Category: What is with the Clownfish – an intro

If you look carefully you will see that the clownfish is at home in the tentacles of the sea anemone. They live in a mutual relationship; in symbiosis. The clownfish protects the sea anemone by feeding off predators and emitting a high-pitched sound. Meanwhile, the sea anemone protects the clownfish as it is immune to its stinging tentacles. There is something in this relationship which reflects the balance of independence and mutuality that must be present in churches and fresh expressions (as new forms of church) in order for them to mature. This thinking can be extrapolated to include New Places, New people projects that sit within the Methodist Church’s God for All strategy.

One has to be honest and say that there is a point where the beautiful image breaks down – and that is in that what the clownfish does not need (and excretes away), nourishes the anemone! Nevertheless, this remains a powerful example.  As my former presbyter colleague, Rev Gareth Baron put it at a circuit meeting, we need to learn to ‘love our anemone’. (Let’s face it, everyone loves Nemo, but whilst many people are attracted to fresh expressions, the wider church has a crucial role.)

Rev Dr Rowan Williams, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, once coined the phrase, ‘a mixed economy of Church.’ At the time he was responding to tensions within the Church of England between what had been inherited and what was emerging. His response was to argue that leaders should strive to develop a mutuality between the two. Whilst fresh expressions –  or any kind of venture involving new Christians – have much to learn from the inherited church, the inherited church would do well to heed the lessons that originate from the honest appraisal of those who view the church with fresh eyes. This extends to other areas of Church mission and matters of policy in general where questions of orthopraxis grate so clearly against our orthodoxy. Herein, those of us who should be wiser need to guard against a degree of paternal arrogance that assumes that we know best. As repeated 3Generate Manifestos produced by the Methodist Church so clearly highlight, whilst we recognise that we have a responsibility to nurture our children and young people, we must not overlook that God can and is already speaking prophetically through them. The danger is, of course, that rather than being part of the body, children and youth are seen as an addition that we attend to occasionally, where we assume that our ‘adult’ way of seeing the world is always right.

Rev Graham Horsley, former Churchplanting Secretary of the Methodist Church and latterly Fresh Expressions Missioner has suggested the phrase ‘mixed ecology of church’ might be more useful. It speaks of a living relationship and encourages us to understand that this is characterised by dependence on each other, where our very existence is in the balance, rather than a one-sided relationship, where what is new-born exists at the good intention and well-meaning of what is mature and growing older.

The literature survey that I carried out for my doctoral research shows that whilst the wider church needs to reflect on its attitudes towards fresh expression, some fresh expressions leaders – and beyond that, commentators within the emerging church movement, seem to favour the idea of jettisoning the tradition of the Church, and starting anew from ground zero. Significantly, one of the points I made in my thesis about Fresh Expressions is that it risked becoming a victim of its own rhetoric. On the one hand, Fresh Expressions makes the case that the inherited Church is failing in its mission, and therefore there is a need for a novel approach. On the other, it has to convince people to remain within the institution. If you are a clownfish you need the anemone – and vice-versa.