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The one thing I'd like to say to the inherited church is thank you for supporting us in what's
going on. I'm sure at times people must look at me and think what on earth is this person
doing, how has this got any relevance to what we understand our faith to be, how is this
going to fill up our church, how is our money being spent wisely? But people have been really
patient and really brilliant in letting me work out this journey, work out where we might
be going with this work and with these communities. So yeah, just thanks for your support and
please understand that by supporting what's going on, you're not just handing it over
to me and saying 'good luck', you're saying 'I want to be part of this too', but acknowledging
that we've all got different strengths in what we're trying to do. So yeah, thanks and
keep on supporting us if you can.
Let's listen to each other, let's hear what each other have to say. We've got an awful
lot that we need to learn -- young fresh expressions need to learn about what it means to be a
mature church, what it means to grow people into mature disciples. We really need to,
and are desperately trying to, work out some of these lessons for our context and there's
a whole lot that we can learn from the inherited church in that way. But then on the other
hand I think there's a whole lot that we're looking to be able to -- and wanting desperately
to be able to -- say and share with the inherited church about what church looks like and just
wanting to be able to share that kind of knowledge really and the understanding that has been
built up from all the different experiments and explorations and our journeys trying to
grow church with those who don't have a church background.
I think there are some pioneers who perhaps become a bit disenfranchised, a bit angry
that the church isn't doing all that it could be doing -- and I agree with that -- but at
the same time I think the tradition that comes with it is so rich and there's so much wisdom
that's kind of held within that so I kind of want to reassure you that when we're doing
something that's completely different it doesn't necessarily mean that we don't like what you're
doing or what you're doing is unimportant, because it's not, it's still equally as valid,
still equally part of the bride of Christ and the body of Christ.
To the inherited church I would say keep putting young people in leadership, because in my
experience the expressions of church and communities that have thrived are ones that are led by
people who are young and are in that age group and it's really hard sometimes to give permission
and to, say, let somebody lead something when they're under 30 but I think it's something
that the church should try and do more. The demographic of the inherited church is middle-class
white men and I think that there's a challenge to raise up younger leaders.
I think this whole thing of mission-shaped thinking, mission-shaped discipleship, it
would be really helpful if they could do a lot of the ground work in their teaching,
because I find that I'm trying to do new things as a pioneer and actually people are open
to joining me doing things, but actually there's so much ground work to kind of detox them
from normal ways of doing church that actually in a way the inherited church could do a lot
of that because they believe in fresh expressions but perhaps they're not doing it, but actually
as a pioneer I should be released to just get on with the mission and take my team with
me but actually I feel I've got to do a lot of basic discipleship often with people. So
the church perhaps needs to think about how are they discipling people in the 21st Century
in some new ways.
Don't write off young adults. They can be hard to reach, we can be a bit annoying sometimes,
we do have questions, we do have doubts, but don't write us off. Listen to us, engage with
us, invest in us, because we have a lot to give.