understand by itself terms why it’s doing what it’s doing, and the way it would proceed with even greater faithfulness”.
Another finding was that just five of the 900 “latest things” reported by dioceses could possibly be said to exist within the Catholic tradition. This was “unsurprising to those of us who’ve been observing this movement for a while”, the report says. “This has been, and stays, essentially an evangelically-driven project.”
It continues: “It can be very hard for those from a more Catholic tradition to interact in a movement that has an inherently loose definition of church, and church form. . . Put simply, if a church is the gathering of those across the word, and sacraments as administered by a priest and in keeping with the authorised forms, then ‘latest worshipping community’ or ‘latest Christian community’ will at all times be inherently weak as a descriptor.”
In a bit on its limitations, the report acknowledges that it relies on information gathered from dioceses and their representatives. This may raise questions amongst readers whether Catholic “latest things” were registered at diocesan level. All but certainly one of the 11 dioceses referred to the SDF process when asked about “starting latest things”.
Of the 900 “latest things”, 89 per cent were “integrated inside the present parish system” relatively than existing as stand-alone “latest” churches (for instance, BMOs). The total includes 40 latest resource churches: the vast majority of dioceses had began or were about to begin no less than one.
Most were “revitalisations and grafts, or latest congregations inside existing churches”, and a “significant number” had been began intentionally in areas deemed to be areas of deprivation. The “overwhelming majority” weren’t city-centre resource churches, or larger (100-plus) churches, and didn’t originate from Holy Trinity, Brompton.
While describing this activity as “extensive”, the report observes that, in a few of the dioceses, the number of latest things was “very small” compared to the variety of parishes. Dioceses reported that these latest things were “growing in perceived contrast to most inherited churches”.
Only one diocese used “fresh expressions” or “pioneering” to explain what was happening, and the report explores in some detail the importance of this apparent shift prior to now decade, “from a deal with fresh expressions of church, towards starting latest churches”. This is described as a shift towards a “worship-first model of starting latest churches”.
The Fresh Expressions movement, it notes, was “keen to maintain ‘church’ as a qualifier”. By contrast, dioceses now used language allowing for “maximum breadth. ‘Church’ feels immediately restrictive and limiting. But it’s price asking why this is likely to be the case. Is it because ‘church’ feels too unachievable for the vast majority of things which can be began?”
The report records that a “good number” of the brand new things established not exist. The pandemic is given as one reason. Some had “struggled to get going in any respect in relation to SDF plans”, with appointing leaders listed among the many difficulties. Establishing congregations on housing estates is highlighted within the report as particularly difficult.
Across the dioceses, the report says, the language of “mixed ecology” was “ubiquitous”. This allowed for the potential of holding together pioneering and planting under one banner. But, it argues, “If the essence of pioneering is developing latest forms, for brand spanking new people, through experimentation and risk, and seeing church emerge, then it is evident that the overwhelming majority of things began in ten of the dioceses are usually not this.”
There is a suggestion that critics of the Mission Shaped Church report of 2004 (subtitled “Church planting and fresh expressions of church in a changing context”), who argued that it represented a shift away from the received C of E ecclesiology, can have seen their arguments win the day: “The C of E has not normalised pioneering but has relatively directed its energies at forms which can be additions to and adaptations of the present structures.”
Noting that the language of Vision and Strategy was “ubiquitous” across the 11 dioceses, the report concludes that that is an “underdeveloped area within the Church of England’s theology”, and observes that “loosed from theological roots, the conceptual framework inevitably looks for other sources for its guidance, namely business and management theory.”
The Church must ask, it says, what the “ends” of starting latest churches are, and the way these are different from the “ends of our contemporary world and, most notably, from the free-market capitalist context inside which vision-strategy-culture language and conceptual frameworks has emerged”.
To date, there was, it concludes, “really little or no theological rationale behind the starting of latest things. . . We are thus left with something of a spot between a few of our theological claims (namely, ‘God is the first agent in mission’) and our praxis (namely, ‘if we fail to do x, then we risk y’). We need subsequently to analyze what we predict is occurring here in order that our activity might need theological integrity.”
