A
Mission Shaped Church
We are living in a rapidly increasingly diverse nation.
Way of life, ways of thinking are becoming very different.
How should the church respond to this situation? While
there are an increasing diversity of congregational
styles of life and worship; many consider that there are
still very important parts of our nation unreached by the
churches and more is needed. The Bishop of Maidstone has
chaired a working party of the Church of England which
has written a report entitled, ‘A Mission Shaped
Church.’ The heart of this book, as far as I
understand it, is that what the church is doing now is
fine but it needs to be supplemented by a range of new
missionary initiatives which deserve funding, a share of
the church’s income.
These new initiatives are very varied. They range from
extensions of the sort of directions we are trying to go
in our church schools and St Stephen’s congregation
to the night club chaplaincy established by the bishop in
Maidstone lead by Diana Greenwood, a Church Army Officer,
to initiatives we are hardly able to envision or
articulate.
What are we to make of all this? I am convinced that we
need new and imaginative initiatives. The church has
limited resources; we are unlikely to increase these
greatly over the next few years. How do we best use the
limited resources we have - this is a very difficult
question and has to do with some sort of evaluation of
opportunities and resources. I consider that it is
inadequate to leave the ‘traditional’ church as
it is and add supplementary activities. There are places
where the ‘traditional’ church is becoming
increasingly unviable. There needs to be a concern for
the ability of church work to be able to sustain
itself over time. The history of the church suggests that
most creative work that embodies the gospel in the lives
of persons takes a long time to build and establish. I do
not see the needed new initiatives and the ‘traditional’
churches surviving well in an effective way without a
creative relationship with each other.
This report and its thinking and further thinking about
these matters needs, I believe, to be worked out in each
local place. It is only honest and imaginative
conversations within the town of Maidstone and with its
surrounding countryside and within the wider community of
Kent that will lead us well into this future we need but
can hardly imagine in this wonderful and ever changing
world. These are important matters for us to think and
pray about.
Christopher Morgan – Jones
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