Luke Edwards is a pioneering leader, helping form a fresh expression of church named King Street Church (KSC) in Boone, NC. He was recently featured in his local newspaper describing what makes their approach to church different.
Below is an excerpt from his blog describing what a fresh expression is, and why it is so important in his context. You can read the whole post here.
A mentor early on in my call to minis
try told me, “A church that focuses inwardly is doomed to fail.” These words have stuck with me and I’ve devoted my life to this idea. Throughout my seven years in ministry I’ve experimented with various models of Christian witness. As a worship leader, I helped create a service that would attract new people into our church. As a missions director, I created programs that would give our church opportunities to serve our neighbors. It was not until I started my first “fresh expression” of church that I felt like we were finally on to something…
My experience in starting fresh expressions has shown me that there is a third way. By forming Christian communities that are open and appealing to people of various beliefs and disbeliefs, we have created a space where people outside of the church can encounter the Gospel on a weekly basis. There is no deception, no ulterior motives, just a community of people who care deeply about each other, gathered around scripture, given the freedom to wrestle with the intersection of faith, life, and the world.
People outside of the church are longing for safe places to talk about things that matter to them. They are longing for a community that will accept them for exactly who they are. One young woman told me she liked the “ability to be vulnerable with relative strangers.” However, people outside of the church refuse to be deceived, they refuse to be someone’s project, and they refuse to be forced into a belief that they are not ready to claim. It is the role of fresh expressions to create a community where the slow process of new faith can take place.
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