German Catholics want to learn from Anglican Fresh Xpression movement.
From 2019- contacts continue but on 1 September 2022, Christopher Campbell took over as director of Quo vadis?, the Center for Encounter and Vocation of Religious Communities in Vienna doubtless taking these ideas with him.
Background from the Church of England"I believe that God is calling us to be a church of glorious and profligate diversity"
Anglican Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, Presidential Address: General Synod July 2020
At the market or in the kebab stand: new ideas for forms of worship
The Church in Germany often makes a somewhat dusty impression and is no longer attractive to many. But how can the Christian message reach the center of society? A group from Limburg was in London looking for inspiration - at the Anglican church reform movement "Fresh X."
Many people in Europe have a more or less fixed image in their minds of what a church service is. In a church, old songs are sung and an individual leads the celebration in a familiar order. But this service is different: it takes place in a café and many people get involved. After a welcome, the visitors sing songs ranging from pop to new spiritual songs, then someone addresses the others with words somewhere between a sermon and a lecture. In small groups, everyone can then read quotes, draw something, talk or pray. The celebration ends with a common prayer and more songs. The weekly meeting at the "Kahaila" café in London's Brick Lane is a fruit of the Fresh Expressions of Church initiative - Fresh X for short - which has been seeking to bring a breath of fresh air to the Anglican Church of England since the early 1990s. A group from the Diocese of Limburg was in London in October to be inspired by these "new expressions."
Why London? "It's a fragmented, segmented, secular city," says Christopher Campbell, adult education officer for the Limburg diocese. "We're encountering a post-secular world there: the secularization of life has taken place, but religion is returning to society in many places quite outside of institutions, sometimes diffusely." He is thinking, for example, of mottoes on T-shirts or tattoos with religious symbols. London is a particularly difficult place for the established churches: After centuries of state churchism, English society is much more secular than, say, Germany. The multicultural metropolis stands out because of its particularly low church loyalty, despite its long and rich church tradition with world-famous houses of worship, vaults and choirs.
Against this backdrop, numerous groups and individual initiatives have emerged since 1990 to counter the traditional structure of the church with a radically new model. Being a church should no longer mean only coming to worship on Sundays. Fresh X wants to establish community forms away from the territorial parish, in which being Christian can be lived in a new and different way, according to the wishes and needs of the people of the 21st century.
Once a week, the "Kahaila" becomes a place of worship.
Theologian Maria Herrmann has been studying the Fresh X phenomenon for years. "The Anglican Church is 15 to 20 years ahead of us - in its upheavals and awakenings," she says. The basic conditions there are therefore different than in Germany, she says. "In this country, when you see a service like this, you might think, 'It's just a devotional in a café.' But in such a secular society, it means much more than it does here." The Anglican Church, he said, is by its nature very ecumenical, combining Catholic with almost Free Church aspects. Fresh X can thus draw on a broad tradition and dare to try something new.
From very intimate to mass events
The word church service means more than just familiar liturgy: Besides the cosmopolitan version in the trendy "Kahaila," it can take on very different forms. Elsewhere, visitors first meditate to Gregorian music, before people speak quite spontaneously about their faith between short psalms or readings, some of which consist of only a few sentences. "Some of them still have their coffee in hand," Campbell reports.
Different again is the group that meets in a kebab store to talk about the Bible. The underlying texts are quite short and in easy language - so that even those who don't normally engage with texts can join in. It should not depend on the level of education who can join in the conversation.
Hillsong services are characterized primarily by catchy music.
At the other end of the spectrum of contemporary forms of faith are new church movements such as the megachurch Hillsong. Founded in 1983 in Australia, which is also very secular, it relies on mass events in large theaters, for example. The hallmark of Hillsong services is the great importance of music; the band on stage is the constituent element of the church, along with the sermon, which sometimes lasts about an hour. The emotional pop melodies are also available on CD and the usual streaming platforms, and they convey the often simple messages to the faithful.
A network is emerging
The large-scale free church services are alien to Fresh X; here, it's more about actions on a small scale. Compared to traditional pastoral care, however, the approach is completely different. At Fresh X, committed lay people act and implement projects that are close to their personal hearts. Priests stay very much in the background, merely organizing and facilitating the initiatives - and in return handing over responsibility and control. According to Christopher Campbell, the initiative's events thus take on a shirt-sleeved, very informal character. The boundary between organizers and participants is blurred, and a network is created across event forms.
There is no longer any separation between culture, worship and charity. Motivated by faith, the volunteers do something for the community, such as reviving an abandoned youth center. In this place, where the people are already anyway, a form of lived faith then emerges out of their needs. For example, a nail salon owner decided to set up a mobile nail salon in a minibus and drive to places with social tensions. She does the nails of the young women free of charge and talks about their problems as well as about spiritual matters. The idea is to create an openness: Those who come into the network through a social initiative also have the opportunity to become active elsewhere or to get something going themselves. So social contacts come first, before it's about faith.
A church service can also be a coffee in the marketplace.
Campbell was impressed by the personal involvement of the people in the projects. They have a good sense of what people need. This is no coincidence: The Anglicans have reoriented the training of volunteers and priests, who are called "pioneers. They now not only learn how to celebrate a church service - the missionary task is central from the very beginning. The goal is to communicate the Christian message in new social contexts.
Friction between tradition and progression
However, even Fresh X is not a blue sky without clouds: Many an active congregation today also celebrates services in the café, precisely because their own church has had to close for financial reasons. In addition, there is friction between the new actions and the classic church congregations: Fresh X members sometimes see themselves as second-class Anglicans and complain that traditional churchgoers look down on them. On the other hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, for example, assures Fresh X of his support and shows it more clearly than to Sunday churchgoers. The segmentation of society becomes palpable here, even if tolerance may prevail on the whole.
In addition, it may well be questioned whether the low-threshold openness does not cross the line into arbitrariness. Is it still in the spirit of Christianity if the focus is primarily on general spiritual thoughts? This was also discussed by the Limburg group: Some visitors, for example, gave projects the predicate "This is the last degree of desperation before there is no more congregational life at all". Fresh X remains a matter of taste.
Of course, one would like to see new, "fresh" impulses for the church in German Catholicism as well. But simply importing the methods from the island is not very hopeful, Campbell thinks. "There are enough concepts in the Anglican Church as well, that's not the point. It's about the committed being authentic and acting out of their faith." That hands-on, informal attitude needs to be adopted, he says. The church needs to take people's concerns more seriously and support those who want to build new bridges in society, he adds. But, as in England, that also means the pastor must relinquish some of his authority and not always claim the last word. Authority and capital must be given to those who take their vocation seriously.
First a spiritual deepening
According to Campbell, discovering this must be another building block. One congregation in England, for example, started with itself when looking for concepts for the future. The first step was not to develop concepts, but to deepen their own faith. Then the parishioners listened to the people in their neighborhood before thinking about actions. So working on the church of the future also means working on one's own faith. "Some active people in this country are less sustained by faith than they think of themselves," Campbell believes. That's where deepening is needed. At the same time, he says, it can't be a matter of simply acquiring new worshipers. "Anyone who wants to do that is at a dead end."
Herrmann also observes that forms of the Anglican movement from England cannot simply be transferred to Catholics in Germany. "Focusing primarily on worship is a very Catholic approach." Fresh X, he says, is more oriented toward missionary movements of past centuries. For example, he said, even the Jesuits in missions were always concerned first with a community and social togetherness before questions of religion and worship came to the table. Today's mission in Western societies takes place, for example, in family education centers, schools or charitable institutions - and it needs time. A community needs seven years, for example, to move from the first step of community building to the stage of thinking about religious practice.
The problem in Germany: "This time is missing." The church is under great pressure to act right now, he said. That's why it continues to simply produce new offerings without addressing the complexity of a community. Fresh X in particular, however, is meant to be a field of discussion that develops impulses away from ready-made offers. But this activation potential of the faithful is still not supported enough in this country. "We would need there also church-legally a protection area, so that new initiatives can make a few years also simply times", so Herrmann.
So the Fresh X movement is not a blanket blueprint for a church of the future everywhere. But a bit of inspiration has stuck with Christopher Campbell. He now wants to regularly sprinkle Fresh X concepts in the Diocese of Limburg that could be implemented right now without any problems. First sparks for new fire and a different way of being church and celebrating worship? Perhaps.
.jpeg)
Comments