I am doing some stuff around young people and emerging church and what we can learn from one another. My experience suggests that many yp and youth workers think of their youth groups etc as expressions of church and I am interested in how this sense of definition can either release creativity and growth or inhibit. By this I mean that groups who grow together towards an expression of church can be inhibited from further development when it is not openly acknowledged. When named as such and discussed as an expression of church it creates impetus to grow deeper relationships and outwardly but when not acknowledged outwardly i have seen groups loose momentum over time and dissipate.
Two areas I would value feedback on
Firstly if you are involved in an emerging church thing have noticed this process in the emerging churches that you are part of. Did people start getting together and once you defined what you were doing – did it release energy and creativity? Did people start to make more effort to meet together etc or am I way off the mark?
Secondly if you are a youth worker are young people or leaders describing what you do as church? Can you relate to the blocks/ creativity and definition?
HI Richard. My experience is that as a youth worker I have often considered a group of young people to be an expression of church. The problem I have frequently encountered hasn’t been so much the young people feeling restricted by a lack of definition but rather the Institutional leaders of the ‘parent church’ wanting to control or rather appearing to be scared of losing control if we were to call it an expression of church. Expressions of church are for church leaders and often youth workers are simply expected to add to what ‘the leaders’ (the beurocrats) are trying to create, rather than being given permission to develop fresh expressions. Rant complete…. for now. I guess I’m talking about the lack of ability to define a groups true identity or vision in the light (or darkness) as youth workers are so often subject to the restrictive institutionalized benefactors of youth work – ‘the local church’.
Thanks ben, feel free to rant any time on sunday papers. I am interested in your final comment about lack of ability to define a groups true identity. One of the issues that Pete Ward raised when I was discussing the idea of definition was that church becomes church when others (outside) see it as church – I wonder where this leaves us if others (other than the the restrictive institutionalized benefactors of youth work – ‘the local church’) see it as church.
Hi Richard – congrats by the way… I’ve definitely experienced this issue of definition myself. We often had groups of young people express church in a very relational way, that puts many others to shame. The problem has come in that these young people have still had quite an institutional view of church being a Sunday meeting, and therefore failed to recognise what they were doing and their relationships as church. In the long run this meant that as they got older and got busier, they lost something of what they had had because they didn’t see it as important. The point being that they were able to express something naturally, but when pressures crept in, they didn’t recognise the essential elements of church, and so drifted back towards the traditional.
Whoops, forgot to put my name on that last comment.
thanks Pete. The drift is interestingand I wonder about if it the instutional nature that prevents drift or definition.
um, sorry to have a slight issue with Pete Ward – but what is he saying? Church doesn’t become something when others recognise it as such . . . it either is something or it isn’t, our guide for this, surely is not whether others look at us and say, “there is an expression of church”, but on whether our focus, our reason for being together is centred around Christ and His Kingdom – Pete might say, it depends what / who you mean by “Christ” and what you mean by “Kingdom” . . . how will people know that we are Jesus’ disciples? By loving each other . . . the depth of our inward relationships towards each other and God determines our outward impact what kind of community we create . . . but people who know nothing of God might look at this loving community and think “wow, I want some of that” – and never call it church, so what? Does God only exist if people outside of relationship with Him recognise Him?