Fresh Expressions in Liverpool: lay led, midweek, no church building, and growing.

In a timely response to my post yesterday on Fresh Expressions in the CofE, the Sheffield Centre have published a study on Fresh Expressions in Liverpool Diocese.

Liverpool are one of the 2 Dioceses quoted by a CofE paper this week as having 10% or more of their members belonging to a 'fresh expression' of church. The other is Canterbury. As Laurence commented yesterday, the study shows up a certain flakiness in the reported figures - around 40% of things reported to be 'Fresh Expressions' weren't. What's remarkable is that, with 202 parishes and 78 confirmed new churches, around 1/3 of Liverpools churches are church plants. They only equate to 10% of the Diocesan membership, but that's growing: these churches were planted with a combined total of 570 people, and now have a membership of over 2800.

Other interesting stats: 60% don't use a church building, only 29% meet on a Sunday, and a large proportion are lay-led, rather than clergy led. It's a very encouraging report to read, and hopefully the kind of thing that will have the bishops of the CofE sidling up to James Jones over the weekend and asking how they went about it.