Dec 2009: Jenny Andison

Jenny Andison. Photo: Diocese of TorontoJenny Andison is the Archbishop’s Officer for Mission for the Diocese of Toronto. She is an ordained priest still working half-time at St Paul’s Bloor Street. Alex Newman spoke to her about what it means to be a missional church.

TAP: Why did the Diocese create this job?
JA:The idea has been in the air for awhile, getting its start in England with the Fresh Expressions
movement that’s supported by Archbishop Rowan Williams. And in 2007 here in Toronto, the Bishop [Colin Johnson] co-sponsored the Vital Church Planting Conference with Wycliffe College, and then a church planting/Fresh Expressions working group was developed, chaired by Duke Vipperman. But the diocese understands that in order to support a missional direction for one of North America’s largest dioceses they needed to put some resources behind it.

TAP: And what is your role?
JA: Essentially, I’m an advocate for missional ways of being church around the Diocese of Toronto. I work alongside parishes in helping them understand what it means to be shaped for mission in their context. I’m also developing a five-part Lenten series called Mission Possible that will be available. For me, it was also important that I be a practitioner. The fact that St Paul’s -- where I serve half-time -- is undergoing transition helps to lend credibility, because I’m on the learning curve too.

TAP: OK, so what exactly is missional?
JA: Well, let’s start with what it’s not: attractional – which is a church that operates on the assumption that some people will still come to church as long as you make it an attractive experience. While we can still grow through attractional churches because people still walk through the door and services still need to attract, this can’t be our only long-term strategy, because as Christendom fades every year, fewer people are walking through those doors. Missional, on the other hand, can be scarier -- at least for me! It operates on the assumption that many people will not be naturally attracted to church. It strives to create a fresh expression of church for the changing culture and is established primarily for people who are not yet members of any church. It will come into being through principles of listening, service, incarnational mission and the making of disciples.

This doesn’t mean shutting down the inherited church -- not at all. Archbishop Rowan Williams has a phrase: “mixed economy church,” where missional churches and “inherited” churches -- the churches that most of us belong to -- exist alongside each other and mutually support one another. In fact, the aim would be to make the inherited churches as healthy as possible, because they’re the parishes that can support Fresh Expressions as equal partners.

TAP: Does this mean the inherited church has failed somehow?
JA: No – this is not about denigrating the inherited church, which is filled with faithful people, and more about running to catch up to what God is doing outside our church buildings.

TAP: What do you mean by God working outside?
JA: We have to assume that God is doing things in our local community, because of the nature of the God we believe in. And if we follow the call to be divine detectives -- listening carefully to what people are saying in order to discover the underlying God-question at the heart of it – then we can be effective at being incarnational, the face of the risen Christ in that community. It requires also discovering where the beating heart of the community is – the local school, hockey rink, Tim Horton’s – and seeing with fresh eyes, praying for God to show us the opportunities that He is preparing for us there.

TAP: What should a church do to start being missional?
JA: It tends to start with a handful of people in a living room, gathering in prayer and searching Scripture looking for God to reveal where to begin. It may look small for a long time and may not look church-shaped exactly, but if we reassess what we qualify as success then we can be patient. At times we’ve elevated big numbers over deep discipleship. The Church needs to spend time in the community in order to see God’s fingerprints on people’s lives. Form small teams – five or six – walk and pray the neighbourhood, sit in coffee shops, chat with people. Ask questions, like Jesus did. Spend six months in Tim Horton’s asking people questions about their lives and you’ll find out a lot.

TAP: What should a church feel as it becomes a disciple?
JA: It will probably hurt. You often only know you’re growing in faith when it begins to stretch you. For growing churches, you may have to set some things aside that God is no longer using to extend His kingdom. But there’s nothing more invigorating than seeing someone encounter Christ, and when a church starts seeing adult baptisms, that’s a very sweet moment.

TAP: What strengths does the Anglican Church have to make these changes?
JA: This isn’t so different from how we’ve done things in the past. The Anglican Church has a rich history of global and local mission. We haven’t always been perfect or done things well, but we have the experience of going to different cultures and sharing Christ crucified and risen. But we haven’t done that in our local communities often for a generation or two, so to some extent we’ve lost our ability and confidence to speak effectively locally. And the culture is changing so rapidly we’re struggling to catch up. Although we need to hold on to credal statements, it’s essential to understand this culture and speak its language. Archbishop Cranmer was so keen for us to speak “in a language understandeth of the people.”

TAP: At a workshop you gave you defined ‘disciple’ as someone who must first repent, be faithful, and then journey forth.
JA: The word repentance carries a lot of baggage outside the Church. But it’s a word that Christians know -- going through the Cross leads to new life – and one of the first steps in being missional is to realize where we have at times failed as Christian communities, when we have not been the face of Christ to our neighbourhoods. We’re all guilty of this, I know I am. In any period of revival, the Church has gone through self-examination and repentance. To some degree, the difficulties that the church is facing now, is a time of purifying and God pruning us, pruning for growth -- God wants more people to know Christ in Toronto.

TAP: Is this movement partially due to dwindling church attendance?
JA: Well at its heart it is not about propping up the institution, but about being faithful to how God operates in people’s lives and following God’s lead. God is preparing the way and we are being called to follow.

For more information, see the Fresh Expressions Canada website: www.freshexpressions.ca. Or email Jenny Andison jandison@toronto.anglican.ca.