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Church plant, fresh expressions, emerging church - what to call it?

See this article and other church plant resources at the Incarnate church planting website
In the 1990s lots of people were talking about church planting – and some of us were actually involved in a church plant! Today, many of us are suspicious of the phrase ‘church planting’ (doesn’t it imply church growth oriented, programmatic, goals-obsessed cloning?) and prefer ‘fresh expressions’ or, cooler still, ‘emerging church’.

But before we discard a term that has been used for many years maybe we need to ask what these alternatives actually mean and how long they will last.

Actually, in the past twenty years or so we have used or coined various phrases as we have wrestled with the challenges of mission in a changing culture:

- Missionary congregations
- Church planting
- Missional church
- New ways of being church
- Emerging church
- Emergent church
- Mission-shaped church
- Fresh Expressions

Some of these terms are associated with particular denominations. Some are familiar in some countries but unknown elsewhere. Some carry quite a bit of theological or cultural freight. Some started out as generic terms but have narrowed their meaning.

Maybe some historical perspective will be helpful:

• In the late 1980s Anglicans (and then others) started talking about missionary congregations. By this they meant that churches needed to stop concentrating on maintenance and put mission back at the heart of church life.
• In the early1990s many people started talking about church planting, arguing that many churches could not make this shift, so new churches were needed to reverse the trend of decline and to be genuine missionary congregations.
• By the mid-1990s church planting was stalling – for several reasons: most of the easier plants had already happened; growth was slower than expected; recovery times were longer than expected; there was a dearth of suitable leadership; many plants had failed or were struggling; and not all plants were actually missionary congregations.
• Some denominations paused for reflection and began to ask two questions: what kinds of churches should we be planting (rather than how many), and how can we make sure they are focused on mission?
• The language of missional church became more popular – imported from the US and used to emphasise church DNA or mindset or ethos, rather than activities. New churches and existing churches were encouraged to be missional.
• At the same time some began to use the phrase new ways of being church to talk about experiments that were taking place around the margins of church life. This was not church planting in the usual sense: it was more tentative, quieter and reflected the culture of the people involved or the place where they lived.
• But there were problems with this language: it seemed dismissive of ‘old ways’; it got confused with the ‘New Churches’ (as the House Church Movement was now known); and some groups were remixing old elements.
• By about 2000 the language of emerging church had became more popular to describe the increasing number of new churches that were springing up. This had significant advantages: it was a dynamic and developmental term; it was tentative and humble; it reflected the reality that this was disparate, not a coordinated movement; it linked with the idea of ‘emerging culture’. However, some people found it rather passive and wondered if it was truly missional.
• A variant on emerging church was emergent – a more coordinated movement in the US with some similarities to other developments in western culture but also with significant differences.
• In 2004 the Anglicans produced the Mission-shaped Church report. This started as an update on their church planting report (‘Breaking New Ground’) in 1994 but grew into a survey of many different forms of church. The title of the report underlined a concern that mission should come before church and shape what emerged. Emerging church quite suddenly became hot news!
• However, the report preferred the term fresh expressions of church, for reasons it explains. A new organisation, Fresh Expressions, was set up to map, resource and reflect on what was happening. And Rowan Williams endorsed a ‘mixed economy’ church.
• Meanwhile, church planting was back on the agenda, with more church planting underway than for several years – somewhat chastened but purposeful and gaining momentum.

So where are we now?

Terms like ‘missional church’, ‘missionary congregation’ and ‘mission-shaped church’ are important reminders that missiology comes before ecclesiology and that whatever we plant needs to be mission-oriented. Church planting is only helpful if it enables us to participate more effectively in the mission of God.

Terms like ‘new ways of being church’ and ‘fresh expressions’ urge us to be creative and to explore new possibilities as we attempt to incarnate the gospel faithfully into a diverse and changing culture. Church planting is not the same as cloning.

Terms like ‘emerging church’ and ‘emergent church’ warn us against deciding in advance what church will look like and encourage us to reflect on our context and culture. Church planting is a dynamic and organic process that cannot be reduced to strategies.

But as long as we allow these other terms to shape and critique what we are doing, it may be worth holding on to ‘church planting’ for the time being. After all, ‘church planting’ is not just the latest popular phrase: it links us with brothers and sisters across the world and throughout church history who are our partners in mission and who share our passion to see the gospel embodied and contextualised in every neighbourhood and network.