World-Shaped Mission. Janice Price

place of the church building as a tool in mission, the nature and practice of worship and the role of the evangelist to name a few. What is important is to acknowledge that how mission is imagined affects the way it is expressed practically.

      1.12 The current context in twenty-first-century Britain is complex and challenging. The Church of England together with its ecumenical partners is discovering the language and practice of mission and evangelism anew. For the Church of England, it is searching to interpret and express them as English Anglicans in the mission contexts of today.

      What is shaping the mission imagination today?

      1.13 World Christianity

The shape of world Christianity is changing. The centre of Christianity is shifting from the West to the Majority World9 in the East, to Africa, Latin America and Asia. It is more accurate to say that the future of Christianity will have multiple centres of Christianity. It is in the churches of the Majority World that growth is being experienced at a phenomenal rate. The Pentecostal Churches are popular and are growing fast. A significant development globally has been the emergence of theologies of the Spirit as agent in mission.10 The Christianities of the Majority World are diverse and culturally distinct – just as Western Christianity is culturally distinct. The churches in the North and West will continue but in increasingly diverse forms. The churches in the different global regions will no longer resemble the churches of the West. This is to be warmly welcomed as the churches throughout the world express Christian faith in ways that are culturally appropriate and relevant. Relationships between the churches of the Majority World and the West will be as important as ever, if not more so, and historic relationships will undergo sometimes painful re-evaluation. This is an Ephesian Moment11 when the old forms of the historic churches of the West live together with the new and emerging Christianities of the Majority World. It is increasingly evident that changes in the world economic order will influence patterns of mission in the future. The growing economic significance of China, India and Brazil, for example, will have a considerable effect on patterns of world mission movements and partnerships. The presence of large numbers of women and young people in the churches of the Majority World has the effect of embedding them into serving local communities and future generations.

      1.14 Most significantly, world Christianity lives in an inter-religious global context which is increasingly political in its outworking. This has highlighted the particular tensions that face Christians who live as a minority faith in complex inter-religious contexts. It has also highlighted the importance of inter-religious dialogue as an aspect of relationships across cultures. Here the concept of mission is highly problematic where conversion can be forbidden by law and communicating Christ’s gospel is limited or even prohibited. It has also highlighted the fact that relationships in one part of the world affect those in other parts within very short time periods. The post-9/11 world has brought inter-religious dialogue to the top of the world mission agenda.

      1.15 The Church of England

In the Church of England many parish churches are actively reorientating their priorities to a mission focus and this is bearing fruit both in the depth of spiritual life and in numbers involved in churches. This is also the case ecumenically as all denominations in Britain reorient their lives and priorities towards participating in God’s mission in the world. However, there is still a journey to make. In the Church of England the mission imagination of many, but by no means all, parish churches primarily concerns survival. The demands of expensive church buildings as well as the need to pay the quota to the diocese continue to put pressure on parish churches to draw inwards or to see those outside the church as a source of income and funds rather than those who God loves and for whom the church exists. In many places it is not that parish churches do not want to think creatively about mission. Rather it is that the necessity of upkeep of buildings and ministry saps creative thinking. For many, inside and outside our parish churches, the church building exerts a power and influence over memory and association which can lead to tension as important landmarks change and are even threatened. Mission for the Church of England has been a synthesis between parish or community, church building and ministry, largely but not exclusively by the clergy-in-parish model. This way of imagining mission in the local context has proved to be remarkably resilient. It has allowed for variations – for example, church planting, team and group ministries, local ministry teams but has not fundamentally changed. The Decade of Evangelism saw attempts to re-shape these relationships with Robert Warren’s work on Building Missionary Congregations.12 This analysis advocated the move from ‘Maintenance to Mission’ and urged Anglican Christians to imagine their life in new ways based on God’s mission in the world.

      Mission-shaped Church

      1.16 The publication of Mission-shaped Church in 2004 was highly significant in shaping how the Church of England imagines mission in two areas. First, it acknowledged that the parochial system was

‘no longer able fully to deliver its underlying mission purpose. We need to recognize that a variety of integrated missionary approaches is required.’13

      Secondly, it advocated that the Church of England is itself now a church in mission and that to be effective witnesses to Christ’s love Christians need to cross cultures in our own context. In particular it articulated the nature of changing communities in England based on network rather than geography and how personal and cultural identity is being shaped by these changes. The report relates this to a post-Christendom context where the gulf between Christian faith, the church and cultural context is growing and how the church needs new ways of relating to its context. In essence this would mean adapting to a missionary strategy which focused on telling the story of Jesus within a culture that was in the process of forgetting that story, or for many, hearing it as a new story. This was a new understanding of incarnational mission – not only confined to the parish model but a diversification of that strategy into new worship styles and forms of church. Mission-shaped Church gave rise to the movement called Fresh Expressions. Fresh Expressions has led the way in expanding the mission imagination into new ways of being church and of relating to the contemporary context. Fresh Expressions has opened new possibilities for following God in mission in the world.

      1.17 With the emphasis on the need to work cross-culturally in the English context Fresh Expressions has also assisted in the breaking down of the division between home and overseas mission. Where home and overseas mission were previously seen as separate categories, it is now the case that differences can be distinguished between them but in essence mission from everywhere to everywhere is cross-cultural. This is reflected in the work of the Mission Agencies. The Church Mission Society (CMS) is heavily involved in Fresh Expressions and in pioneer minister training and has mission partners in the UK involved in Fresh Expressions as well as in the wider world. Equally, the Church Army was heavily involved in the process that led to the publication of Mission-shaped Church and is central to the continuing development and vision of Fresh Expressions.

1.18 In highlighting the role of the Mission Agencies in Fresh Expressions, the influence and contribution of the voluntary society to God’s mission can be seen. The interaction of voluntary society and church structures is an example of the principles of the two structures of modality (‘the structured fellowship’) and sodality (a structured fellowship where there is a conscious decision to join beyond the modality structure) as developed by Ralph Winter.14 The modal is the Church of England structures and the sodality is the Mission Agencies and the Religious Communities for example. The relationship between these two structures of being church are interdependent but church as both modality and sodality need each other and each are vital for the life of the other.15

      1.19 Cross-cultural relationships have been part of the life of dioceses and parishes of the Church of England for many years. Whether