If you are exploring whether to do Greenhouse, or are just beginning the journey, you may see or hear several unfamiliar terms used in conversations or in the resources.
This glossary helps to explain what these terms mean, and includes some other terms that are used in wider fresh expressions and pioneering spheres too.
Terms specific to Greenhouse
Greenhouse is a Church of England project which aims to help missionally-minded Christians, both lay and ordained, to grow new church congregations of all kinds where they don’t yet exist, with the intention of sharing the Good News in the places where they live, work and have friends.
These new kinds of Churches, which can begin and grow in almost any context, can often be termed as fresh expressions of church, or ‘contextual’ church. They help faith journeys to begin among people who don’t yet know Jesus and are generally unfamiliar with Church life.
To help Christians who feel called to this kind of ministry, Greenhouse offers a learning community framework over a two year period, though it can be for longer. These learning communities cultivate the right kind of space for teams of Christians to come together and have great conversations about how to turn their ideas into an action plan.
This person is the key contact in the area where a Greenhouse is run. This may be a diocese, a deanery or another geographical area. They draw together a Greenhouse Facilitation Team of three or four ‘Facilitators’. This team might include the Enabler, but not necessarily.
Greenhouse Facilitators work together to help make Greenhouse happen. Responsibilities include:
This is a Team based at a local level, perhaps in a parish or in another specific context, and which is working on the ground to build a new Christian community / fresh expression of church.
Facilitators will need to find these Teams and recruit them into the Greenhouse. They can be lay or ordained. Anyone with the seed of an idea for mission can join in.
A meeting of all the Greenhouse Teams with a defined area, (such as a diocese). They get together to share ideas, encourage one another and make plans to help turn their missional ideas into an action plan. This way of gathering together with the intention of learning from others is sometimes referred to as a ‘learning community’.
This is a stage-by-stage pattern that has been identified in successful projects which grow new Christian communities. In Greenhouse all Teams are encouraged to keep moving around this journey. Gatherings and the Godsend resource support this process. The journey has six stages, which are: listening, loving service, building community, sharing faith, becoming church and repeating the process.
This is the main resource to support Greenhouse Teams in between Gatherings. Learn more about it on the dedicated website, or in this training video (designed for Greenhouse Facilitators). Godsend explores how to move around the Missional Journey in simple, practical ways.
General terms used in pioneering and fresh expressions ministry
A new form of Church that emerges within contemporary culture and engages primarily with those who don’t ‘go to Church.’ Watch Mike Harrison, Bishop of Dunwich, explaining more in this video.
A New Christian community that is started or grows outside of the existing parish structure and patterns of worship. Time honoured parish ministry and new worshipping communities bring structure, ideas and life to one another. They enhance each other, rather than pulling in opposite directions.
A Church plant is an initiative that begins from a Parish or a Diocese with the intention of forming a New Christian community. They typically begin with a group coming from a mother Church or Diocese holding invitational services/events in a community in which there is currently no Church.
A Resource Church is a particular category of parish who, in partnership with the Diocese seeks to resource mission within a region. These parishes have an outlook beyond themselves, seeking (where appropriate and invited) to share programs, expertise, events, and facilities.
Pioneer ministry is about breaking new ground, forming church in fresh and probably unconventional ways, working with people on the edge of church and beyond.
Pioneers are people called by God, who are the first to see and creatively respond to the Holy Spirit’s initiatives with those outside the church; gathering others around them as they seek to establish new contextual Christian communities. Pioneers connect with people outside of Church, creating new ways of doing Church together in their community.
This is a term first officially used at the Church of England’s General Synod in 2020 by Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, who then stated he believed the Church was being called by God into ‘profligate diversity’.
What he meant by that was that ‘church’ can take many forms, from traditional and time-honoured parish churches to those that look very different. Difference may be seen in the type of buildings they meet in (or they may meet online, or in the open air), and in the style of worship, the interests, demographics, ages and backgrounds of those who gather in them. This is also sometimes termed as ‘contextual’ churches, where the church reflects its context closely.
Each one is unique and has its place in the rich diversity, or ‘ecology’, of the whole Church of God. All are equally valued and important.
The Church of England feels that God is calling the whole Church to become a place where ‘mixed ecology as the norm’. ‘A Church where mixed ecology is the norm’ is one of the key strategic goals in the Vision for the Church of England in the 2020’s.
Archbishop Stephen Cottrell summed up the Vision by saying: “The overriding aim for the future is that any worshipping member of the Church of England, when asked by their friend where they could go to explore their faith, would be able to recommend an expression of Church locally that would really suit them.”