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Testing Fresh Expressions: Identity & Transformation

Reviewed by Paul Beasley-Murray.

This book is a very welcome contribution to the study of mission today in the UK. Up until now it has been difficult to evaluate ‘Fresh Expressions of Church’, not least because according to Robin Gill, a distinguished professor of applied theology, it would appear that even some of the core documents that have promoted Fresh Expressions contain on-going contradictions and misleading information. Now, however, we have a major piece of academic research on the effectiveness or otherwise of Fresh Expressions in the Diocese of Canterbury by John Walker, who himself has experience of both traditional parish ministry and innovative church planting. The following are some of his conclusions:

• “Fresh expressions of church are better at mission than parish churches in some highly contextualized situations, and the fresh expressions movement has enriched and reinvigorated the way many parish churches approach mission Still, they do not and cannot compete with the depth and breadth of life and experience of parish churches, they are no better at attracting the non-churched than parish churches and both fresh expressions and parish churches grow through exactly the same process”.
• “The fresh expressions have attracted people who would have been unlikely to form a Christian identity within a parish church. For these people, the claim that fresh expressions are a necessary complement to the parochial system has undoubtedly been true”
• “The Messy Churches… showed a higher attendance percentage of children than any other faith community, and the exponential rise of the movement in the UK has been remarkable. There is little evidence that fresh expressions are generally more effective than parish churches at attracting the non-churched, however”.
• “Any kind of conclusion that fresh expressions of church, new and contextual churches, liquid church or emerging church alone constitute the future of the church is as unwarranted, both sociologically and theologically, as the conclusion that they are unnecessary. Rather, ’we may find that there is a divine harmony, of which the living principle in each of these systems forms one note’, for ‘no one local church can fully express Christ and his gospel  Each needs to be related to others, which have different gifts or contexts’ (F.D. Maurice and Graham Cray)”.

This is a highly significant study, which should be of interest to every reader of Ministry Today. However, it is expensive – so make sure your local library buys a copy and then borrow it!