What makes a church Anglican?

Sounds like a seriously boring topic...? Yesterday at Wycliffe I was in a focus day on Fresh Expressions of church led by a nice man called Steve Croft who is in charge of Fresh Expressions. If you haven't heard of this, the idea is basically about trying to start churches which meet people where they are rather than simply doing stuff in order to get people to come along to an existing church on a Sunday morning. So, to use some examples from yesterday, a parent and toddler church instead of a parent and toddler group to get people to come along on Sunday morning. Or a skater church for young people. Or a coffee shop church - and so on. Lots more info on the website.

I guess I tend to assume that this is a Good Thing because I became a Christian in a church/congregation like this. It's called Eternity (website being reformatted at the moment) and is a plant of an Anglican church in Warfield, near Bracknell. The pragmatic side of me says: this is a way to get more people to become Christians so we should do it.

But there was quite a bit of discussion in the focus day on this question. A number seemed quite concerned that this would undermine Anglican identity since these new kinds of church bore little relation to the way 'we' tend to do things: don't necessarily worship on Sundays, don't use standard liturgy, don't operate within a parish and so on. Others were concerned about the 'homogenous' principle, i.e. the churches grow best when they are trying to reach a particular group of people rather than build a community for all and sundry.

I have some sympathy for these concerns. The church is supposed to be a place where people come together from every age, nation, class, language and so on. It is meant to reconcile enemies and unite people who would otherwise have nothing in common. And to be Anglican it needs to have some kind of continuity with and relationship to other Anglican churches.

But at the same time I guess I want to defend the idea of Fresh Expressions for a number of reasons. The first thing that occurs to me is that actually most 'normal' churches actually operate on a homogenous principle anyway - they just don't realise it! So a parish church which is trying to reach the parish around it is in fact already trying to reach a group of people who already have something in common - namely, that they live in the same place. And almost invariably, these churches do not in fact bring people together from all manner of background - they tend to represent people of similar ages, class, nationality and so on (obviously there are exceptions).

The day reminded me of something else: being Anglican is not about sharing the same liturgy. You often hear it said, "The great thing about the Anglican church used to be that you could go anywhere in the country (or even anywhere in the world) and everyone would be using the same readings and the same liturgy" and so on. Anglicanism was meant to be somehow uniform.

I think that's terrible! It rejects the whole insight of the missionary movement that Christian faith needs to be contextualised and expressed in a relevant way to people - otherwise you are absolutising and exporting a strand of English culture (from several centuries ago!), not the gospel. And in fact, all mission is cross-cultural to at least some extent (especially in today's post-Christian/Christendom situation).

But most importantly, this insight is right at the heart of what it is to be Anglican. That is, the idea of contextualising the gospel is not some faddish contemporary novelty. It is written into the heart of the theological heritage of Anglicanism, it is what being Anglican is all about. The Book of Common Prayer was an attempt to express the gospel in a relevant way for sixteenth and seventeenth century England. Public worship was no longer to be conducted in Latin but in the language everyone spoke. It was never expected that this liturgy itself would become the eternal touchstone of authentic Anglican expression: the key was that Christian worship should be comprehensible to those who attended it.

My conclusion is therefore obvious: Fresh Expressions are trying to do the same thing today. It is important that they operate with the accountability and support of the wider Anglican church - and ultimately, they should play their part within the church more widely as we would expect any church to do: contributing financially to the diocese where appropriate, meeting with other churches for worship and fellowship, raising up and sending out missionary leaders. But these expressions of being part of the wider church are not dependent on Sunday morning, operating within a geographical parish, and using the same liturgy as everyone else!

Comments

[Simon]

"Others were concerned about the 'homogenous' principle, i.e. the churches grow best when they are trying to reach a particular group of people rather than build a community for all and sundry."

There's an underlying assumption there that "churches grow best" is exactly equivalent to "churches are best". It's a very common assumption, but it really ought to be challenged.

[Sean]

Not sure I quite understand you. Do you mean to challenge the assumption that growing churches are the best kind of churches?

If so, fair enough, in a sense. But could you be more specific? I would agree that we should be wary of simple numbers games. But I would equally say that if a church is not growing, we should ask ourselves why.

[michael jensen]

Well, Sean, we agree again. IN fact, the 39 Articles explicitly speaks of different liturgies being used in different contexts... it's a 'd'uh' as far as I am concerned.

[David]

Interesting post - we are having similar discussions over here at Ridley. A few reflections on how we think Fresh Expressions are Anglican.

Authority structures and the wider Church - the leadership of the FE can choose to make that clear and visible... that they are under a Bishop, an Archdeacon, a Diocese... part of the Church of England, part of the Anglican Communion, part of the 'catholic' Church (with a small C)

The way in which they interpret Scripture - Scripture, Tradition and Reason.

Structure of services. Common Worship already recognises we don't use the same words but it encourages us to adhere to a liturgical structure... that can apply and be distinctly Anglican just as much as an FE as anywhere else.

Importance of the Sacraments - Baptism and Communion.

I personally find this whole homogenous/heterogenous idea to be a red-herring. No church is totally heterogenous. Even discounting the issue of location for your average church and noting people maybe of different age structures, we are usually far from representative of all the 'people groups' that in our parish. Culture, style of worship, language, and much more can all homogenise the church in different ways. Why hold FE churches to a standard that inherited models of church have never fulfilled?

[Sean]

thanks all, esp. David. I very much agree with you.

At Soul Survivor, they introduce many of their festivals now with the words, "Welcome to Soul Survivor. We are part of the Church of England." I love that!

Steve Croft made the point that the diocese and its bishop is the basic ecclesiological unit of the C of E and not the parish. That is, if a church is in communion with and under the authority of its diocesan bishop then it is authentically Anglican. Cathedrals (most of them) are a good example of non-parochial but very Anglican churches!

Not sure I agree re. Scripture, trad and reason though. That is a post-Enlightenment fabrication/distortion of Hooker!

[Sean]

P.S. for more on that, see my post on Hooker:

http://seandoherty.blogs.com/welcome_to_seans_blog/2005/06/richard_hooker_.html

[jen]

interesting post
I think that if churches met people where they are and befriend them then they have the opportunity to invite them to church on Sundays

[Suzy]

I'm really interested in the fresh expressions idea and will take a closer look me thinks. I guess the point is that Church needs to be a community and can grow more easily where there are good friendships and where community already exists.
In times past when transport was a little more challenging then I guess proximity was the main factor that bound people together. However these days with a more mobile society community tends to be based on other stuff like shared interests etc.
So for example there are 4 Christians as part of the crew at a Ceroc night that I go to. I think it would be exciting to try a fresh expression of church in this scenario!
I just think that we cannot and should not expect people to come to us in our Christian ghettos. I have become so uncomfortable in church so why on earth should I expect someone else of my generation who hasn't been 'churched' to turn up and embrace the idea?!