CELL CHURCHES AND MSC

They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household [oikos]."

Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized.
The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them;
he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—
he and his whole family.
Acts 16:31-34

CELL CHURCH

As I was setting up my itinerary, I consulted people "in the know" in the UK asking for specific recommendations of FXs which were

...effective at enfolding previously non-churched people

…in significant numbers

…with a reasonable possibility of becoming self-sustaining

…and helping people along to mature discipleship.

I scheduled to visit as many of the recommendations as I could. I found as I went around that many (indeed most) of these churches and FXs had in them some sort of "cell" structure. I don't think this was an accident.

Cells are mentioned repeatedly in this FX pilgrimage blog as

"Cell Church" in Tas Valley.

"Cell Church" at 4ALL Southreeps.

"Cells" at “Stukes” Newcastle, and

"Cell Groups" at "Harvest", Broadstairs, or

"Gamma Teams" at Christ Church Central.

"Life-boats" at the Fountain of Life, Ashill.
"Small Groups" at the Net Huddersfield.

Holy Trinity, Brompton has a system of some 60 "Pastorals" that include small groups - but they do more than meet as small groups.

[See also a fascinating note on cells and monastic life by George Lings in the post on Lindisfarne's Aidan; Graham Tomlin in his book on Evangelism, The Provocative Church, discusses Cell Churches positively (pp. 149-152).].

[My short stay in the UK allowed me to see only ten of the hundreds of Fresh Expressions (FXs) of some fourteen models. I chose not to look at youth FX’s such as Legacy BMX or a surfing church. The Goth Eucharist was not on offer where I was during my stay. About 60 or so of the Anglican FXs in the official FX directory describe themselves as being cell churches!]

The Rev.'d Canon Phil Potter, Director of Pioneer Ministry for the diocese of Liverpool, and the Rev'd Canon Paul Bayes, The Church of England’s National Mission and Evangelism Adviser are both experienced Cell Church planters.

How do cell churches differ from the more commonly known (inherited) church model?"

Many functions of "church" as we know it are downloaded to the smaller groups, e.g.

(a) the individual cells become the basic weekly gathering while "big church", the gathering of all the individual cells, happens less often.

(b) for Anglicans sacraments happen at the big gathering unless there is a priest present at an individual cell meeting

(c) individual cells develop their own sense of mission and specific mission projects and

(d) the individual cells together with the larger gathering have the potential to grow into self-managing, self-financing, and self-propagating churches.

What about communions at the cells? Though it is discussed below as an open question, that has not at all proved to be problematic in the FXs I visited.

Phil Potter's 2001 The Challenge of Cell Church is one of the best and easiest to read books on cell churches among Anglicans I have found. He suggests that in the Anglican context both cells and a regular celebration gathering are needed, much as a bird flies with two wings. The link to the larger body provided by bi-monthly Sunday Eucharists is sufficient. At the Rez, we only have communion at the main 10:30 am service every other week anyway. Further, at the Tas Valley cells, which are modeled upon Phil Potter's book, there was so much to cover in our two hour cell meeting that there did not seem to be enough time to add a communion service anyway.

By the way, in MISSION SHAPED QUESTIONS (Church House, 2008) there is an excellent exploratory article on sacraments and Fresh Expressions (of any sort) by the Rt. Rev. Lindsay Urwin, OGS Area Bishop of Horsham in the Diocese of Chichester. This is a great reflective piece by a Bishop and, I think, written for Bishops.

Is “oikos” too small a field to reach?” “Oikos” is koine Greek for “household” but in cell literature it means a wider “sphere of influence” than your nuclear family. The theory is that as the people in cells develop natural relationships within your “oikos” it is inevitable that some will become curious about and open to your faith in Christ. These people can then be invited to and included in your cell.

But won’t reaching out in your “oikos” limit outreach to one’s own racial and cultural enclave? That might be true in some cities but not in Toronto if one considers one's neighbours and work associates as part of your “oikos”. Immediately around us on Bastedo live Chinese, East Indians, Italians, Koreans, Grenadians, Croatians, Greeks, Australians [I was born in the states], and a few same-gendered couples. All these people are close enough to us that, if we needed, we could walk barefoot to their house to borrow a cup of sugar - they are THAT close. Our street is like most in this city. Loving your neighbour in Toronto means your “oikos” will include reaching someone from most any part of the world. What a great city!

Yet by definition there will only ever be a small number of people in a cell - often too small to be effective in ministries intent on transforming neighbourhoods.

CLUSTERS

A relatively recent development among some churches with a cell structure is Clusters . Bob Hopkins of the Anglican Church Planting Initiatives (ACPI) and Mike Breen of 3DMinistries have written a book on it ["Clusters", 2008, available through ACPI or Church House]. These are mid-size missional communities.

Mid-sized: larger than a cell (that is 20-70)

Missional: Small enough to share a common vision – big enough to do something about it

Communities: this is NOT a programme, but a community of people's united around a common vision. Read more www.acpi.org.uk/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=61

or Buy the book!

BACK TO CELLS FROM MSC

The following summary [without footnotes] is taken from Mission Shaped Church (pp. 52-57)

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mission_shaped_church.pdf. If you have read that, then skip the rest of this post. It is reproduced here virtually unchanged, for your convenience and because of the potential cell structure has for travelling light in planting, integrating new people with few obstacles except visiting as a guest in someone’s home - but also helping formerly non-churched folks to come to Christian maturity as followers of Christ.

SO FROM MSC…

Cell church offers a seven-day a week system [of church] that mobilizes and multiplies every member for discipleship, ministry, leadership and expansion.14

Cell church represents a ‘two-winged’ approach to church that seeks to emphasize both large and small group expressions of Christian community.

It affirms the following:

_ Cell and celebration (the small meeting and the big meeting) are both

viable expressions of church.

_ Every cell member has the potential to be involved in ministry.

_ Each cell is a building block of church.

_ Cell leader support and training are essential.

Each cell meeting has a structure within it that enables the cell leader to be a facilitator-leader. A typical cell meeting could express four church functions: worship, word, community and mission.

This expression of church is part of a wider movement across a number of denominations and also across the world. Common to all cell church thinking is a recovery of the conviction that the small group is truly church. There are a number of models being advocated, the Neighbour/Beckham model being the most popular in the church of England.16 Some churches are changing existing congregations to a cell model. Others are planting new churches using cell principles.

Cell and other related fresh expressions of church respond well to a culture

in which community and family have been eroded, and also address the missionary need of the non-churched for in-depth discipleship into a previously unexplored faith.

change to cell within existing churches

When existing churches undergo the transition to cell principles they work towards becoming a church made up of small groups. Each of the small groups or cells is in nature and practice a full expression of church. The church-like roles of building community, offering worship, hearing and

applying the Word, and engaging with society are normative for each cell.

Every cell is functionally more than a study group, a task group or even a care group. It acts as the church in microcosm, including the instinct (shared with church planting) that groups should deliberately seek to multiply (principally through relational evangelism) and reproduce new groups.

The alternative is an intentional halfway house, aiming towards a church with small groups, sometimes called Meta Church.17 The principal difference between pure cell and Meta Church is that in ‘pure cell’ the cell is the primary unit of church and everything else serves the life and growth of the cells. In ‘Meta Church’ the congregation is equally valid, and the two modes

of church complement one another’s strengths. Meta Church’s key insight is that small groups are the ideal context for growing skills in local leaders.

can cell church create a growth mentality?

Revd Paul Simmonds, in a Grove booklet on cell church,18 observes that the move to cell helps shape and direct growth, but does not create it. Cell church originally came from parts of the worldwide Church where growth and evangelism are natural and unexceptional. Cell church was devised to cope with the attendant growth.19 Thus it is historically true to say that it was not designed to stimulate growth but to channel and develop it.

cell planting

Cell planting involves establishing a new church around cell church principles. At present two different patterns are emerging.

parallel cell church

One is the creation of a cell-based church alongside an existing church that remains congregationally based. The existing membership has choice about the style or expression of church to which they wish to commit. People are discouraged from hopping from one to another. Those who select cell do so in the knowledge that it is fundamentally built around principles of

discipleship and relational evangelism. So far the two resulting parallel churches have always been different expressions connected to one parish, and serving only roughly the same area.20 A small number of parallel cell churches have a specific youth rather than all-age focus.

A story: St Alkmund’s, Derby

St Alkmund’s is an Anglican church in the Diocese of Derby. Karen Hamblin is director of Youth and Children’s Work. She says: With hindsight I can identify five major factors that moved us

firmly in the direction of Cell:

A desire to see real discipleship and not just consumerism.

A longing to see new young people saved and discipled.

A knowledge that youth had more to give and the need to

find the right vehicle.

An urgent desire to stop the loss of youth from the church.

A desire to see prodigals returning.

We implemented Cell in September 1997. We felt that we had found something that might have the answers to some of our frustrations in that it would: build on the relational youth work already established; fly in the face of consumerism; create huge potential for evangelism and discipleship; allow young people’s giftings to be used and developed in a safe environment . . .

In order to develop all our relationships we divided them into three groups, each with two adult leaders meeting in different rooms in the church. Things improved further when we moved out of the church into people’s homes, creating a far more intimate atmosphere. Small groups meet weekly, in church members’ homes on Sunday afternoons and then come together to the evening service.

Each has a core attendance of 5–6, with up to 8 on each group’s list. Once a month we come together as a youth congregation (called Wired), in order to celebrate small group life; all the small groups contribute to this time and have major input in shaping and leading it.

Each cell has a leader and apprentice leader. This means the group is able to multiply through a combination of evangelism (we hope) and new youth moving in from the younger age group. It also helps us cope with the older youth who leave for university each year. However, it means that we are constantly releasing and training new leaders.

True to Cell church, values form the basis for everything.

Our values are:

Every member ministry

Every member maturity

Jesus at the centre

Sacrificial love

Multiplication

Community life based around openness and honesty.

[NB this parish considered but decided against becoming an overall cell church.]

cell from scratch

The second strand in planting is the starting of a cell-based church, for an area or culture where congregational church life is not the most appropriate model. This approach has been used in urban contexts where the desire is to reach the non-churched. Cell makes it easier to travel light. The baggage of church in these contexts may include hostility to the institution, a sense

of alienation from its bookish organizational complexity, uncertainty about entering a holy building and a profound sense of not having a clue of what to do once there. Some stories stress the counter-cultural advantage of cell: it is an example of authentic and attractive community that may not be found within the secular community. Where the non-churched have no contact with the institutional church, nor any interest in being contacted, then perhaps a relational approach is the only one that can bear fruit. advantages of cell planting include:

_ Cell principles help those fresh expressions of church working in areas,

or with post-Christian groupings, where middle sized or middle class

congregations – and their style – would be culturally foreign.

_ By being small and responsive to members, cells can identify with the needs of an area and work with those seeking its regeneration.

_ Cell assists the multiplication of indigenous leaders, by a deliberate pattern of ongoing apprentice-style training. Finding and forming these leaders is key to the whole process.

_ Cell church can help a number of planted churches break through the small church attendance barrier of about 50 people, by breaking down the unit size and raising the proportion of the church membership engaged in all forms of ministry, including evangelism.

_ Cell simplifies and focuses the inner life of all young churches. This makes it possible to sustain energy for outward-looking activities.

A story: Harvest, Margate

Harvest was planted out from Holy Trinity Margate in September 1998. This was five years after a previous church was planted (St Philip’s, Northdown Park) in the classic mode, which had a new building and a geographical area to serve. Harvest had neither, but was conceived as a network, cellbased, Alpha-style plant. Careful brokering was needed. The idea was new. No one

knew how it would quite work and relate to neighbouring geographical parishes. Fifty-two adults formed the planting core. They met together in six cell groups across the Deanery of Thanet. The cells meet together as congregation on Sunday mornings in a primary school.

Alpha remains the key entry point for Harvest. Members are encouraged to build friendships that enable exploration of the journey to faith. Cells hold regular social events, in homes,

pubs or wherever. Seventy-one people have joined since the start of Harvest. Forty-six have moved away. Every cell has multiplied. Some have closed. Harvest is still learning!

can leaders be reproduced?

Cells, and especially those in areas of social deprivation, have to face the challenge of growing the next generation of leaders. Apprentice training can release gifts in people so that they can lead small groups with the support of a clear structure. The reproduction of quality leadership is a potential Achilles heel for cell. There is, however, the possibility that a very different style of leader may evolve from this process. Too often the Church cannot find leaders because it will only accept leaders who work in a narrowly defined (middle class, articulate) way.

the claims

One of the claims worldwide is that the outward agenda of cells, together with a high internal level of intentional discipleship, is what enables cellbased churches to keep growing. By multiplying members and even more importantly creating more leaders through apprenticeship patterns, they claim the ability to avoid hitting a numerical plateau. A few cell churches in Asia have become the largest churches in the world. In the Church of England, perhaps the largest self-styled cell church, led by Clive Collier in Hazlemere, is 800 strong. Some of the largest Church of England churches, though not fully developed cell churches, are vigorously committed to small groups for both discipleship and making new contacts.

‘yes, but does it fit here?’

Can cell church really be made to fit with English culture? This question is relevant both to churches that make the transition to cell, and to fresh expressions of church. In particular, two cultural questions are asked. In south-east Asia a highly directive style of leadership is normal, with a robust focus on discipleship and evangelism. This style is rejected by some English commentators as a negative and unacceptable form of control.

In addition, cell church emphasizes that the ‘cell’ is the primary unit of church. The instincts of Western Christians are to see the congregation as the primary unit. This problem should not be underestimated. Even those in favour of cell argue that it is folly for a church to try to shift into cell thinking without long and painstaking efforts to ensure the existing congregation has understood the value change involved.

The shift to cell takes much preparation. Some parishes have begun along the path, but

then pulled back, either settling for some cell values or reverting to an earlier pattern of house groups for study and aspects of pastoral care.

so what?

Significant space has been given here to cell thinking and practice. The movement is clear that what it advocates is real church, with cell worship, community and mission, all infused by a Christocentric spirituality emphasizing discipleship. There is less clarity around issues of sacraments, ordained leadership and deeper connection to the wider Church beyond attending area celebrations.

The variety of contexts in which cell has already been shown to work is intriguing. That people have been able to vary the extent to which they adopt its structures widens the attraction. It is the case that, of all the fresh expressions that have been detected, this one has the highest rate

of adoption by the other expressions. Its flexibility and emphasis on core values rather than structural methods tells us that cell is a significant development.