This is interesting. In this post I listed why I’m happy to be a part of Newfrontiers and in the comments, my friend and fellow Newfrontiers elder Dave Matthias suggested a discussion of how should I put it, areas for development (IMHO)? – H being humble.

I think this is helpful because we need to be able to have an honest discussion and reflection. Mark Driscoll’s challenge to the movement at the summer shows we’re not afraid of hearing and responding to challenge. But an insiders view is different from an outsider. There are plenty of critiques against Newfrontiers – views on apostles, spiritual gifts, roles of men and women, baptism, missiology, ecclesiology etc… Well if I had too much of a problem with any of those things I’m probably ministering from the wrong place. On the whole I don’t so those things aren’t in my critique.

But I probably need to write a whole host of caveats and disclaimers. Whenever you offer a critique there’s often an inherent claim to be able to do better, and I’m not sure I could and I don’t want to be arrogant about this – heck I’m just a blogger. There’s also a personal preference element, I have some preferences but which may not be shared by the wider group. So I have to not throw a tantrum about it, grow up and get on with it. And of course, I could be wrong – won’t be the first time.

So here are my discussion starters in no order of importance:

1. Our conferences are a bit dull. I don’t mean boring, I mean the opposite of cutting edge. Dull not sharp. I’m probably in the minority on this one. The worship is great and some of the talks are excellent. But some of the seminars seem to be the same every year and tell us what we already know rather than stretch us in new ways.
2. Our response to culture is a bit sluggish. I’ve not heard much on our response to climate change, financial crisis, terror, technology, debt to name just a few. There are tonnes of issues that hit our culture not including arts, music, film. Even amongst our bloggers we don’t interact much with those sort of things. Reading Calvin and Edwards is great but if you can get them to interact with today. Even better.
3. We’re very middle class, quite old and mostly white. I don’t know if that’s true of the churches but it’s certainly true of the leaders and their wives. From my observation at their recent weekend conference I reckon less than 10 would have been under 30 and not nearly enough under 40. If we’re keeping up with the broader population as a national group you could argue that 8% of our people and our leaders should be non-white. I live in one of the least ethnically diverse places in the UK but it would be great if out of our cities real multi-cultural churches developed. We want that, we’re just not there yet (great post by Steve Tibbert on this very issue). As for the class thing, well it’s not just us is it, that’s Christianity in general. I think we probably need to do more work on how to make leaders from tradesmen and women who don’t have degrees or whatever. Jesus managed it, why can’t we?
4. Can we have some different styles of worship please? How about some gospel? Some blues, I don’t really mind as long as its not country and western. But it would be nice if we rediscovered the piano over the guitar, took our outstanding creativity in music into new genres.
5. Our response to theology is a bit defensive. There’s a time to hold ground against false ideas. That’s needed, that’s important, but if that’s all we do then we become theologically reactionary, conservative and outdated. There’s always a need to do theology in our generation, in changing times. As Bonhoeffer asked, ‘what does this mean for today?’ We can do creative theology that doesn’t simply respond to other people’s bad theology.

I think that’s me and the question I have to ask myself is how can I contribute? Can I offer something to my team, my company of believers that will help us in these areas, just as I am helped by so many others who are so much sharper and wiser than me in church leadership?