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New Housing, New Partnerships

New housing areas...

New partnerships?
One of the criticisms of the Mission-shaped Church report was that it was ambiguous about multi-denominational church plants. The Grove Booklet no.61 reviewing UK church planting in the 1990s that George Lings co-wrote with Stuart Murray was also hesitant about ecumenical planting by drawing more attention to its drawbacks than its strengths.

This Encounters on the Edge issue was written to tell the stories of two highly effective multi-denomination plants and thereby redress the undue negativity perceived correctly by some. These two stories show how it is possible for such fresh expressions of church to thrive and the booklet takes time to reflect on why they have worked so well.

Both stories happen to share a similar context. They are new churches planted in areas of new middle-class housing. The Government's commitment to building so many new homes for the foreseeable future is an important opportunity for the wider church to make a contribution to by releasing resources to plant new churches for these new communities.In both these stories, multi-denomination planting was the best way to do this. Order this issue to read how they grew from scratch to work so effectively.