Archbishop Rowan Calls for Church to be seen as "Life Transforming New Creation"

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, called for the church to look afresh at the "remarkable transforming nature of the first century church" and allow structures to be "more permissive than prescriptive" in order to inform the delivery of fresh expressions of church.

Speaking at the tenth National Anglican Church Planting Conference held in London on 23rd June. Archbishop Rowan's thoughtful and reflective keynote address to 450 delegates from across different traditions within the Anglican Church highlighted the recent appointment of Stephen Croft as Archbishops' Missioner as central to helping the church through what he described as "an exciting and unchartered future."

In an hour long address that focussed on the challenge of being effective in a society that does not always see Christianity as culturally relevant, Dr Williams was passionate about not losing site of "the transforming new creation” that an encounter with Jesus has on the lives of individuals and communities. Whilst highlighting his regret at the decline of Sunday as the special set aside day for worship, the Archbishop accepted the cultural realities created by our 24-7 pressurised lifestyles, and challenged the church to respond to this through "encouraging people to find space to encounter God in their daily lives in a way that best enables a relationship to be sustained". He was determined that the church needed to “break through in the stand-off between the extremes of conservative and radical positions” in presenting the person of Christ, and went on to state that church structures do not present God to individuals - "it is a real encounter with Jesus that does that", he said.

Archbishop Rowan identified the two principal challenges of mission-shaped church as being to allow people to experience church as "an event before it is an institution" and that "the spirituality of the church should enable people to come to a fresh and transforming encounter with Jesus."

George Lings, Director of Church Army’s Research Unit, The Sheffield Centre commented: “We have an Archbishop who openly makes the fostering of fresh expressions of church one of his two highest priorities. Delegates were delighted that he has supported a conference focused on enabling people to think about doing mission-shaped church in their locality, theologians to explore for what reasons church should be mission-shaped and develop strategies to implement mission-shaped church’s recommendations in dioceses.”

For a full transcript of the Archbishop's keynote address (available from 25th June) call Jude Stone on 0114 2789378