Books available from Urban Expression
Planting Churches by Stuart Murray
A practical guide for all those involved in planting churches. Explores the why, where, who, when, how and what of church planting.
Who can be involved in church planting? Where should we plant new churches? What kinds of churches? How do we go about this? What resources do we need? What are the pitfalls? And is church planting still relevant in an era of fresh expressions and emerging churches? Stuart Murray draws on thirty years experience as a practitioner, trainer and consultant to address these and many other questions. Planting Churches explains why church planting is crucial if we are to incarnate the gospel in a changing culture and guides practitioners through the whole process of planting a new church.
Stuart Murray, who has worked as an advisor on church planting for many years, discusses local and trans-local approaches to planting churches, training planters and building teams, the key role of research and preparation, diverse models of planting, the need for developing contextual, authentic and missional church plants, and the connections with the emerging church phenomena.
Post Christendom by Stuart Murray
What does it mean to be one of many minorities in a culture that the church no longer dominates? How do followers of Jesus engage in mission from the margins? What do we bring with us as precious resources from the fading Christendom era, and what do we lay down as baggage that will weigh us down on our journey into post-Christendom? It presents an overview of the Christendom system, examines the legacies this has left, and highlights the questions that the Christian community needs to consider in this period of cultural transition.
A Vast Minority: Church and mission in a plural culture by Stuart Murray
Christians are now members of a minority religious community in a plural society. How is this diminished status to be understood in a global and historical context and within the purposes of God?
What institutional changes are required if the Christian community is to operate with much more limited resources? What psychological and emotional adjustments are needed in communities that have a corporate memory of majority status, privilege and influence but now experience life as a minority? What hopes and expectations should be encouraged, and what strategies should be adopted?
Urban to the Core by Juliet Kilpin
The world is urban at its core – over half the world’s population live in cities and most of the global poverty resides there too. Urbanization affects all of us, whether we love in cities or not, and this impact will increase in the coming decades. For fifteen years Urban Expression has been motivating people to get up and move into inter-city neighborhoods to see what they can learn and what difference they can make. This book gets into the heads and hearts of our teams and unpacks the values that have inspired these missionaries to be urban to the core.
The Urban Church
Edited by Michael Eastman and Steve Latham
This text aims to equip the urban churches to live up to their potential, and face the challenges, of their particular environment. Issues at the core of successful church life, such as worship, scripture, faith-sharing, peace-making, are all addressed.
Each chapter contains a number of essays from contributors from around the country including London, Birmingham, Belfast, Glasgow, Hull and Liverpool. They represent different Christian traditions: Baptist, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Pentecostal and Presbyterian.
The New Anabaptists
New churches and communities with Anabaptist convictions and practices are
being planted in the UK. Supported by the Anabaptist Mennonite Network, the
Incarnate project is encouraging pioneers to establish fresh expressions of the
gospel in different contexts and neighbourhoods. It is early days, but we hope
what is planted will offer opportunities to test out the relevance of Anabaptism to
mission in our post-Christendom society.
This new book explores twelve ‘common practices’ that might characterise these
emerging communities.
In 2010, The Naked Anabaptist was published. Written by Stuart Murray, this was
the fruit of conversations with many others about how the Anabaptist vision is
inspiring and challenging followers of Jesus today. It expounded the seven ‘core
convictions’ that comprise the centre of gravity of the Anabaptist movement in the
UK. It sold very well, was translated into several other languages and a revised
edition was published in 2020.
The New Anabaptists is a sequel. It examines the kinds of practices that flow
from the core convictions and are likely to feature in churches, communities and
initiatives that are inspired by the Anabaptist vision. These practices include
Jesus-centred biblical interpretation, peace witness, truth telling, multi-voiced
worship and much else. The book reflects on the significance of these practices
in a post-Christendom and post-colonial environment.
The book includes three chapters by Stuart’s colleagues who reflect on initiatives
they are involved in, all of which have been inspired by the Anabaptist vision.
Juliet Kilpin introduces Peaceful Borders, working with refugees and asylum
seekers. Karen Sethuraman introduces SoulSpace Belfast, an emerging peace
and reconciliation community. Alexandra Ellish introduces the Incarnate project.
The book is an invitation to a conversation. A resource for emerging Anabaptist-
oriented communities. An exploration of how the Anabaptist vision might be embodied in missional communities in 21st-century Britain.