Welcoming the legislation, Church Army’s Chief Executive, Mark Russell said: "My dream is that we will further the mission of the church. At the heart of this colossal piece of work is the Bishops Mission Order. I pay tribute to all of you involved in this legislation…that suddenly fresh expressions have the authority of the bishop; it allows the bishop to be that leader in mission that he is supposed to be. It places mission and outreach of fresh expressions at the centre of the diocesan life.

"I believe that this piece of legislation is a gift to the Church of England. It enables fresh expressions and the new types of Christian communities that are emerging to be part of that mixed economy that Archbishop Rowan dreams of. It allows us to have a church as diverse in parish and in fresh expression."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams said: "Essentially the Fresh Expressions program is not simply about a kind of scattered set of experiments; it’s about that gradual, but I think inexorable shift, in the whole culture of our church that has been going on in the last few years, and which will undoubtedly continue to grow and develop.

And that shift in culture is about the way in which discovering new expressions of the Church’s life has now, rather paradoxically, become part of the blood stream of the traditional, mainstream churches’ life.

"To be, so to speak, an ordinary average Anglican, to be an ordinary average Anglican diocese, to be an ordinary average Anglican bishop, now involves you in thinking about, planning for, and involving yourself in, some quite extraordinary and, on the face of it, sometimes rather unanglican bits of new life.

"We’re rediscovering something about what the Church is, as well as what the Church of England is; rediscovering, to use a favorite metaphor of mine, that the Church is something that happens before it’s something that is institutionally organized. It happens when the Good News summons, assembles, people around Jesus Christ.

"Remember that that is what we’re thinking of, not a series of scattered experiments, not a series of enterprises in religious entertainment, not, God forbid, a kind of dumbing-down of the historic faith and its requirements so that more people may get vaguely interested."

Dr. Williams said the point of Fresh Expressions is the point of the Church itself, "that is to provide a place where Christ is set free in our midst, if one can use such an expression -- and I hesitate to -- to gather those who want to be in his company. That freedom is always there for our Lord, we can simply try and, as has often been said, join in and not get in the way.

"So you’re going to hear something now about being the Church, and being the Church of England, not about something marginal, something eccentric, but about the very life blood of who we are and what we are. What’s been achieved, I think, in the years in which Fresh Expressions has been working, is remarkable and it owes a great deal to the extraordinary energy and vision of Steve Croft and his team."

To listen to the full audio of the debate, follow this link http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/gsam2702.html 

Church Army is a society of evangelists within the Anglican Communion, which exists to enable people to come to a living faith in Jesus Christ. For more information on the work of Church Army see http://www.churcharmy.org.uk/  or phone +44 (0)20 8309 3519.

 © 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission