My friend and colleague Mark Fields recently drew my attention to a UK website: Fresh Expressions. It focuses on new ways of being church.
This group seems to be asking the question: How can we empower people to experience Christian communities in the context of existing relationships and networks? If you’re a surfer, how can you bring Jesus into the surfing world and see what that looks like? How can Jesus help transform that group of people and see something new emerge from it? That’s a fresh expression of the Body of Christ.
The infiltration method—as opposed to the more commonly used extraction method—can lead to powerful movements. Instead of ripping people out of their current relationships and bringing them into our community, how can we go into people’s current circumstances and see the Body of Christ emerge from there?
We really do need all kinds of churches… and we really do need fresh expressions of being the church.