CT: What is a mixed economy of church?
Bishop Graham: ‘Mixed economy’ is an expression that originates from Archbishop Rowan Williams when he was a Bishop in Wales. The thinking behind it is that new congregations and church plants are not to replace existing churches with their approach, but complement them.
There is much good work to be done by traditional churches and they need to be supplemented and complemented by new forms of church to reach those that remain untouched by existing churches.
It is a partnership between the two and not a competition. The intention is not to replace one another, and neither is it to operate in isolation from one another but rather supplement with mutual prayer, recognition and learning from one another.
The great majority of Fresh Expressions planted in the last five or six years are new congregations of existing churches so it helps lots of local parish churches and Methodist circuits to become mixed economy.
CT: You meet a lot of people in the traditional churches. Do they feel threatened by new expressions or pressured to change at all?
Bishop Graham: It’s a varied picture but I don’t think there is much of that. If there is pressure to change, it’s indirect, because no one is saying stop doing church traditionally and ‘everybody’s got to do these new things’. The other aspect of the mixed economy is an understanding that the whole church is missionary and that traditional churches need to be missionary in their traditional forms.
There is a challenge that way, but I find that more traditional worshippers are grateful that something is being done and I find it even more with the older generation who say that they are worried that their grandchildren don’t go to church at all. So if they see something happening that isn’t church the way they are used to but it’s helping their grandchildren engage with the church, then they are excited about it and not necessarily threatened by it.
CT: The mixed economy means many different styles of church and different traditions and denominations working together. Is there a tension between the inevitable diversity and unity?
Bishop Graham: I had a meeting recently with David Cornick, General Secretary of Churches Together in England and a former colleague of mine. I think we are both clear that unity and mission are equally important and you can’t simply go for one and not the other. But the way it is working out is beginning to change. We had a long period of time when there was considerable hard work about formal unity for the sake of mission and to give a united witness. That’s still very important but what’s tending to happen now is that more progress is being made with unity when churches in an area are acting together or coordinating in mission.
Fresh Expressions is one of the ways they can do that. Doing mission is the best route to unity, many of us are discovering. Diversity is fine as long as there is real communication locally. Some churches have gathered together as a result of the Hope 08 initiatives and have kept working together and a lot of the Street Pastor initiatives have been made possible by that.
We have a regional organisation called FEAST through which the Fresh Expressions strategy team leaders of different denomination in an area coordinate together. It allows them to know what the other is trying to do and that way, you don’t have six churches working on one estate, for example, and no one working on the estate next door.
In lots of parts of the country, rural and urban, we are encouraging churches to plan together and to pray together and, if you like, coordinate the diversity. So it helps with unity rather than undermines.
