By Bellah Zulu, reporting from Johannesburg
On the penultimate day of the Anglicans Ablaze conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, delegates were challenged to do something for the Kingdom, and do it differently.
The Rt Revd Graham Cray is Archbishop's Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions. He shared with the conference about a dynamic and new form of worship with a focus on mission and “willingness to re-imagine church”.
The Fresh Expressions movement was started in the UK to address the significant reduction in church attendance. He explained that adopting a fresh expressions of church model has become an effective way of planting new congregations; one which also works with Christians from a broad range of denominations, cultures and traditions.
Bishop Cray said it is "gaining popularity among Anglicans and changing lives across the world...Christians are trying new things...and congregations are being formed and lives are being changed.”
Less and less people in church
He challenged people to consider which communities current forms of worship are failing to reach. “Less and less people are coming to church because they are attracted to other things...People will not automatically come to us, we have to go out there and find them hence the need for fresh expressions of church,” he said.
He reminded conference delegates that they owe it to those who have not yet encountered the grace of Christ in their lives to share the gospel with them. “We need to step out...if we don’t go, people will never discover the transforming power of God,” he said.
The mess will bless
Lucy Moore is the founder of Messy Church, a very successful fresh expression of church that puts families having fun at the centre. In a passionate and driven presentation to the delegates, she reminded Anglicans that “God is in love with the Church, including the Anglican Church” and that he “wants to use it to transform the world.”
“There is need to reflect who God is in the way we do church. Jesus went out to the edges and did not stay on the tour. He went out to people on the fringes, to people in a complete mess.”
“There is a perspective in society that the church is for people who are good enough but we who go to church know it is not true. We go there because we know we are in a mess and the best place for God to deal with us is in church,” she said, adding that Messy Church was “lighting fires in our own hearts” to reach out to the unchurched.
Lucy, who was visiting Africa for the first time, said she very much appreciated the love and warm welcome she had received from African Anglicans.
Some Churches in Africa are already embracing the concept of Messy Church. Delegates watched a video from the Diocese of George in South Africa where the church has embraced the concept and using it to bring together kids and adults from the community to experience church in a different way. One kid from there described Messy Church as “fun and creative.”
Going beyond people’s expectations
Oscar Muriu is an outspoken Kenyan pastor who leads the Nairobi Chapel. He described one of his major aims is winning young people to Christ. In an effort to get youngsters to church and to get them to stay, he and his team aim to go beyond all expectations when reaching out to people. They aim to add the ‘wow factor’ to all aspects of the church service from the reception, through the praise and worship to the preaching.
Pastor Muriu got perhaps his biggest applause when he addressed the need to not only sing the “good old songs from centuries back” but also ones that people could connect with today.
In a youth workshop, Pastor Muriu also presented the young people attending the conference with a challenge. Using the Biblical characters Joshua and Caleb as examples of young men who rose to major challenges, he asked “Where are the people who will face the Goliath in our church?”
“The church needs courageous young men and women who will stand tall and make a difference,” he said. He reminded the young people of the need to “see with the eyes of conviction of who God is” and that “God is bigger and better than any challenge.”
In an atmosphere of deep praise and worship, day three was clearly one where people were ask to reconsider their own experience of church. One participant from Uganda admitted to ACNS that he had been very challenged by seeing the Archbishop of Canterbury washing young people’s feet.
Anglicans Ablaze are a group of organisations, under the oversight of Bishop Martin Breytenbach, within the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) who desire to be set ablaze with God’s love and power in order to build up the church and to serve God in the world. This year’s international conference runs from July 2 to 5.