In episode 91 of the Pivot podcast, hosts Dr. Terri Elton and Dr. Dwight Zscheile talk with the Rev. Canon Dave Male, a pioneering leader in innovative ministry across the UK. They explore the vital task of forming disciples in today's rapidly changing culture and how we can bear faithful witness to the gospel. Dave shares his journey in establishing Fresh Expressions of church within the Church of England, discussing the challenges and opportunities of working within traditional church structures. He highlights the importance of embracing a mixed ecology of church, where both traditional and emerging forms of Christian community coexist and flourish. The conversation also delves into the need to create a culture of innovation and experimentation within local churches, with a focus on evangelism and discipleship as central to the mission of the church.

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Dave: I think the word church is important because when you look at the New Testament church, you realize church is really important to God. You know, this is the way it's just it's a description of Christian community. But I think it is saying something about the nature of that Christian community that is centered on Jesus. Um, and it's saying it is for us. It was very much there was a feeling often of fresh expressions are just a way into proper church. And we were wanting to say, no, no, this is proper church. Um, and we're not expecting people to go to what we were doing in Huddersfield to go to something beyond it when they've kind of grown up and matured or whatever. This is church in its fullest. It's sacramental, you know, it has leadership, it has accountability. You know, all the things, uh, it has a governance structure. Um, so I for me, that's really important because the church, the local church is the kind of key structure, it seems to me, from the New Testament.

Terri: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Pivot podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Terri Elton and I'm joined with Dwight Zscheile. Many churches today find themselves wrestling with how to form disciples in today's culture, and what it means to faithfully witness to the gospel when the church has lost much of its credibility with neighbors. Moreover, many of our time honored church structures just aren't designed to do either of these things in today's world. This is why we are so excited to welcome the Reverend Dave Male to the show today. Dave comes from the UK, which in many respects is America's future when it comes to being a post-Christian society. For the past 30 years, Dave has been at the heart of some of the most creative work that has taken place in the UK to renew the Gospel Witness, initially as a local pastor experimenting with pioneering and fresh expressions of church, and then as a trainer of innovative ministry leaders, and now currently as the Co-Director of Vision and Strategy for the Church of England. Dave is also the author of the book How to Pioneer, and has recently joined us here on our faculty at Luther Seminary as a part time visiting instructor in starting New Christian Communities. Dave, welcome to the Pivot podcast. Oh thank.

Dave: You. It's great to be with you.

Dwight: So, Dave, let's, um, give our listeners kind of a glimpse of your ministry journey and begin maybe early on, you were one of you were involved in starting, I believe, which was one of the first fresh expressions of church in the UK. Tell us a bit about that story.

Dave: Yeah, I mean, it started before that. So my first kind of placement was in a small church in a city called Leicester, uh, social housing area. Um, and the church was doing fine. And then I realized that actually that was the problem. They weren't really interested in anyone else. They it was just great, you know, there was enough. There was 100 of them. It was enough to keep it going and everything. Uh, I moved from there to a larger church where I was the associate large for England. I should say not for America, but 4 or 500 people. Uh, and I discovered exactly the same thing. Um, it was much larger, but actually, their main thing was we like it the way it is. We don't want to change for anyone else if they want to come to us. Great. Um, and I think both those experiences really challenged me. Um, because partly because I'd not come from a Christian background myself. Um, and lots of my friends were not Christians, and it just made me think this isn't what the church is meant to be about. The church is meant to be about how how do we connect with the people outside? Um, and how do we help them to discover Jesus and discover community? So with a few friends, we started a kind of Sunday evening thing, really, uh, which was very creative, kind of very dramatic. It was almost like a show, but often around particular issues. We might look at suffering, we might look at, uh, humanity. Um, and we did that for about a year and then decided we really need to do something a bit more than this. Um, and so we decided, after reading an article in our local newspaper that said, I think at that point, over 53% of people in Huddersfield, this town in, in the north of England, had no contact with any religious institution. And we thought, what kind of community could we create to reach those people. So there are about 28 of us who started this thing that we called the net, with a specific aim of, um, growing in our own discipleship and through that, enabling people who had no contact with church, uh, to discover Jesus for themselves and to become part of our community. And, um, uh, I was then involved with that for seven years. We took the bold step to ban any Christians from joining us. So the only way we could grow was through people, uh, coming to faith, joining us, coming to faith, um, mostly through our contacts, our friends, our neighbors, our workmates, our relatives. Um, and so, yeah, that's what we tried. And we tried lots of things that didn't work. And we tried some things that did work. Uh, lots of experimentation. Um, and I think part of it was this whole thing of actually, we're there to give ourselves away as church. So it's not oh, do I like this? But it is actually people are people who are coming. Do they feel comfortable in this scenario? So I thought that would be me for the rest of my life. Um, but during that time, as you said, we were one of the first fresh expressions of church to be happening. Um, and we were the big report was written, um, for the Church of England, and we were the first church talked about in that report. Um, and through that, I met lots of people who were beginning to or wanted and start this kind of thing and grew more and more concerned that quite a lot of them were struggling or burning out, starting these new things, because a lot of energy to get something off the ground like this. Um, and so I was doing more and more mentoring, and then my leaders said to me, oh, Dave, we really need you to be around more than you are and not going off to see these people. And I felt God say to me, well, the other alternative is you're not around at all, and you pass this on to someone else. And then out of the blue for me. Um, the two theological colleges in Cambridge, uh, came to me and said, we've actually got some money to start, uh, a pathway for pioneers. Would you come and lead that? And it just seemed to fit with everything I was doing. Uh, so I did that for nine years. And alongside that started my own, uh, charity called the centre for Pioneer Learning to help lay people and also other denominations and most surprisingly to me, internationally, um, doing lots of work in Canada and America and Australia. Um, and then, uh, somehow I got involved with the kind of central church, and I went to a meeting where they said, uh, what can we do to help pioneer and grow in the Church of England? And the people at the centre said, well, you need someone here waving the flag for pioneering. And the rest of the group took one step back, as it were, and I was left there. Um, so I then took on this job, never having been anywhere near the centre of the Church of England and as a pioneer, trying to avoid that kind of thing. Um, and then that led to, uh, leading the discipleship and then that led to the Church of England's huge change program. Uh, and, uh, being the kind of co-director for that, uh, helping churches and our diocese to implement the change strategy for the next ten years. So it's been a mixture of kind of traditional church, uh, church planting, fresh expressions, teaching and strategy work. It's it was never what I thought it was going to be. Um, I thought I was going to be a local church minister for the whole of my life. Um, so, yeah, God always seemed to surprise me. Every none of it was planned. I hated that, it was all. All new. But when I look back, um, the last six jobs I've done, no one had ever done them before me either I'd help create them, or someone else created them, and I applied. And you, you can see why, as a pioneer, um, that would be mightily attractive to me.

Terri: So I want to follow up on that. I heard two themes that I'm curious about. One is when you were in a church that was kind of working and people were happy, you were like, this is odd. Yeah. So I want you I want you to speak to that for a minute and second when you started at least. And I'm glad you addressed this later, but at least when you started, you didn't wait for the church to come alongside her or encourage her to nudge. So I want to know, what was it like kind of going outside of the traditional church structures? Because if people don't know, if we think our denominational structures are deeply embedded, the Church of England's are much more embedded, right? Like so this is a big step for you to do that.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah. No it was, it was it was a very big step. And it kind of took two years for the structures to catch up with us. So we just started in our front room with a small group of ten people saying, and the other big thing I would say is this wasn't just me, it was the other, you know, it was very much all of us together, a real sense of team in this. Um, just sitting, meeting once a week. Um, dreaming dreams. So I, we stayed for two years. Part of the church, uh, trying to persuade the diocese to fund it in some way. Um, and we really we called their bluff, basically. So the diocese had said we're the missionary diocese of Wakefield. And we said, well, if you really are the missionary Diocese of Wakefield, you'll fund this because otherwise you're just using names. So that was the but it took a long time to persuade them. Um, but I think it was very much the kind of we just felt so called to it that we even thought about, um, my wife working full time and me looking after the kids, and we just there was just that compulsion. This is what God is calling us to and nothing can stop it. We'd rather work within the structures, but if we have to, we'll we'll go elsewhere. And I think the other key thing I learned from that is you do need 1 or 2 supporters in the structures, not everyone, because sometimes you can't be at the meetings and you need someone who's in the meeting, who's speaking for you. And the go back to your first question, the people who are happy in the church, um, the bit that really disrupted me was they were happy in the church, but they weren't unhappy that the people on the estate didn't feel welcome. And that's the bit that I really struggled with. Um, and I think sometimes that can be the worst of both worlds, where actually there's just enough people to keep it going. It doesn't therefore have to change, but it's for me, it was the recognition. We were on a state of 10,000 people. And really, none of those were coming to the church, and none of them felt comfortable to come to the church because it would have meant some big changes from the way it was operating.

Dwight: So, Dave, let's hear a little bit more about that ministry that you started in Huddersfield with that team. And maybe for some of our listeners who aren't familiar with the phrase fresh expressions of church, maybe just give us a bit of a definition of that and then dig into a little bit of what did that ministry look like? If I were maybe someone from that, that estate or that housing development who wanted to who found my way to this, what would I have experienced?

Dave: Yeah. So a fresh the term fresh expressions of church really came because in the Church of England ordinal for new priests, there is a phrase about the gospel being freshly expressed in every generation. And that's therefore where that phrase came from. Um, so it was that idea that it's it's the unchanging gospel, but it needs to always. And this is, you know, what the church is always having to do freshly express it. Um, but alongside that, we want to say very clearly that this was church, this wasn't a stepping stone to church or something, you know, a a little thing on the side. This was about creating fully fledged church. Um, but but done in different ways, as I said. Um, what was happening in England was that quite a few of us were beginning these things, talking to each other at a kind of local level. And then the denomination began to catch up. So the mission shaped church report of 2004, the Church of England did, which was the game changer. Um, was a was actually a report saying this is all happening. The spirit seems to be at work. What should we therefore be doing as structures to respond to this in ways that will enable and enhance and help this. So yeah, the net in Huddersfield wasn't where it was a different place from where the housing estate was. That is worth saying. Um, so we, we decided as a team, um, who is it we want to reach. And we basically identified 20s and 30s in this Yorkshire town, um, who were fairly mobile people. Um, because that was the big gap in, in the church in and still is in many ways. Um, and that kind of made people very nervous. But it's worth saying that we didn't stand at the door asking for people's birth certificates and saying, oh, if you're 41, you can't come in. But it's what I kept saying to church leaders is actually, you do this in your churches. By the time you meet the place, you meet the kind of service you do, you're doing it. But you're just not not realising it. we're going to do it and say, what would we need to do to kind of connect with those people? Um, one of the big things we learned was we thought initially that it would be through small groups that people would would start to join us. What we found was that that just was not true. Um, actually, where where they made contact was through what we were doing on a Sunday. Our kind of Sunday event, Sunday service, uh, often with food, either at breakfast before or kind of lunch after. Um, that was often the first port of call because they could be much more anonymous in those situations. Um, so what we began to do was, um, we would have three services for three weeks. Um, and then on the fourth week, we would do something which was wholly aimed at people outside the church. Um, and we wouldn't we wouldn't do that on a Sunday morning. We would do that on a Friday or a Saturday night. But that would be our Sunday. We wouldn't then have something different on the Sunday. And we found often the. And again this was through trial and error. One of the best things was storytelling. So we would we had someone, uh, in our church who was really good at interviewing and had worked for a radio station. And so we would get someone in and he would interview them about a particular issue or something in their life. So, um, for instance, um, we had someone in whose, uh, daughter had been killed in a terrorist incident, um, and he interviewed her him about that and how as a Christian, did he react and stuff. But the other thing we did, which was really good, is we then opened it up to questions for people in the room, um, so that they could ask questions. So suffering was a big one, but we did lots of other issues and subjects around that, and then we would always have a chance. We you got to realize this is the 1990s, but we'd have a card under the table, under everyone's seat which said, you know, what did you enjoy? What could we improve? Um, if you want to find out more, you know, put your name and address in it. Um, so that was those were our kind of key things. And then we started a kind of small group system around discipleship. Um, which was really, uh, was where people then went on to, as it were. We thought it'd be the other way. Start with small groups, end up in a kind of big thing. Um, but actually, it was definitely the other way round. Uh, the other thing we did was a lot of social events. Um, so, uh, lots and lots of I remember being in the car one day and, uh, taking my kids to school, and one of their friends who were taking said, oh, what did you do at the weekend? And my my son said, oh, uh, the church went swimming and burst into laughter because this little child had the idea of a building, you know, going into a swimming pool. but, um, and it was all because we realized that in one way, though, this is new, it's not new. Relationships are the absolute key. Um, and if you're inviting a friend and then they get to know some other people through these social events, they're much more likely to stick. Um, I think the other big learning we took was there were some statistics that were done in the 1990s which said, um, on average, it can take someone up to four years from first hearing the gospel to responding. And so that was a question we kept asking ourselves, how do we enable someone to feel part of this without feeling pressurised? Well, if I haven't made a, you know, decided to follow Jesus, then I need to leave. Um, so that was a that was quite an important thing for us. Um, in terms of how do we make people feel that they belong here and this is a learning place for them, but actually To recognize that this this takes time. Um, and so what does that look like? And how can they be involved? Were really important things. And then probably the biggest thing we did was we started a at least once a year, often twice a year, uh, a group called Just Looking, which was for people who wanted to find out more. Um, and it did, we used to say, because there was an advert in Britain like this, it does what it says on the tin. Um, you know, it is if you're just looking. Um, and then there were further discipleship things afterwards that but that was a, that was a really key thing. Um, so a lot of our, those Friday, Saturday nights were saying, look, if you want to find out more about this, um, then we run this very informal group. Um, yeah. So those were the kind of things that we were doing. So I have.

Terri: A question and I wonder about context for this one. We have the new initiative here at Luther of Cultivating New Christian Communities and have thought about calling it that rather fresh rather than fresh expressions of church. And you have been very intentional. You and I have had a little bit of conversation about this, about calling it church. Right. Yeah. So say a little bit more about why that's important. Because Christian community is so relational. And I hear the relationships are very important. So that's the first thing. And second, can you give some examples about stories out of these fresh expressions of church that really help people like your son or your son's friend reframe church then out of these fresh expressions.

Dave: I think the word church is important because when you look at the New Testament church, you realize church is really important to God. You know, this, this is the way it's just it's a description of of Christian community. But I think it is saying something about the nature of that Christian community that is centered on Jesus. Um, and it's saying it is for us. It was very much there was a feeling often of fresh expressions are just a way into proper church. And we were wanting to say, no, no, this is proper church and we're not expecting people who go to what we were doing in Huddersfield to go to something beyond it when they've kind of grown up and matured or whatever. This is church in its fullest, its sacramental, you know, it has leadership, it has accountability. You know, all the things. It has a governance structure. Um, so I for me, that's really important because the church, the local church is the kind of key structure, it seems to me, from the New Testament, um, around communities. I mean, Christian community is great. I think it's, you know, I don't have a problem with that, but I but I think theologically there is something about church, um, which is really, really important. Now I've forgotten, Terri, what your second bit of follow up to that was? Oh, I know, give some examples. Well, here's one of my favorite Examples. Um, I, um, one of my students here in Cambridge, um, rang me up one day and she said, oh, Dave, I've got a really big problem. And I was thinking, oh no, what's happened? And I said, so what? What why? What's happened? She said, I've got a horrible feeling. I've started a church. And what had happened was, um, there was a school in their locality, and there were a number of Christian parents who whose children went there. And at the time, the head was a Christian as well. Um, and the parents, uh, there were 5 or 6 of them decided that they should start a prayer group and be praying for this church, for this school, which a lot of communities do. But then they began to think, we need to do something a bit more about that. And as they obviously at the school gate, got to know some of the other parents, they realised there were a lot of social issues going around, particularly in that area around drugs and drink and marriage and relationship difficulties. So they asked the school if they could have a room on a Friday, and when they drop the kids off, the parents could go to that and just socialize, but also have a chance to be prayed for and begin to kind of discover more about the Christian faith. So quite in quite a relaxed way. So they started this, and obviously they just invited mums and dads and carers who were there to join them. And this began to grow and they started a kind of alpha course. Out of this, people started coming to faith. And that's when Sue rang me and said, I've got a horrible feeling. I've just started a church because I to be honest, when they started it was, we're going to start a prayer meeting. But actually what had happened is that they'd begun to think about the people outside of themselves, how they connect with them, how that might form community and out of it. Actually, they formed a second church because most of the, uh, people could not come on Friday morning. It was only the carers and others. Um, so they started something on a Saturday afternoon, which was much more intergenerational. So that is a great example of, um, thinking about kind of what's the mission God is calling us to and how can we begin to be an answer to that?

Dwight: So one of the phrases that frequent listeners or viewers of this podcast will recognize is the idea of a mixed ecology of church that comes from the UK. And I wonder if you could speak a bit to this. How the mixed ecology paradigm is has taken shape and is taking shape in the UK, and how traditional inherited churches and fresh expressions or new forms of Christian community. New church starts can work together effectively.

Dave: Yes. No. Sure. So when we started back in kind of end of the 90s, 2000, we we used the phrase mixed economy to start with. Um, and then we've moved, which I think is a much better because it's a much more organic, that sense of mixed ecology with the idea that actually we need all forms of church. There isn't one that is the ultimate form. These all need to work together, recognising, as you were saying at the beginning, that we're living in very changing times. Um, and our mission needs to freshly express what we're about. So the church will will take on those different forms. Um, so mixed ecology is recognising that we need things that are both traditional and new and experimental. And Chaplain, you know, all sort chaplaincies, church plants, fresh expressions. Um, and actually they are all church. So there is a real sense of diversity and unity. So a sense that we need many more diverse forms of church, but also with a real sense that there is one church and we need each other. So the new needs to learn from the traditional and the traditional needs to learn from the new. So that's what we mean by mixed ecology. And also our research suggests that probably 90% of the new come from the traditional. So we in the work I'm now doing around our our change strategy, we've put together revitalisation of the parish for mission with a new worship, new worshiping communities, because we recognise those two things go together, because what happens in a traditional church, hopefully, is they say, well, we're doing great here, but we're not connecting with these people. And they recognise actually we're struggling to do that. So we might well need to create something new for that to happen. So the mixed ecology is for us is really vital because it, it, it enables that kind of missional energy to really grow and develop in new and surprising and different ways.

Terri: I like that because I think ecology is about life and it's about connectivity and the interrelationship. And if you ignore one part, right, you can starve a system or if you, you know, feed too much, you know it. It has to have that dialogue and conversation.

Dave: Well, I was going to say, and the worst is when a one plant or one species kind of takes over and it wrecks the whole ecology of the area.

Terri: Yeah, yeah. That's right. And I think that's what has really caught my imagination around our learning with what you have been doing there in the UK. Another piece of relationship I want to get to around evangelism and discipleship and, um, just like you were talking about earlier, about the relationship between people that have been formed in shape in more inherited models and people that are brand new to discipleship. Like, how does do you imagine those two working together? Because as I see it, you can't evangelize unless you're a follower yourself, unless you're a disciple. And and those those have a natural relationship. And then I'd like you to speak to, at least in our context, evangelism has a really bad is a bad word, right? It's even interesting with seminarians talking about that. So what are some common misconceptions about evangelism as you work with it in your context?

Dave: Yeah. So to answer the first question, my phrase is always you can only express what you experience. Um, and that's true of anything, isn't it? But it's also true of the Christian faith. So, uh, I think it's Dallas Willard who said, if you want to think about evangelism, start with discipleship, not the other way around. And I think that is true because if it's not our experience, then it will soon come across as false. Or, you know, that's what we're meant to say, all those kind of things. So I totally agree that it comes out of that experience. Um, now, obviously, for people who are coming to faith, in many ways that's easier than people who've had faith for a long time. Um, and that's when I think this whole thing of, well, what do we mean by evangelism? Um, really comes in because I think even in England, people are it's not a good word. We often use the word witness sometimes rather than evangelism. Um, but I think it's about I mean, I like the word evangelism because if you go back to the Greek roots, the word literally means party. It was a celebration party. And now in both of our cultures, that would be the last thing Nothing that people would, but it would be a party if a child being born for a birthday. Uh, if you're, you know, your king had won a great battle, you would have a euangelion that you know, that that's. But somehow we've lost any sense that this is a part, a celebration of who Jesus is and what he's like. So I think there is a need to kind of help people think it's not about knocking on doors. It's not about shouting on street corners. It's not about, um, it's not about ramming it down people's throats that they don't want to hear. Um, I think one of the key things I have learned, and I learned this a few years ago is, um, actually thinking through what, in our churches, what are we asking people to do when we talk about evangelism? Because when I asked most ministers, so what are you asking your people to do specifically when you talk about evangelism and they always say, oh, I don't know. Then I say, well, how will your people know what to do if you don't know what you're wanting them to do? So one of the things when we did the fresh expression is we talked with everyone and said, what do you think you could do? Let's forget the word evangelism. But what what would be possible for you to do? Um, and we had a big discussion about it over a number of weeks, and we came up with three things together that everyone could do. The first was to pray specifically for people, and I think it's an old fashioned thing, but I really think it makes a big difference. Um, so, you know, we talked about and we do this in the Church of England, praying for five people through thy kingdom come. So who are the five people you could pray for? And that change changes the temperature and also reminds us that actually evangelism isn't our thing. It is God's thing. And we're we're asked to be involved in that. The second was, um, could you say something about your own experience? Um, and they all said, yeah, I think I could, and we even provide a bit of training about how you express something about your story. Um, and that that includes up to date, not just 20 years ago or whatever. And the third thing we asked was, could you invite people to things that we do at church? And we had to come to a contract at that point. So they said, well, we could if it's good enough, if we're confident in it, we'll invite our friends. So we said, as a church leadership, we will do everything we can to make it not embarrassing, but things that you'll actually really want your friends to invite to come to. And sometimes we used to run them twice because we'd run them the first time and they'd say, oh, if I'd known it was that good, I would invited so-and-so. So we said, okay, we'll just run it again and you can invite so-and-so and so- and- so. Um, so I think it is just thinking it's kind of breaking it down to what is it we're asking people to do and what are we asking them not to do. So that's why the just looking stuff came up, because we're saying we're not necessarily asking people to help their friends, uh, you know, make that step into the Christian faith. Um, that that would be through just looking and other people who do that. So, so don't worry about that. But think think about the three things we've agreed that you could do and how that might work out. So I think it is that just giving people this is what we're asking you to do. Um, I think giving people a bit of training and a bit of help. Um, I think the other big thing that we learned was telling stories was really, really helpful. So, um, we used to have a it's kind of a really old fashioned thing that I picked up from the Methodist, but a kind of, uh, church anniversary. But we made it into a church birthday. So every year we had a birthday and people told their story, and some of them would be about how they came to faith. Some would be people who'd been had faith for a long time, but often it would involve. I invited someone to, you know, I did. This happened. Um, so that was really important. And my I had a kind of role, uh, as the kind of senior leader of. I'm involved in this as well. So I have to be inviting not just church contacts, but other, um, but actually, part of my story was telling them how I'd messed up. Oh, I invited so-and-so, but I did it in such a bad way they didn't come so that it wasn't always success. Success. Because my big thing with with our church people was, I do think God is calling you to invite people whether they come or not is not. That's not your role. That's God's. Um, your role is to issue an invitation. Um. It's God's it's up to God whether they come or not. So I'm relieving you of that worry of thinking that. But so for me, yeah, it was telling those I think just it builds confidence that actually, um, the gospel still works. And I think there's in our churches there's a for good reasons with decline and stuff, there is a feeling of this doesn't work anymore. Um, whereas I think it still does. That's that's my experience. Um, and it's, it's engendering that confidence and that, um, I think there are two key questions always in for every Christian. Do you really believe this? And God, can God use me? Those are the two fundamental spiritual questions. Um, and I think this thing of Can God use me in evangelism and discipleship is a is a really key question. And I'd be wanting to say, yes, he can, but he'll use you as you are, not as someone else, as it were.

Dwight: So Dave is for our listeners or viewers who are leaders responsible for stewarding local churches, um, share some more about how they can create a culture of innovation and experimentation, and particularly one in which the leaders that the spirit is working in can be encouraged to step forward. And you've you've done a lot of training and education of ministry innovators or pioneers. What would you say about that?

Dave: I think it is, uh, creating that culture that says, uh, well, if you've got a new idea, let's try it. Um, and believing that within that community there are lots there's lots of innovation going on. Um, but actually often people are not seeing an opportunity for that in their local church. And they may well be joining other social organizations where actually some of those gifts of innovation and creation are being used. So I think as leaders, it's about creating that culture where people can say, I'd love to have a go at this. I'd love to try this. I was wondering about this. Um, what if those are the kind of key questions helping people to think, what are the what are some of those questions that might lead you to innovation and creation, and then creating an environment where you say, well, let's try that for 2 or 3 months. Let's see what happens. Um, you're not going to commit the whole church budget to this new thing. That would be crazy. Um, but you are going to say, okay, we'll give it a bit of resource. We'll, we'll give it 2 or 3 months and then we'll look at it and reflect, um, and then we'll, we won't just say that's a failure. We'll say, well, what have we learned from that? And what do we do beyond that? One of my kind of heroes used to say to me that it's not about things that don't work, it's about prototypes. And a prototype is always built knowing it won't be the final product, but it's it's getting you on the way to that. Um, so I think it's, it's about giving people confidence to think about and recognize where they're answering those kind of what if questions. Or could we do this? Or could we try this? And then giving them the the confidence and the resources to give it a go and just see what happens? Um, and yeah, I've always been amazed. I think there's much more innovation out there than often we recognize.

Terri: Yeah, I think that's for sure. And I think some of that's context and the dynamic, like you said, the fresh expression of church needed for every generation. Right. And I think we've just lost that heart of acts or of other centuries. So I'm curious if you could give us you've been at the heart of the Church of England's vision, as they've been kind of rolling that out. Give us a little glimpse of what are you excited about, about the future of the work that you're doing right now in the UK?

Dave: Yeah, I think, uh, two things would be so. One would be around fresh expressions, new worshiping communities that are kind of over overarching title. We did. We asked a question of all our churches. Have you started at something new in the last year? And 1400 churches have started something new, and this is the local parish traditional church. 1400 have started something new this year. That is amazing. So in all my interviews I tend to talk to bishops, uh, regularly. I often say to them, well, I was really amazed in your diocese because actually this is 9% of all our churches. It was actually 14%. Um, and what how did this happen? And the answer usually is, I have no idea, but it just shows that at the local level there is a real, uh, desire. You know, people are just saying, this isn't working. We need to try something new. And if people then feel that permission and some resourcing and a little bit of training, actually, you begin to see that taking off. The other bit that, um, is exciting to me, but I think is a challenge for us, is around discipleship. So we we now use this phrase in the Church of England missionary discipleship, which I really like, because I think those two things need to be together mission and discipleship. And it's that sense of there are two movements. One is being sent out, the other is being drawn to Jesus. And we need both of those things. Um, so we're thinking more and more about what does that look like? And our big thing, which has been built on some things from years ago, is that this is a seven day thing. It's not a a church thing. I think too often we've seen discipleship as socialization into church. Um, rather than recognizing actually all that we do is part of our discipleship, our job, our home life, our social life, everything. So. And how how is that reflected in a missional way I think is something that that yeah, we're more and more excited. You know, for instance, like sport is I think is an, you know, one of those great things around that how how do we see that in, in its mission, not just in terms of evangelism, but in that bigger sense of also kind of physical building, community giving people hope and confidence and all those kind of things. So I think those are those are the, the two things that that really excite me. Um, and, and I will still be challenges to us, but things we're really working hard at at the moment.

Dwight: Dave, thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom with us on today's Pivot podcast.

Dave: Oh, it's been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.

Terri: And where I'm even more excited to have you teaching on this within our curriculum in this coming year and looking forward to that. So thanks, Dave.

Dave: Oh, no, I'm I'm looking forward to that as well. Very excited. Thank you.

Terri: And to those listeners, thanks for joining us today for this episode of pivot. And if you haven't yet checked out Faith Lead Academy, we have a course on Fresh Expressions and we'll put a link to that in the show notes if you want to learn more.

Dwight: Finally, the best compliment you can give us is to share. Pivot with a friend. Until next time. This is Dwight Zscheile and Terri Elton signing off. See you next week.

Faith+Lead voiceover: The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith+Lead. Faith+Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.