By Sally Carter and Martin Stewart, interim co-convenors of New Thing. “ New Thing” is a group formed after Assembly 2006 and is an attempt to find new ways of being Church together. Its name comes from Isaiah 42:9 – “ See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”
Following the leadership standards decision of GA06, people holding a wide range of views expressed disquiet over where the Church has found itself after this adversarial and legalistic debate. We believe that there has to be a better way of handling our differences when the matters before us are not of the substance of the faith.
The primary aim of “New Thing” is not to set up a lobby group to overthrow the decision, as we believe this perpetuates the adversarial way in which our debates have been conducted. Rather we would like to create a space where we can learn how to be together in ways that are respectful and enlivening rather than battering and divisive. Through such processes we hope to discover ways of being Church that enable us to stand together in Christ.
From early beginnings in email exchanges, a small group met to give some shape to our hopes. During a prayerful day together, we explored the shape of this New Thing. We are inspired by stories of people welcoming and talking with each other across division and labels. We are excited and challenged by the thought of living out a radical Biblical hospitality where we no longer see people with different viewpoints as enemies or opponents. We don’t anticipate that this way of talking together will be easy – in fact we have already found that it isn’t – but we believe that it is the way the Church of Jesus Christ is called to be!
We have some basic beliefs about what would be needed to discover this new territory. Openness; a letting go of fixed agendas; good, dynamic theology; a commitment to robust engagement with a purpose of transformation rather than persuasion, exploration rather than polarisation. Out of that first meeting, a provisional statement evolved that expresses something of our hope:
Accustomed as we have become to adversarial ways of engaging with one another, it would be easy for people to feel that New Thing was a bland cop-out with a diluted, inoffensive version of the gospel. But we hope that through this New Thing we may discover together far-reaching implications of the Gospel that could re-shape our church almost as radically as Peter’s vision in Acts 10 shaped the early Church in Jerusalem.
You can be involved in this adventure by: