What We Do
Vision Day
The world has changed.
Does your church have a vision for the future?
Are you new to the Fresh Expressions movement, know a church or leader who should be involved, or would like your denominational group to be in on the conversation? Vision Days are a great way to discover more about what it means to be involved in starting fresh expressions of church. Over 4,000 people have participated in Vision Days in more than 60 different cities.
A typical Vision Day lasts 6 hours and provides the perfect opportunity to discover what it means to be the Church in new and creative ways, hear from Fresh Expressions practitioners, learn how to renew existing congregations through fresh expressions of church, and discern what this could mean for your region, community, or neighborhood. There is active discussion as well as opportunity to build networks and relationships among those in your area.
At the Vision Day you will discover:
- How fresh expressions of church are renewing the church around the world
- What it means for your church to be Mission-Shaped
- How to intentionally engage with the community beyond your church walls
- Tools for starting fresh expressions of church in your area
Help host a Vision Day in your city! Send us an email to get started.
The Vision Day is ideal for:
- Anyone interested in renewal within established congregations
- Those interested in building relationships and serving the communities in which they live or work
- Those who have real questions about fresh expressions and mission-shaped church
- Those who have started something new and need some practical help
Each Vision Day is led by the Fresh Expressions team and is carefully planned in partnership with a group of local churches and denominational groups.
SCHEDULE VISION DAY
Local Church Workshop
Discover How Fresh Expressions Could Work in Your Church
You are excited about Fresh Expressions, but you know that you can’t start a movement alone.
After years of church leaders clamoring for a tailored learning experience, we’ve created the Local Church Workshop.
This half-day event is designed and tested to help you go from being a lone ranger to a connected team member.
Not only will we help you spread your passion to other leaders, and we’ll be there when big questions come up!
At a Local Church Workshop your team will discover:
- what a fresh expression of church is
- how a fresh expressions can transform your church
- how to experiment with fresh expressions in your setting
- how to involve different kinds of people
- where in your city you can start a fresh expression today
Do you want to build a team that is passionate about starting forms of church for people who don’t yet go to church?
You understand that some people in your community will never come to your church.
You want to go to them—but you don’t want to go alone.
We’re here to help you spread this passion to your church.
Learning Community
Learn how to start and lead fresh expressions of church
Are you a Pioneer?
Pioneers are mission entrepreneurs who have the stirrings to go beyond existing church communities to engage in life and ministry with people, fostering fresh expressions of church that connect with those uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the inherited church.
Fresh Expressions Learning Communities are a six-month, part-time, learning community designed to:
- Assist teams who want to launch fresh expressions of church
- Help pastors and lay-leaders create Fresh Expressions strategies for their communities and neighborhoods
- Surround pioneers with a network of fellow sojourners and practitioners of missional ministry
Over the course of approximately six months, cohorts meet for two weekend retreats, monthly connection and support through coaching. Teams and individuals discern and implement intentional steps toward developing fresh expressions of church appropriate to their unique contexts. Each participant is welcomed into an on-going peer learning network upon completion of the learning community.
What You Learn in a Learning Community
Using the Mission-Shaped Ministry curriculum first developed in the UK as a framework, Learning Communities dig into the theological foundations of Fresh Expressions, the practices that lead to contextually appropriate ministry, attentiveness to authentic discipleship, tools for developing teams and leaders, and the steps to forming meaningful expressions of church within a particular mission context.
Learning Communities equip you to live into these principles of mission:
- Incarnational—Entering deeply into the life of the neighborhood or the network
- Missional—Looking for what God is doing and joining in
- Contextual—Living out communal life with Jesus that fits the context
- Formational—Walking with people in a discipleship journey
- Ecclesial—Fostering maturing church that honors God and makes sense for the context
By participating in a Learning Communities, you’ll come to understand the theory and practice of the Fresh Expression journey:
- Listening—Listening deeply to a context and discovering God’s unique call to love those whom God is putting on your heart
- Loving and Serving—Stepping into God’s invitation to do life with people; to love and to serve in ways that bless people and give them a glimpse of God’s goodness
- Building Community—Fostering or deepening a sense of connection and community that reflects God’s fullness of relationship with one another
- Exploring Discipleship—Inviting people into an unfolding encounter with God’s love and a journey into a life that reflects the priorities of Jesus
- Forming Church—Allowing a Jesus-centered community to emerge that reflects the enduring marks of the Church and the context from which it emerges
- Undergirded by Prayer—Following the lead of the Holy Spirit
Upcoming Learning Communities:
Roundtable
Fresh Expressions Roundtables serve as an opportunity for small groups from a church, denominational group or area to:
- Ask in-depth questions about the concepts, theological foundations, and the developmental process of fresh expressions
- Envision the implications of fresh expressions for their specific congregation and community
- Gain some experience with fresh expressions to get up close and personal guidance on how they take next steps on this journey
To learn more about Roundtables, send us an event inquiry by clicking the button below!
SCHEDULE ROUNDTABLE
Steeple to Street Training Day
Your Church’s First Step Towards Starting Fresh Expressions
Steeple to Street Training Day is a practical, hands-on, feet walking, lunch eating, people meeting practice that will help you and the leadership of your church take the first steps towards starting a fresh expressions of church.
Steeple to Street is designed to help you learn how to dig into your mission context. You will:
- Use a listening and discernment process to help participants commit to at least one hour of prayer walking in their local context prior to the training day
- Reflect together on missional practices that can help you discover more about your community and connect with the people who are not coming to your church.
- Discover why and how to pay attention to your ministry context
- Start considering what kinds of fresh expressions of church might be appropriate and impactful in your area.
Your church will leave the training with real possibilities for fresh expressions of church in your community, workplace, and networks.
Download a FREE study guide to the book ‘From the Steeple to the Street’ by clicking HERE!
Purchase your discounted copy of the book ‘From the Steeple to the Street’ HERE!
The Amore Project
Bringing Church Home
Where does mission start?
The Amore Project builds family-like communities for evangelism and helps married couples:
- Reimagine home as the “first church” and a launching place for joining God’s mission
- Trains married couples to embrace their marriage as a sign of the gospel and a calling to minister among those who are far from God.
- Amore Communities create space for all people to experience and celebrate God’s love
The Amore Project started in Italy by Msgr. Renzo Bonetti and, through the Famiglia Dono Grande Foundation, has helped create hundreds of Communities of Families for Evangelization (Amore Communities) in Italy and in other parts of Europe. In 2013, the project began taking shape in the United States through the vision and generosity of Truro Anglican Church in Fairfax, Virginia and Fresh Expressions US. The project helps strengthen marriages, proclaims God’s spousal love for every person and forms spiritual families who live as agents of Jesus’s self-giving love in their neighborhoods and communities.
Learn more about The Amore Project
The Ananias Project
Any Movement of God Must Be Grounded in Prayer
We wouldn’t have a New Testament if it wasn’t for Paul. But we wouldn’t have Paul…
…if it wasn’t for Ananias.
In Acts 9 we read that Ananias was a man of prayer who courageously responded when God called him to pray for Saul of Tarsus. We don’t know much of Ananias’s story, but we know that through his prayers and teaching, the bloodthirsty Saul became Paul the Apostle.
The Ananias Project:
- Undergirds the Fresh Expressions movement through a concerted, coordinated prayer ministry.
- Trains prayer ministers for churches and prayer teams to support fresh expressions pioneers
- Through regular retreats, builds like-minded and prayer-focused individuals and teams
Email Cheryl McCarthy to learn about how you can build a strong foundation of prayer within your church to undergird the fresh expressions movement in your community.
Dinner Church Encounter
The DinnerChurchCollective is an initiative of Fresh Expressions US. Dinner Church Encounters are 1-day training events that are offered in numerous locations across the country. They are typically held on Saturdays with training sessions from 9am-4pm. Participants then experience an actual Dinner Church gathering that evening at 5pm.
These day events begin with the rich theological history of the dinner church vision, and progresses throughout the day toward more practical insights that would enable a leader or group to imagine hosting a Dinner Church in their town.
An Encounter is a great opportunity to come as a core plant-team or as a church group that is interested in doing a fresh expression of church as a part of the established church they all attend. The training sessions assume each attender has little or no knowledge about the historic dinner church approach that was widely used throughout the first three hundred years of Christianity. But by the end of the day, it is our hope that every attender will have a very clear vision of What, Where, Why, When, and How they might help establish a dinner church in their city – maybe even within the shadow of their own steeple.
Beyond the training sessions and the live dinner church experience, there will be several other resources available, and insight into how to use these tools to engage the groups home church when they get back. It is our belief that after attending an Encounter, each person will never look at their city the same way again – especially the sore neighborhoods.
It is also our hope that each attender will not again limit themselves to “outreach thinking” when they can open a church for their lower third neighbors instead, and do church in a for them in a way that better fits their sociology.
Dinner Church Immersion
The DinnerChurchCollective owns a training house in Seattle, WA to host church leaders for a 3-day training and observation event. These visits include accommodations, breakfast’s, training sessions, opportunities to observe a couple Dinner Churches in action, and fireside dialogues with experienced leaders during the evenings. it is assumed that each one attending a Dinner Church Immersion has read the Dinner Church Handbook or the Overseers Handbook, both of which can be ordered from this site.
The training sessions offered at Immersions are both dialogue-based and observation-based. The dialogue sessions begin with a theological review of the historic dinner church, and work progressively toward practical issues and large scale strategies such as an overseer who is tasked with planting city or regional areas might need. Of course, due to the fact that everyone will have already read the handbook and have undoubtedly gathered some questions, we let the attenders steer much of the discussion.
The observation opportunities will include attending two dinner churches in session, and engaging in those evenings in several different ways. One way is to actually work at the buffet table and see the encouragement that is offered by the servers; in serving food they are serving the Gospel. Another way is to sit back and observe the way non-churched people worship and listen, as well as seeing the prayer and one-on-one conversations taking place across the room. Still another way is to sit at a table, and eat with people who start off as strangers but turn into friends by the end of the night. Many of the visiting leaders will have the opportunity to talk with these new friends about Christ and some will even get to pray a prayer of healing for them. Sitting at a table and turning strangers into friends is the most meaningful role in the room. A final way to engage in the evening is to interview the worship leader, artist, security personnel, pastor, buffet table leader, and those who showed up that evening to be a part of the “lift” team. All of these conversations prove to offer rich practical insights.
Notes regarding travel: It is best to be in Seattle by 1pm on the first day, as it will take some time to get to the training house, get checked in, and be ready for the first session at 3pm. The final training session will conclude at noon on the third day, so scheduling flights home after 3pm would be the goal.
National Gathering
2018 National Gathering: Steeple to Street
This gathering focused primarily on developing the leadership required for this new mission era in which the Church finds itself.
The Church is rediscovering its identity in mission. More and more churches are taking seriously the call to engage with their communities…and many more would like to. But this new mission landscape is going to need new skills of leadership. Bold, risk-taking, creative, discerning leadership. Leaders who will move to the mission edges and foster fresh expressions of church. Leaders who will take on the adaptive challenges within existing churches to catalyze new energy for mission. Leaders who will make room for experiments and risks for the sake of the gospel.
Speakers included Alan Hirsch, Tod Bolsinger, Deb Hirsch, Graham Cray, Evelyn Sekajipo, Iosmar Alvarez and many more.
You can watch the sessions and/or listen to the audio by purchasing the audio & video sessions HERE.
2016 National Gathering: The Power of AND
In 2016, we explored the power of ‘And’. This little word links groups of words together weaving a story that is richer and more varied than it would be if any word in the group was left alone.
Faced with the reality of our post-Christian culture, Christians across several continents concerned with giving a credible witness to Jesus in our time are discovering the power of “and.” Historic congregations are starting new communities of faith in networks and neighborhoods previously unreached by any church. There is a renewed interest in the Church as a movement of missionary disciples gathered to worship and sent out on mission at home and everywhere in between.
The theme of and permeated all of the sessions, highlighting the very real potential for tradition and experimentation to coexist. Conversations and presentations included Fresh Expressions and the local church, Fresh Expressions and the neighborhood, Fresh Expressions and your network, Fresh Expressions and everyday life, Fresh Expressions and your calling, making the mixed-economy of church work, bridging the pew and the neighborhood, finding and developing pioneers, and so much more. Plenary speakers included Graham Cray, Jo Saxton, Renzo Bonetti, Tory Baucum, Brian Sanders, David Fitch and Jorge Acevedo. Workshops were led by a variety of other missional leaders and Audrey Assad grounded the gathering in worship.
Audio and video recordings of many of these sessions from 2016 can be found on all three pages of our RESOURCES page