Church renewal in Britain

My friend Connie den Bok, a minister in Toronto, put me onto some things that are happening in Britain through the Church of England and the Methodist Church. As we all know, church decline in Britain is way more advanced than in Canada (although I suspect we're closing the gap quickly) -- but there are some innovative things brewing there that we could learn from.

There's a website -- www.freshexpressions.org.uk -- which tells the stories of many new initiatives that are revitalizing the church among previously marginalized groups -- students, young families, persons with disabilities, children.

I'm going to encourage my own Council and leaders to start chewing on some of these ideas. Some have more merit than others, but they all seem to be organic, contextualized responses to the decline of traditional denominationally based Christianity in a once heavily Christianized culture.