Growing in God in the Countryside was a project in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich begun in 2019 with two workstreams. With a focus on mission in a rural context, it sought to develop a community of small ecclesial groups and of fresh expressions of Church known as the Lightwave Community, as well as acting as a catalyst for cultural transformation in rural mission across the diocese.
The project was most successful in the first of these two aims, while the second aim remains largely unexplored and unevidenced in this report. A variety of factors contributed to a division between these two aims, and this report focuses primarily on the outcomes and learning from the first aim, while also reflecting on what can be learned with regards to the challenges encountered by the second.
The report also includes six short summaries of different small groups and fresh expressions of Church that have emerged through the Lightwave Community, which serve to illustrate the breadth and variety of outcomes across the project in different types of rurality.
The project has enabled the release and flourishing of a considerable number of individuals and groups to explore and experiment with new ways of being Church and of making disciples in the rural context. Although this has not been without its difficulties, the overall impact is positive. The report notes that Lightwave was helpful in supporting local leaders:
… who want to develop something outside of traditional Sunday morning services - especially worship that suits different learning styles or that meets outdoors. The discipleship pathway model gave local leaders confidence to create fuzzy-edged gatherings for newcomers to explore faith without undue pressure.
The project was most effective where it supported the release of local resources and pioneers who already existed or were latent within the diocese, rather than making external appointments to new pioneering posts. A diocesan-wide Bishop’s Mission Order (BMO) provided an effective support infrastructure for new groups, without overburdening existing PCCs. The BMO consists of a dispersed missional community with its own charitable status, alongside benefices and, like them, under the bishop. However, this development of a parallel structure was not without its opponents, and the future relationship between the two is currently being discerned.
The challenge of ‘embedding’ this new structure into the existing ones is a priority, albeit doing so in a way that doesn’t stifle the creative impulses and energies that have been released through the project. The Lightwave brand, family and movement are valuable to members and advocates, and something would be lost if it were not to continue. Effective means must be developed to allow the old and new structures and their members to build relationships and to learn from one another. The language of mixed ecology is only worthwhile where all the different parts of the ecosystem recognise their need for one another and hold one another in mutual esteem.
As one of the first diocese-wide BMOs (Bishop’s Mission Order) in the Church of England, and with a distinct and positive focus on the challenges of rural mission, this project has much to offer other dioceses in terms of learning about the practice of mission in similar contexts.
