New Places for New People
Earlier this year, 450 pastors and leaders from across the United States experienced the first United Methodist Fresh Expressions National Gathering in Charlotte, NC. The purpose of this gathering was to help “cultivate communities of love and grace for people neglected by the church [and] to be the church with new people, in new places, and in new ways.”
The Fresh Expressions movement originated in the Anglican Church in England and has its roots in early Methodism. The contemporary Methodist Church in Great Britain has also embraced and expanded on the practices of the Fresh Expression movement to enhance their vision for co-creating new places for new people to be disciples of Jesus Christ. The Methodist Church in Great Britain “sees starting New Places for New People in every circuit as a vital part of responding to the gospel of God’s love, revealed to us in Christ. [The] aim is to see new people becoming disciples of Jesus and forming new Christian communities in rural, estate, urban, suburban, and village contexts.” New Places for New People projects “are focused on forming new Christian communities for those not yet part of an existing church.” For the British Methodist Church, this includes the Fresh Expression movement, as well as focuses on new towns and housing developments, students and young adults, families with children, replanting in existing places, and developing Church at the Margins of communities.
One of the shared core values of both the British Methodist Church and the Fresh Expressions movement is to develop a “mixed ecology” of church which includes caring for people in our inherited churches, while also leveraging resources to develop and strengthen new faith communities.
In this newsletter, Rev. Edgar de Jesus will share some of his experience in the local church related to experimenting with Fresh Expressions of Church. Edgar will also share his hopes for how the Fresh Expression movement will help strengthen the witness of the United Methodist Church in the United States and here in North Carolina. Rev. Julia Hayes will share how Wrightsville United Methodist Church is experimenting with a “mixed ecology” of church, and particularly how the merger between Wrightsville UMC and Oleander UMC is co-creating new places for new people in the greater Wrightsville Beach community.