Resource: The Mission Shaped Church

In 2004 a working group in the Church of England chaired by Bishop Graham Cray published a report called The Mission Shaped Church which outlined the issues relating to mission and church in the 21st Century:

• The report describes in detail the changes in society. It describes twelve different kinds of fresh expressions of church. It challenges the whole church to turn outwards in mission because of God’s call to be mission-shaped.
• The report encourages the churches to shift resources towards encouraging fresh expressions of church alongside the parish system. It makes a number of recommendations to enable this to happen.
• The report was unanimously welcomed and commended by the General Synod in February, 2004 (the General Synod is the Church of England’s parliament). 14,000 copies of the report have been sold. It is now being widely studied across the churches and overseas.

This report can be bought or ordered at any Christian bookshop and is a foundational read as we look to mission. However, the fresh expressions website has a pdf copy you can download for free. Click here for The Mission Shaped Church.

~ by Simon on August 11, 2007.