Why is this important

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Why is this important for pioneers?
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Are fresh expressions proper church?

• what is at the heart of church?
• what must always happen in church?
• what can change?
• how can we preserve our identity?

SHARE website
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Ecclesiology

• Distill the essentials of the church
• Describe the richness of the church
• Discern and define the presence of
• the church
• Derive the practices of the church
• Develop the maturity of the church

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• Church as spiritual society
• All Christians are one in Christ
• Church as repository of true teaching
• It gathers the faithful together

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OHCA
Enduring Marks
Four linked Journeys
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Organised Organic One
Diverse Holy
Charismatic Catholic
Local Apostolic Prophetic
Howard Synder , Decoding the Church. Baker Books
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The great confession and the great
identification constitute biblical
ecclesiology. The church is born out of the
koinonia of the Spirit, the identification with
Christ. Identification with Christ through the
Spirit, issues in the great community and the
great commission.
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Five practices of the church

• Dialoguing with- binding and loosing
• Sharing with- Eucharist meal
• Transcending prejudice- baptism
• Valuing one another- multiplicity of gifts
• Listening to one another- open meeting

John Howard Yoder, Body Politics. Herald Press
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• Unity in freedom
• Catholic in partianship
• Holiness in poverty
• Apostolic in suffering

J. Moltmann, The Church in the power of the
Spirit. SCM 1977
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The missionary church will not aim to
spread its own form. It is not a subsidiary of
the old one. It is a new church of the same
apostolate. It preserves its unity when it
fulfils Christs apostolic mission to its own
historical situation.
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Three dimensions
Open before God before
humankind before the future
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the theological doctrine of the church cannot
be simply expressed in abstract terms about the
churches timeless nature. It will have to provide
points of departure for reforming the church,
for giving it a more authentic form.
Faithfulness and the fresh start are not
antitheses in the history of the Spirit.
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And so from the start , where Jesus is, there
is the church, the church is the assembly of
those who are finding their relationships, their
lives transformed by the presence of Jesus.
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Anglican ecclesiology

• It did not start in 16th Century
• There is no definitive Anglicanism
• It is global

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The Church of England is part of the One,
Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church worshipping
the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It professes the faith uniquely revealed in the
Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic
creeds, which faith the Church is called to
proclaim afresh in every generation, lead by the
Holy Spirit, it has borne witness to the
Christian truth in its historic formularies, the
39 Articles, the BCP and the Ordinals of Bishops,
Priests and Deacons. Preface to the Declaration
of Assent . Canon C15
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This seems to be a mandate for some
reinterpretation, re-expression and making the
faith relevant, provided that this
exercise, imperative as it is, remains faithful
to the Scriptures and the creeds. one that
is full of vitality and manoeuvrability and which
has the flexibility to make contact with the
contexts of our pluralistic world. Paul Avis,
The Identity of Anglicanism, TT Clark,2007
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The Church has to worship incarnationally, separ
ated from the world by the offence of the cross,
not by any alien character of the
culture. Lambeth Conference 1988
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• 3 key marks
• catholic and reformed
• episcopal oversight
• baptism and eucharist