The Starter’s Way: Leading New Contextual Christian Communities
Ed Olsworth-Peter and Dwight Zscheile (eds) The Starter’s Way: Leading New Contextual Christian Communities (New York: Church Publishing, 2025) xxx+189pp, £21.99
I instinctively want a ‘how to do it’ type book, and always know that is fairly pointless. Contexts are different. My abilities, skills and gifts, or more accurately the lack of them, are different to the author. What we actually need is reminders of the underlying principles that are key and I think this book does that very well. Its up to us to live these out in our differing situations.
This multi authored text from largely USA and British based practitioners has come up with a series of spiritual foundations, inwards qualities and outward practices that are key in pioneering and leading new and locally relevant churches. Writers include Michael Beck, always well worth reading and who directs Fresh Expressions of Church for the United Methodist Church, well known speakers such as Jonny Baker and even a former Cliff College student in my time there – Peterson Feital originally from Brazil who is today a very creative Church of England vicar in London.
What are they saying? The necessary spiritual foundations include being Jesus-centered, a life of prayer, a calling, bicultural identity and responsive obedience. The inward qualities are those of discerning, self-giving, playful, hospitable and resilient. Finally outward practices involve noticing, adapting, experimenting, co-creating and persisting.
Alison Boulton, a British Baptist, writes about the inward quality of resilience as ‘not about having a tough exterior’ but ‘honestly acknowledging … challenges and, with God’s love and upholding, journeying through them, emerging with greater wisdom that equips and empowers for the next challenge’ (p97). We need to learn more about being resilient. Each chapter concludes with five areas to consider and here Boulton succinctly outlines necessary practices to help build greater resilience.
Related to resilience is the outward practice of persistence considered by Peterson Feital. His chapter is quite autobiographical and documents the author’s struggle against ‘institutional racism, toxic masculinity and cynicism’ but how ‘out of this came the birth pains to grow the church in a different way’ (p153). ‘Resilience is not simply the ability to bounce back through sheer willpower; it is the scaffolding that enables you to keep going’ (p154). In Feital’s five things to consider he includes knowing what we are passionate about to let this drive our persistence, and to never stop having fun.
Our Methodist Michael Beck recognises the current reality where ‘churches are closing their doors and clergy are leaving their ministries in droves due to burnout, compassion fatigue, a changing cultural landscape, and a structural mismatch in terms of denominational organisation’ (p162). But he is full of optimism and hope, as the church can offer community that a lonely world is longing for. Beck summarises the book as follow, ‘the fifteen principles outlined form an ecosystem where each element supports and strengthens the others, and as they do we will see communal life in Jesus grow and flourish in places where it wasn’t before’ (p172).
Perhaps the final challenge here is where we started – recognising we don’t need ‘how to do it’ material, but a deepening understanding on how we live as missional disciples, and part of that life is a focus on developing new churches and on intentionally growing our existing congregations.
Rev Dr Stephen Skuce
Superintendent for Growing Churches