Move over 'mixed economy'. Say good-bye to 'fresh expressions'. Welcome 'Frittata Church'.
Italian omlettes have a lot to teach us about doing church: you can't make one without breaking eggs, it's got all sorts of ingredients, it's known as a crustless quiche so there is no sharp edge that defines it clearly, it's made in a frying pan and then the grill: frying pan to fire...
We had a discussion about offering different streams of church culture to the community at a meeting tonight. One of the things that came up was the fear that we become so diverse with out mixed economies that we loose coherence. It's a good point. So a frittata is a complex mixture of different blobs of church, wee spots rather than highways, that contain some of the flavour of the faith. Maybe mixed economy (many different streams) don't work but lots of different moments and opportunities: social and discussion based, sporting and entertainment, worship and alternative offer a more chaotic but community based model. How could that work?
Church can't die. It just can't. But I'm stressed that the church locally is too easily and without putting on any sort of breaks, becoming unviable. But people of faith believe in the ability for transformation, for hope, we really believe in the future and that the church is an agent of change.
Perhaps we can take opportunity to strip ourselves down to the bare essentials and work out what we are about and, while leaving Sundau mornng as it is, build something new on those basics. An interesting way into this would be to sum up the faith in 10 words. What sentence would you construct? Possibly these could be the starting blobs for a frittata church...
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