On Mission with Jesus: Changing the default setting of the church

On Mission With Jesus

On Mission with Jesus is vital ‘unlearning’ for the Church, rebooting our ecclesial imagination with the missionary dynamism of the New Testament. When I first heard Graham explain his thesis, I was persuaded; I’m delighted to see it now published. This is a compelling case for a new Christian default more deeply rooted in our gospel past and more radically oriented to the world in love. Comprehensively biblical, robustly theological – this is a whole library of missiological wisdom in one book, beautifully and wisely digested. As a mature reflection on the mission-shaped church and a pointer to the future it will make an important contribution.

Revd Canon Dr Mark Powley, Archbishop’s Mission Enabler for the North

I consider Graham Cray to be a foundational thinker and leader in helping communities engage more missionally and faithfully in our time. This book, loaded with insights gleaned from the last few decades of activism, bolsters his legacy in a meaningful way. An important contribution.

Alan Hirsch, founder of the Movement Leaders Collective and author of numerous books on missional spirituality, leadership and organization

This is the book we have been waiting for Graham Cray to write! I am delighted it is here. He compellingly argues that the Western church has got its default all wrong, frozen in time, stuck. The images we have when we think ‘church’ have a gravitational pull back towards a Christendom default. We need to move beyond the idea that mission is simply a task of the church and see it as the activity of God in which the church is called to participate and so be missionary by nature. An adventure of the imagination is required if we are to respond to the challenges of our era. Cray refounds the church around the disarmingly simple notion of church as a community of disciples on mission with Jesus. To get outside of gravity you need rocket speed. This book might just be the rocket fuel we need.

Jonny Baker, Britain Hub Mission Director, Church Mission Society

On Mission With Jesus

Changing the Default Setting of the Church

Graham Cray

© Graham Cray 2024

First published in 2024 by the Canterbury Press Norwich

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Unless otherwise indicated, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (

niv

) are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Anglicised edition) copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78622-541-2

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Contents

1. Introduction: Missional Diplomacy

2. On Mission With Jesus: Sharing in the Mission of God

3. On Mission With Jesus: Making Disciples

4. On Mission With Jesus: Following the Spirit

5. On Mission With Jesus: Shaping the Church

6. On Mission With Jesus: Anticipating the Future

7. On Mission With Jesus: Joining the Family Business

8. On Mission With Jesus: A Pilgrim People

9. On Mission With Jesus: Identifying Jesus in the Church

10. Becoming a ‘Jesus on Mission’-Shaped Church

Bibliography

The past 20 or more years has seen an extraordinary flourishing of creative imagination and praxis, as churches of many different traditions have engaged in mission with the rapidly changing world around them. In writing this reflection I wish to honour the many pioneers, practitioners, missional thinkers and permission givers who have taken part in this move of the Spirit. I write in the hope that this contribution also will help us to follow the missionary Spirit.

I dedicate this book to my wife, Jackie, who has been my key companion, encourager and support along the way.

1. Introduction: Missional Diplomacy

This book reflects upon understandings of the church that have developed through, or as a consequence of, the Fresh Expressions movement and similar initiatives: part of ‘the extraordinary creativity that is being expressed in communities, in churches, and in denominations themselves … [where] the church is being reimagined as a myriad of new ecclesial forms burst upon the scene’ (Ward, Liquid Ecclesiology, p. 2). In particular it asks what core underlying image of the church, what I call the default setting, is most appropriate for the day and context in which I write.

My vocation in the latter years of my ordained ministry has largely been one of missional diplomat or door opener, interpreting practitioners to permission givers and vice versa. I was once told, in a different context, that I was personally trusted by two parties, neither of which trusted the other. Fortunately I was not called to that particular ministry of reconciliation, but I have seen my role as that of diplomacy, of aiding mutual interpretation and understanding. One characteristic of many of those who pioneer new forms of church is that their calling is so self-evident to them that they find it hard to imagine why others cannot see it. Equally, permission givers can find it hard to see beyond novelty to the missional and theological rationale for new forms of church. So this is a book of missional diplomacy, aiming to provide theological foundations to give permission givers the theological assurances they need, but also the theological foundations that equip practitioners for the long-term work that pioneering requires.

My concern about the missional form of the church in today’s cultures began with the love of contemporary popular music, which began in my teenage years and continues today. That love developed into thinking and analysis when I attended a conference of the Theological Students Fellowship and heard Dr Francis Schaeffer give the lectures that were published as The God Who Is There and later, Escape from Reason. Schaeffer was the first person to introduce me to the history of western thought from the Enlightenment, and its shaping of our increasingly secular culture. I then read his colleague Hans Rookmaaker’s book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Rookmaaker was Professor of the History of Art at the Free University of Amsterdam, but he was also the editor of a series of reissues of old recordings of jazz, blues and spirituals, and his reflections extended to what he called ‘jazz, blues and beat’ (Modern Art, pp. 184ff.).

It occurred to me for the first time that I could reflect on the music that moved me in the way that Schaeffer and Rookmaaker mainly reflected on philosophy and high art. From that came a series of talks (chiefly at the Greenbelt Festival, and later at Soul Survivor) and occasional articles, which have continued to the present day. The aim was always to listen to the music on its own terms and take seriously what it was communicating; to attempt to understand it from a biblical Christian world view, and to identify ways in which the Christian gospel could engage it with integrity. But music does not exist in cultural isolation. Popular music and all its accompanying culture is part of the wider culture that makes up the world we live in today and reveals its world view. I had studied the sociology of religion as part of my theology degree, and increasingly found myself thinking about the wider culture, particularly through the lens of the sociology of culture. The publication of Lesslie Newbigin’s The Other Side of ’84 and the resulting The Gospel and Our Culture movement gave me new insights and impetus. Like most of those who have engaged in the missiology of western culture, I am standing on Bishop Lesslie’s shoulders and return to his writings regularly. Hans Küng’s application of paradigm theory to church history in Theology and Christianity and, in particular, its application to mission by David Bosch in Transforming Mission, provided an essential tool that helped me get to grips with the significance of context and culture change.

But both Newbigin’s and Bosch’s writing ended just as the transition in western culture labelled ‘postmodern’ began to take the foreground. Any era or period of culture labelled ‘post’ (modern, secular, colonial etc.) must, by definition, be a time of transition, when it is clearer what is being left behind, or receding in influence, than what is emerging. The term ‘postmodern’ was always contested, and used differently in different disciplines, but in the end the terminology was secondary. Whether arguing for postmodernity (David Lyon), late modernity (Anthony Giddens), the second modernity (Ulrich Beck), another modernity (Scott Lasch) or whatever, the various scholars were united in identifying a number of significant areas of cultural and social change, just disagreeing on the labels and the degree of continuity or discontinuity.

Three of the key elements of the emerging culture were:

The transition from identity being established by what we produce to what we consume. This was described by Giddens as ‘a novel phenomenon, which participates directly in the processes of the continuing reshaping of the conditions of day-to-day life’ (Giddens, Modernity andSelf-Identity, pp. 4ff. and 199).

The emergence of new communication and information technologies, which according to Lyon ‘contribute to novel contexts of social interaction’ (Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland, p. 13). As this has developed through the internet, social media, gaming, ubiquitous mobile phones etc., it has created ‘A media environment that is unique in its present form’ (Couldry and Hepp, The Mediated Construction of Reality, p. 53).

The increasing significance of networks and the growth of a ‘Network Society’, and ‘The emergence of a new social structure’ (Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, p. 14).

Note the use of ‘novel’, ‘new’ and ‘unique’ by scholars who name this era differently from one another. Giddens wrote, ‘The world in which we now live is in some profound respects quite distinct from that inhabited by human beings in previous periods of history’ (Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, pp. 4ff.).

The way culture is understood has changed as these transitions have been observed and studied. According to Nick Couldry, ‘The old model thinks of a culture as a place where certain things are collected together and ordered. But there is no such place. Our primary data are … patterns of flows and the structural forces which shape them’ (Couldry, Inside Culture, p. 103).

In practice, western culture is now ‘glocal’. The ugly word ‘glocalization’ was coined by sociologists in the 1990s to describe the impact of the global on the local. It has become more important as scholars have increasingly recognized that globalization does not simply standardize or homogenize everything and everywhere, because ‘We live in a world partially interconnected and interdependent, but where a multitude of different cultural arrangements coexist with one another’ (Roudometof, Glocalisation, p. 138). So ‘glocal’ is ‘The point of intersection between the global and the local’ (Vanhoozer, One Rule to Rule Them All, p. 99). It is made even more complex by the massive spread of digital media, as a core element of everyday life and community. Couldry and Hepp write: ‘As embodied human beings we have no choice but to act from a certain locality … But these localities change their meaning in a world made up of ever more complex translocal connections’ (Couldry and Hepp, The Mediated Construction of Reality, p. 87). It has to be local or it does not exist, but the local is impacted by the global.

Although each locality is distinct and cannot simply be standardized, a coherent contemporary world view, with great capacity for internal variety, has emerged through these changes. It is structured for individuals. Its core value is the right to individual choice: ‘Individualization is becoming the social structure of the second modernity itself’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization, p. xxii). It has a satnav, consumer choice. The globalized consumer world provides multiple options, so consumer choice is the tool for individual navigation. Its controlling story is constructivist – create your identity through your individual choices. ‘You can be whatever you want to be.’

Furthermore its assumptions are ‘secular’. There is plenty of room within it for religion or spirituality as a personal consumer choice for those who like that sort of thing but ‘many people are happy living for goals which are purely immanent; they live in a way that takes no account of the transcendent’ (Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 143). Charles Taylor has described in detail ‘a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and, indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace’ (Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 143). He describes current western assumptions as an ‘immanent frame’ – ‘A race of humans has arisen which has managed to experience its world entirely as immanent’ (Taylor, A Secular Age, p. 376).

In other words, happiness is found through the multiple-choice options within the immanent frame, so there is no need to look beyond, even should there be anything there. Taylor’s image of the frame demonstrates the promise and the limits of ‘secular’ life. Happiness, or whatever is realistically possible, is available within the frame. But the frame blinds those within it to the possibility that there might be more.

Summing up the implications of Taylor’s work, James K. A. Smith wrote:

Your ‘secular’ neighbours aren’t looking for ‘answers’ – for some bits of information missing from their mental maps. To the contrary, they have completely different maps … they have constructed webs of meaning that provide almost all the significance they need for their lives … A way of being in the world that offers significance without transcendence. (Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, pp. vii–viii)

My preferred metaphor for this era is Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘Liquid Modernity’.¹ According to Bauman, ‘Postmodernity and postmodernism have been hopelessly confused … Hence my own proposition liquid modernity which points to what is continuous (melting, disembedding) and discontinuous (no solidification of the melted, no re-embedding) alike’ (Bauman and Tester, Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman, pp. 97ff.). ‘Liquid’, as Bauman used it, is a useful term. It provides an accessible metaphor for the speed and complexity of the changes we have been living through. It makes us aware that structures, commitments, trust in institutions and patterns of life and work which were once taken for granted, are dissolving, and being replaced by an ongoing and acceleration process of change. This change is discontinuous. The assumptions of the past are no longer assured guides for decisions in the future. Giddens described this era as ‘Modernity’s surprising outcome’. ‘Living in the modern world is more like being aboard a careering juggernaut rather than being in a carefully controlled and well driven motor car’ (Giddens, Consequences, p. 53). This complex globalized world is unpredictable, almost by definition. Bauman says: ‘the world we inhabit is as complex a system as can be imagined, its future is a great unknown, and it is bound to remain unknown whatever we do’ (Bauman, 44 Letters from the Liquid Modern World, p. 107).

Pete Ward has helpfully applied Bauman’s metaphor to the church and ecclesiology, but admits that his use of the term is ‘against the grain’ (Ward, Liquid Ecclesiology, p. 9). For Bauman this liquidity is a matter of concern. This change is a reality, but not all of it is good. Some of this liquid is corrosive.² Patterns and institutions of mutual human commitment are being undermined. ‘The solids which are in the process of being melted at the present time are the bonds which interlock individual choices in collective projects and actions’ (Bauman, 44 Letters, p. 6).

This sociology of the ‘new’ culture needs to complement not replace the understandings which preceded it. Whatever the realities of the consumer networked world may be, they have not replaced the earlier realities of disparities of wealth, poverty, power, opportunity, gender and racial inequality. The consumer choice world may have captured the hearts and imaginations of many people in the West, but there is little opportunity for equal access. Christian witness will need to affirm and engage much of the ‘new’ culture, but also counter aspects of it. This is acknowledged in the Mission-Shaped Church report. In the Introduction I wrote:

The gospel has to be heard within the culture of the day, but it always has to be heard as a call to appropriate repentance. It is the incarnation of the gospel, within a dominantly consumer society, that provides the Church of England with its major missionary challenge. (pp. xi ff.)

But if the culture we live in today is ‘in some profound respects quite distinct from that inhabited by human beings in previous periods of history’ (Giddens, Consequences, p. 5), how do we engage it with the gospel? This ‘gospel and culture’ question leads inevitably to questions about the missionary shape of the church for this context: hence Mission-Shaped Church.

From my perspective the Fresh Expressions movement, originating in the UK, developed from the meeting of gospel and culture concerns with Anglican church-planting theory. Each enriched the other, the most significant further development being the emphasis on discernment in each local context, rather than just identifying wider cultural trends. How is the church to be here? We have moved from a model where, with a few allowances for churchmanship, the local Church of England looks more or less the same everywhere, to an approach where, with a shared Anglican DNA, it needs to take shape appropriate to its local context, and will therefore be diverse in form. The Church of England’s House of Bishops speak of ‘creating and normalizing a pattern of diversity, of parish and other traditional forms alongside newer forms. This pattern of diversity is the new normal’ (Church Planting, para. 4).

This does not mean a complete disregard of scripture, or of the history and tradition of the church, or that of a particular tradition within it. Guided by the scriptures, pioneer leaders know that there are core characteristics of any church – worship, community, prayer, scripture, baptism, holy communion, mission and so on. They are asking what form these should take in the context to which God has called them. To use Douglas Gay’s metaphor, practitioners ‘remix’ their historic resources for the new context they face (Gay, Remixing the Church).

Some 20 years have passed since the writing of Mission-Shaped Church and there is now sufficient distance, and sufficient quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered, for perspective, but sufficient proximity for relevance. What have we learned about the church for our culture and contexts? And as we engage with this cultural shift, what have we learned for the future cultural shifts, which inevitably will come, so that succeeding generations have some tools passed down from us for appropriate discernment and mission?

How are churches formed?

According to Duerksen and Dyrness, ‘the entities we call churches emerge from the interaction of their cultural assumptions, their special historical inheritances and their understanding of God’s revelation through scripture’ (Seeking Church, p. ix). Similarly, according to Healey ‘The distinctiveness of the church lies in its Spirit-guided participation in God’s self-communication as this is mediated by scripture, the church’s history, and its traditions of practice and enquiry’ (Healey, ‘Ecclesiology, Ethnography and God’, p. 194). Cultural context, ecclesial tradition and scripture bear some resemblance to Anglicanism’s scripture, tradition and reason, for reason is not detached objectivity. It is always contextual – how do people think and see from here?

Cultural context

Context is vital for two reasons.

First, as we will see later, the local church is intended to be incarnational – the body of Christ taking shape for this particular place in the light of Christ. Second, we are all culturally embedded people. ‘Our culture is within us as well as around us. We cannot escape it, though it is possible to innovate, replace, add to, transform and in other ways alter our use of the culture that we have received’ (Kraft, Christianity in Culture, p. 106). Our cultural assumptions, both good and bad, provide the place from which we see, assess and reason. There is nowhere else to stand but here, and ‘here’ is where we are called to live and minister as the church. Or if we are called to establish a fresh expression of church cross-culturally the assumptions we bring with us may not be the same as those of the context to which we have been called. If culture is ‘the way we do things around here’, as Archbishop Warlock of Liverpool put it, time needs to be taken to get our minds around those ways. To oversimplify, the gospel affirms some aspects of a culture, challenges others and is neutral to others, except to the extent that they are part of the character of the community where we are called to embody Christ.

Ecclesial tradition

But we also come as traditioned people, in my case as an Anglican. We bring the traditions we all share, and those of our particular tribes within them, with us. Very properly they will influence our plans and expectations. We will be shaped even by our reactions against part of our tradition. But tradition is always double edged. It bears the best of our DNA, and the essential practices which we share with most other Christian communities. But it can be in danger of preserving habits of church life which have lost touch with the people we are seeking to reach. Tradition is not a frozen asset.

According to Duerksen and Dyrness:

Quite often the particular expression of an ecclesial marker becomes frozen in time, disassociated from the cultural, social and political influences that generated its emergence. Over time, the context in which those markers gained their particular salience fades from view, and the practices themselves come to be seen as pure markers of the church. (Seeking Church, p. 149)

‘Pure’ in the sense of having meaning within the church but no longer in the context. Tradition is not a fixed point used to ensure that there is no innovation. It is a dynamic, developing gift from the past with the capacity to ensure that missional innovation is properly rooted in the gospel.

Scripture

So from our context, shaped in different ways by our tradition, we turn to scripture.

Levison, for example, claims that ‘The inspired interpretation of scripture, more than mission in a general sense or miracles … is the principal effect of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts’ (Inspired: The Holy Spirit and the Mind of Faith, p. 152). As it was with the church in Acts, so we also can expect the Holy Spirit to open the scriptures to us in our missionary context and to show us how to open them for that context. We come to scripture, from our context (we have nowhere else to be), informed by