God’s Mission in Our Community

Write a report for your Church Committee OR your Ministry Area Council, entitled “God’s Mission in Our Community”.

This assignment relates to my Church, St. David’s Church in Llanfaes, Brecon.   

Introduction

This report will outline in general what mission is and will briefly review the context of St. David’s Church, Llanfaes. I will draw on academic works from various scholars to make recommendations to the PCC for new projects that will result in better engagement with younger people in the parish. In order to make recommendations I will ensure that the project meets the five marks of mission, explore the Fresh Expressions movement and try to explain the theological rational behind the recommendation.

What is Mission

Mission has two threads: God’s Mission or Missio Dei and the Church’s Mission or Missio Ecclesiae. In this report “The Church” refers to the Global Anglican Church as a body.

With regards to God’s Mission, Michael Moynagh states in his book Church for Every Context (Moynagh, 2012) (p105) that God is the father that sends the Son and the Spirit. The word “Mission” has its roots in the Greek word apostello, meaning to send (Fernando, n.d.). Missio Dei is firstly and foremostly an activity of God (Moynagh, 2012) (p121)

Moynagh argues that the Church’s mission is to be drawn into the self-giving mission of God. However, David Bosch states in his book Transforming Mission (Bosch, 2005) (p519) that the Church does not simply undertake God’s mission but it is God’s Mission that establishes the Church.

In recent times mission have focused on Fresh Expressions of Church. Fresh Expressions comes almost naturally from a church’s participation with Missio Dei (Sheir-Jones, 2009) (p8). Sheir-Jones goes on to explain that Fresh Expression are alternative, culturally sensitive, incarnational worship for the unchurched.

An important part of understanding what mission is is the five marks of mission. Wallis and Ross in their work Mission in the 21^st Century, detail the five marks of mission (Andrew Wallis and Cathy Ross, 2008) (pXIV):

1.    To proclaim the Good news of the Kingdom;

2.    To teach, baptise, and nurture new believers;

3.    To Respond to human need by loving service;

4.    To seek to transform unjust structures of society; and

5.    To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the of the earth.

The Church in Wales, being in communion with the Anglican Church, is tasked with upholding the threefold ministry of bishop, priest and deacon to ensure the historic four marks of the church are defined in practice. Those four marks are One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic (Moynagh, 2012) (p109).

Why do we need to engage in mission?

We read in Mark 12:29-31 that we are to love God with all our hearts and to love your neighbour as yourself. There is no greater commandment (NSRV, 1995). In this context we take that to mean that we must engage with those currently not involved with the Church and have no access to the Gospels.

Current nature of Mission in St. David’s

The context of St. David’s Church is that we are set on the outskirts of Brecon, with Brecon Cathedral in the town centre along with another main church, St. Mary’s. The Cathedral and St. Mary’s are very much of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. St. David’s is currently in interregnum and the area Dean has appointed a non-stipendiary priest to lead St. David’s. Regular Sunday worship is about 20-25. Brecon has a lack of ethnic diversity and St. David’s reflects that. As with most Anglican churches St. David’s is populated by mostly ladies with only a few men. St. David’s has an active Sunday school which takes place at the same time as Sunday Eucharist.

Pastoral

We have two licenced pastoral lay visitors who are active. Our non-stipendiary vicar has taken a lead role pastorally and is very much at the front as opposed to just celebrating the Eucharist. There is a strong sense of fellowship within the congregation and reflects the Llanfaes area which is a close community.

Evangelistic

In terms of evangelism, St. David’s has been very much a centripetal or “Come and join us”. We are embarking on a project that will see the church hall being incorporated into the Church building. The congregation are very active, but it does seem to be the same old faces at the events that are put on. As those people drift away or become too unwell to attend, the congregation declines. Much of the activity around St. David’s is about fund raising to keep it open and restore it.

Fresh Expressions of Church

In 2004 the Church of England commissioned a report entitled Mission Shaped Church. This report planted the seed of Fresh Expressions of Church (Church of England, 2004).

Fresh Expressions are new forms of church emerging from contemporary culture and aimed towards those who do not go to church (Fresh Expressions , 2017). Each Fresh Expression has its own identity such as a Café Church or Messy Church to name some of the more identifiable fresh expressions.

Recommendation

The recommendation of this report is that St. David’s takes an initiative to engage the younger generation in a Fresh Expressions of Church Style which could be done in two ways. Firstly, to manage the churchyard in a manner to sustain wildlife and secondly to turn over a small portion of the churchyard to growing vegetables.

These recommendations would have an element of worship within them. The idea being not to attract people to regular Sunday worship but to have these as Fresh Expressions of the Church as independent acts of worship.

The vegetables could be given to the foodbank or sold to the community and the money given to the Foodbank. This will in no way replace any of the services currently held at St. David’s but will be seen as a Fresh Expression of Church (Sheir-Jones, 2009). As discussed in our module workbook, Fresh Expressions is contextual and incarnational and borne out of the culture and networks of the membership (Anon., 2017) (P69).

Many Fresh Expressions revolve around food or sharing of a meal and therefore growing food supports this idea further. Children are very engaged when things are growing and with wildlife.

Theological rationale and motivation

Reasons for Decline

Some of the reasons for a decline in church numbers was discussed in Roxburgh’s book Missional Mapmaking: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition. Roxburgh (Roxbugh, 2010) (Pages 89-109) detailed eight of the preeminent forces that are causes for decline in the Church as follows:

·       Globalization

·       Pluralism

·       Rapid Technological change

·       Postmodernism

·       Staggering Global Need

·       Loss of Confidence in Primary Structures

·       Democratization of Knowledge

·       Return to Romanticism

The reason for the recommendations is that during our Lent course the group studied stewardship. By managing the churchyard in a sustainable manner, we are encouraging wildlife and teaching our younger people to look after the environment. By growing vegetables, we are teaching the young people life skills and by adding an element of worship and religious education we are sharing the Word with more people that just wouldn’t be interested in coming to Sunday Eucharistic services.

We are taught in Matthew 28 verse ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you, And remember, I am with you always, to the end of age. (NSRV, 1995). To put that into our context and as already set out above, one of the five marks of mission is to baptise, teach and nurture new believers.

Baptism is a core part of the Anglican church. Again we are taught in Mark 16 verses ¹⁵ And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good new to the whole creation. ¹⁶ the one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not will condemned. (NSRV, 1995). In the Life Application Study Bible, it says that is not the waters of baptism that saves but the grace of God (Life Application (NIV), 2011). This means that baptism with belief is the core, not just baptism.

The book of Acts is an important missional text believed to be written by St. Luke and describes much of the missionary journeys of St. Paul who is often seen as the great missionary. It is clear from his writings that St. Paul did not stay a long time in his missional visits just long enough to establish a church and leaders then move on. He was not keen to depend financially on the people he sought to reach and made a living by leatherworking or tent-making (Moynagh, 2012) (p13). Paul was tended to perform mission in teams. It is acknowledged that Paul was the first Christian Theologian because he is the first missionary (Bosch, 2005)(p124).

In John 4.35-38 (NSRV, 1995), Jesus says “I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work”. In the Life application study Bible it suggests that the ‘others’ may mean the Old Testament prophets paving the way for the Gospels (Life Application (NIV), 2011). This suggests that we have a continuation of God’s Mission from Old Testament to New Testament and through our work continuing into the future.

Conclusion

We are taught that mission does not mean that one has to go off to different places to preach, but to bring the word of God and knowledge of Jesus to the unchurched. Whilst Sunday worship and Eucharist are important it is often not the most appealing service because it is steeped in a thousand years of tradition. To the new believer this can be off putting as it can be difficult to follow and understand. By launching our “Fresh Expression” style worship we can engage with different people, bringing more young people into our church. When we say church, it is meant as a body of Christ rather than getting them into the church building on a Sunday morning. Our mission is to spread the Word of God and the Gospels to those who don’t normally get to hear about them.

Some of Roxburgh’s eight reasons for the decline of church can be turned to our advantage. For example, using technology such as Facebook and Instagram to share what we are doing and connect with a larger unchurched audience. The Democratization of Knowledge started with the advent of the printing press and has been used to the benefit of the Church in re-printing reliably translated Bibles. 

We find in the Epistles that St. Paul’s in mission(s) planted a church, developed the leaders then moved on to allow the church to grow beyond him. Without that style of early church leadership, we may be looking at a very different Christianity indeed. St. David’s church must also adopt this style with regards to Fresh Expressions because once the one person driving the project has gone the project may fail. All good organisations plan for the future (Ramsden, n.d.).

The criteria for mission in the Five Marks of Mission, was given by Andrew Wallis and Cathy Ross, and the four marks of church are One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic by Moynagh.

Thus, the recommendations achieve the five marks of mission in these ways:

1.    Proclaiming the Good News by ensuring that we include Bible verses and worship with each activity;

2.    Teaching, Baptising and Nurturing new believers by using an activity to bring a Bible reading into our context;

3.    Respond to human need by loving service by either giving the food produced to the foodbank or selling it and raising money for the foodbank;

4.    Transform unjust structures of society by our acts of worship perhaps focusing of prayers for those being unjustly or unfairly treated; and

5.    Safeguard the integrity of Creation, sustain and renew the life of earth by managing the church yard sustainably to develop habits for wildlife that doesn’t usually live there.

References

Andrew Wallis and Cathy Ross, 2008. Mission in the 21st Century. London: Orbis Book.

Anon., 2017. Introducing Christian Mission. s.l.:St Padarn's Institute.

Bosch, D. J., 2005. Transforming Mission. 21st ed. New York: Orbis Books.

Church of England, 2004. Mission Shaped Church. [Online]
Available at: https://thewearypilgrim.typepad.com/files/mission_shaped_church-1.pdf
[Accessed 25 June 2019].

Fernando, A., n.d. Mission and Evangelism. [Online]
Available at: https://www.esv.org/resources/esv-global-study-bible/mission-and-evangelism/
[Accessed 10th June 2019].

Fresh Expressions , 2017. What is a Fresh Expression. [Online]
Available at: http://freshexpressions.org.uk/about/what-is-a-fresh-expression/
[Accessed 28th June 2019].

Life Application (NIV), 2011. Life Application Study Bible NIV. Great Britian: Hodder & Stoughton.

Moynagh, M., 2012. Church for Every Context. London: SCM Press.

NSRV, 1995. The Holy Bible. Oxford: Oxford Unversity Press.

Ramsden, D. J., n.d. 10 tips for successful succession planning. [Online]
Available at: https://www.investorsinpeople.com/knowledge/10-tips-for-successful-succession-planning/
[Accessed 6th July 2019].

Roxbugh, A. J., 2010. Missional Mapmaking: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition. San Francisco: Josey-Bass.

Sheir-Jones, A., 2009. Pioneer Ministry and Fresh Expressions of Church. London: SPCK.

Spencer, S., 2007. Studyguide to Christian Mission , London: SCM. Moodle eBook.