Shapes of future church should respond to needs of a fragmented society, Lings w

Our world is changing fast. According to a recent poll nearly twice as many young people believe in horoscopes as in the Bible, and around forty percent of adults in England and Wales have left the church in their lifetimes.

Against this background, George Lings, Director of Church Army’s Research Unit - The Sheffield Centre, challenged Christians to consider how to make sense of the emerging church scene and respond to the challenge of being Mission-shaped in its focus. Kicking off the first of six nationwide seminars last Saturday, Lings posed the following questions:

How does a middle-class church really connect with the needs of a local housing estate?
How does a congregation, made of older adults, allow church to be created in a way that connects with teenagers?
What would living Christianity look like for Pagans or New Agers?
How can church connect with the people we engage with at work or through social circles?
What about those people who did Alpha but still can’t hack church?

Speaking on the eve of Church Army Sunday at Warwick on 25th September, Lings will tell delegates: “The Mission-shaped Church report, along with other studies, tells us that society is fragmenting. No one model or way of being church will suit everyone - or even the majority. Moreover, in a world dominated by networks, church based on territory alone will fail to connect.The demise of Christendom means Christian identity is no longer conferred on the population by society and Christian values are no long the norm. So most young people do not know the Christian story.”

The 2001 Population Census enabled the Christian Research Association to contrast census figures with church attendance figures. In July 2003 they published their findings in their magazine Quadrant. 72% of the population of England completed the National Census as “Christian”. However, only 7% of the English population are members of churches.

This confirms Lings’ conclusion that completing the national census as Christian “is just a way of expressing belonging and national identity rather than an accurate confirmation of active faith in God. This means that our long-lived and much-loved strategy: “come to us, we are available and accessible” is virtually out of date among the under 50’s. Mainstream culture no longer brings people to the church door. In the past, people might have come to us for the occasional offices, or maybe a crisis made them turn to the church. In those cases, our job was to help them from interest to commitment. That shape is less and less true. We cannot wait for people to come to us; we must go to them.”

Lings is highly regarded in church circles as a thinker and researcher and served as a member of the influential Mission-shaped Church working party under the chairmanship of the Rev Graham Cray, Bishop of Maidstone. In his role as Director of Church Army’s Sheffield Centre - a Research Unit focussed on discerning the evolving mission of the church, he publishes Encounters on the Edge a quarterly series of investigations into fresh expressions of church and Christian community now in its 5th year and will by the end of the year have spoken at 35 events.

A few months ago Lings spoke to Church Army National Conferences in Australia and New Zealand where he claimed that the recent Mission-shaped Church report 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. Conrad Parsons, Project Consultant for Australian New Initiatives said: “George Lings blew the minds of some radical people. His powerful effect lies largely in his revelations concerning the reality of our situation and the possible responses - particularly that if church doesn’t fit our experience-driven lifestyle then forms of church must diversify.”

In his presentations, the stories from Lings’ Encounters on the Edge were used to illustrate the diversity of the mission context and challenge that the church faces in reaching the four key “tribes” he outlined as fringe, open de-churched, closed de-churched and non-churched. Each of these needs a different or tailored approach yet for too often most evangelist programmes, successful though they may be, have focussed on the fringe. “1990’s research from John Finney tells us that 76% of new Christians come from the 30% de-churched”. Research by Lings’ colleague Steve Hollinghurst in The Sheffield Centre shows this is a fast diminishing pond.”

Lings’ talks are characterised by 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 paganism has never been greater. He challenges what he calls the “the Christendom distortion” which connects church too much with provision of public worship and too often presents poor quality of community and is disconnected from mission. “Start with the church and the mission will probably get lost. Start with the mission and it is likely that the Church will be found.” Lings will tell delegates. He advocates the approach of “mission re-discovery” whereby a community is sent to model and build community from which a specific shape of mission arises. Only after that comes the evolutionary discovery of contextualised worship. ”We must have the courage to go with them to a place nether you nor they have been before” concluded Lings, accepting the challenge posed by Vincent Donovan - apostle to the Masai.

The warning to the church in terms of its mission approach offered by Lings is clear: “Mission-shaped Church calls for a process of “double listening”. For the planting of churches, listening to both contemporary culture and church tradition are vital. Only listen to culture and you will end up with syncretism - in which Gospel and church are distorted by the culture. Only listen to the inherited tradition and the life and message of Jesus will not engage the culture - it will be disconnected and nothing will be gained for the church delivering the message as it will be seen as an irrelevance.”

George Lings is part of the CPAS speaking tour- “The Shape of Things to Come” and will be in:

Warwick- 25th September
Bristol 9th October
Haydock 16th October
Bradford 13th November
Glasgow 20th November

For more details of this tour phone 01926 458458 or log onto www.cpas.org.uk

For more details on how to get hold of George’s Encounters on the Edge booklets, contact Claire Dalpra on0114 272 7451 or log onto www.encountersontheedge.org.uk