Many encounter Jesus but just can’t hack traditional church
George Lings - Church Army’s Director of Research, challenged Christians this week to wake up to the fact that many encounter Jesus and spirituality more effectively outside than inside the structures of traditional church.
Introducing the mission and church planting seminar at the 20th Christian Resources Exhibition at Sandown Park, Esher - the largest event of its kind in Europe, Lings claimed that the recent debate in the Church of England has raised the profile about fresh expressions of church, but more should be done to demonstrate the range of what contemporary church is - if Christianity is to convince a sceptical public.
Lings outlined that for too many church is, “an invisible relic of the past - institutionalised, irrelevant and inadequate, and based on a model of society that no long applies: for too long we have tried to span this divide by trying to get people coming in to us rather than being what they need where they are.”
“Forty percent of adults in England and Wales have left the church in their lifetime”, explains Lings. “That is an extraordinary volume of water to lose out of the church bath. It looks distinctly careless. Yet, half of this de-churched group is open to return, if we find them and get our act together. Our call is to engage with a society moving away from - and out of touch with - church.”
The Bishop of Dorchester, Rt Revd Colin Fletcher, added that “emerging church has to be more strongly relational and rooted at the centre of communities if it is to be mission-shaped for the people who need it.” The Bishop of Maidstone, the Rt Revd Graham Cray, author of the Church of England’s mission-shaped church report supports the role of Church Army in helping things to change, “The experience of Church Army at street level will prove invaluable in implementing practical change.”
Earlier in the conference, Church Army’s Chief Secretary, Philip Johanson, had set the theme for future church by warning the church against waiting in vain for young people to return to the fold. In his keynote address Johanson introduced the theme of future church and pleaded that the church needed to recognise the need for fresh expressions of church in a modern context.
Johanson claimed that “Emerging church must be shaped by the mission content of today and not as churchgoers might prefer it to be. We must listen to the people - the 60% who consider themselves as not connected with the church.”
The address provided an honest and frank assessment of why traditional Sunday worship is seen by many as outdated and irrelevant and yet the interest in spirituality, new-age faith and the occult has never been greater.
Church Army is engaged in pioneering ministries that provide young people with the opportunity to express themselves spiritually without the need to engage with traditional church. Johanson highlighted the work of Kidz Klub in inner city Liverpool; the 3:16 bus project in West Grimsby and Streetreach – a project engaging young people in Northern Ireland as examples of Church Army’s pioneering new ministries that are making a difference on the cutting edge.
To download full text of speech, click here
