The Methodist Church and the Church of England are exploring new ways to revive the church and increase church attendance as they use parks, a converted barge, pubs and cafés for innovative church services.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has initiated the 'Fresh Expressions' project at Lambeth Palace and commissioned 12 ‘disciples’ to experiment the new approach to worship.
“It’s a vision for the renewal and reconstruction of the Church of England and other historic mainstream churches,” said Rowan.
He said that this new experiment is an attempt to crystallise his vision of what the mainstream Church could be.
The project was inspired by a report to the General Synod by the Bishop of Maidstone, the Right Rev Graham Cray. In the report, he explored ways on how the Church might adapt to the growing secular society. 20,000 worshippers representing nearly 300 new-style churches have signed up to this new initiative.
According to recent surveys, there has been a slight increase in church attendance with seven out of ten people calling themselves Christian. But only a few attend Church other than at special occasions such as Christmas or Easter.
Legacy XS skate park and Christian youth centre in Benfleet, Essex, are working together to help church growth. This part indoor skate park, part Christian youth centre was opened in March and has over 2,000 members.
A youth congregation at the park encourages skaters to express their spirituality by using the ramps during prayer and worship. Services held upstairs in the café and baptisms held in the pool.It’s a vision for the renewal and reconstruction of the Church of England and other historic mainstream churches.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams
St Peter’s Barge, converted from a 29-metre barge in Canary Wharf, has over 80 attendants coming to its Wednesday afternoon services and 70 on Sundays.
A small tea room in Nottinghamshire is used for fellowship and a church for Methodists. An Alpha course is conducted for family and friends of the congregation.
A congregation meets in the ‘church without walls’, in the surroundings of the Aruba wine bar every Sunday.
Fresh Expressions is sponsored by the Lambeth Partners, a team set up by Lord George Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, to finance evangelism.
The Rev Rob Marshall, one of the 12 ‘disciples’ commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury on Thursday, said “A lot of our church buildings are not suitable or appropriate for modern-day worship.” He emphasised that the new project was not meant to imply that the rest of the Church was stale.
Marshall said that modern clergy are more likely to wear jeans and T-shirts to run services in the evenings in city-centre flats and that the church had explore more new ideas such as café churches. “What is happening now is as exciting as the early Church after Jesus’s time in the Ancient World.”
