A gathering intended to celebrate United Methodist groups that convene in non-traditional settings touted a mime trainer/community pastor, as well as a group that meets in a tattoo parlor, among the programs promoted at the Fresh Expressions United Methodist National Gathering February 26-28 in Ocala, Florida.
According to a United Methodist News Service (UMNS) write-up, “The graceful arc of a mime in motion or the sting of a tattooist’s needle can start people on the road to redemption just as surely as attending church.”
Really?
The United Methodist Church (UMC) has been enthusiastic about partnering with the Fresh Expressions movement. And this would seem innocuous, but the issue with the UMC’s presentation of the partnership is its lack of interest in actually sharing the Gospel.
As UMNS reported on The Well Community Pastor Taeron Flemming’s mime program, “Flemming said he has worked with hundreds of students, and about 20 have gone on to become mimes themselves. But will those mimes train others so that seven generations down the road there is a large contingent of Christian mimes?”
“Seven generations” was the theme of this year’s conference, derived from the Iroquois Confederacy. As Great Plains Conference Bishop David Wilson explained, “Make your decisions on behalf of the next seven generations coming so that they may enjoy what you have today.” This idea seemed incongruous with the conference’s emphasis on the lack of permanence in ministries, particularly church buildings.
In answer to the question about Christian mimes, the article went on to answer, “Maybe yes and maybe no. In a way, it doesn’t matter. The Fresh Expressions ethos is to continually innovate and adapt to the times, whatever the destiny of any single ministry.”
However, making Christians should, in fact, matter to the Church; that is precisely what the Church is tasked with.
In the past, the Baltimore-Washington Conference has bragged of its Fresh Expression projects, “Rather than prayers, one starts with a ‘moment of reflection’; worship music is replaced with secular songs that carry special meaning for listeners; Bible study is transformed into open-ended questions that lead to deep discussion.” How then does it help them know Christ?
The Fresh Expressions Movement claims to meet in non-traditional settings because, as the Baltimore-Washington Conference explained, “The Fresh Expressions movement is not about growing the inherited church. In fact, they are designed to reach people who might never feel comfortable with traditional religion.”
There is only one church, the mystical body of Christ, and in our daily lives, Christians participate in it through local bodies. It is the church that the Saints loved, and for which the last 2,000 years of martyrs gave their lives in imitation of Christ, whose sacrifice made the church our inheritance in the first place. We are to “go out” in order to bring people in.
It is defeatist to act as though the gospel cannot overcome division; that precisely is what it does, according to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, unity in the body is the prayer of Christ.
The write-up of this year’s conference also dismissed the focus on long-term ministries.
“A sanctuary becomes a daycare becomes a retirement center, is torn down and becomes green space,” the Rev. Matt Rawle told UMNS. “Building lasting ministries is good, but being determined that they last forever may be overreaching… We like to plant and build and take up space with the bold assumption that it will be here forever. The sadness in that I see in my own kids because I have crowded them out from their own footprint.”
This is the opposite of the way congregations for centuries viewed their churches and ministries. It wasn’t that they were averse to change when needed, but they built structures and ministries that they thought would last because they anticipated the body of Christ would continue to be built and serve Christ within them.
When I was a United Methodist, we were continually told something similar: “the building is just a building” and “we have to go out.” “Go out” was never defined, but it was made clear that it was anywhere but the church. This sentiment always felt like the trite platitudes of a denomination that knew its membership was rapidly declining. After all, what’s the point of going out if not to bring people into the body of Christ, and that body has to meet in order to live in community. And the community that meets in church, that teaches the scripture, that is intergenerational, that serves one another, and the community together is far more intimate than fleeting community building programs.
One example that exemplifies the issue with Fresh Expressions comes from the Baltimore-Washington Conference in 2023, “One older man transformed his weekly practice of going to the dog park into a spiritual community. The first question that ignited this Faith Expression was, “If God was a dog, what kind of dog would God be?”
By contrast, my church recently dedicated its organ. We intentionally restored the historic organ that had been bought with the hard-earned wages of the immigrants, who, over a century ago, moved to the area and believed a church was the best use of their money. It was carefully restored by the donations of the current congregants, not just for our use, but as we were told at the rededication, for the use of proclaiming the gospel to our children and children’s children and so on. That is why the first hymn played on the restored organ was “O God Our Help in Ages Past.” By the grace of God, it was a testament to the permanence of the Church.
The UMC’s membership vows require the member, “to uphold the local congregation with one’s prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.” Those are made to the “inherited church,” and they are in the service of something fruitful and permanent.
More from IRD:
‘Inclusive’ Methodism and Real Inclusion
Mainline Protestantism’s Fall?
Comment by Tim Mc on March 13, 2026 at 9:31 am
“The Fresh Expressions movement is not about growing the inherited church.”
Describes the UMC perfectly.
Comment by Corvus Corax on March 13, 2026 at 11:49 am
Liberals like to sit around and reenact the kindergarten activity “Show & Tell” and then call it spirituality.
Comment by Gary Bebop on March 13, 2026 at 12:48 pm
Sarah Stewart shows us the unraveling of church coherence. This is not limited to United Methodism, even though we may be fascinated and horrified to see it advance inside the UMC. Incoherence is showing up inside historic evangelical denominations as well. But one hopeful signal amid the lawlessness of our times is the revival of desire for scriptural holiness and godly order. Weary of headline provocation, people are turning to Bible reading (seeking the Spirit’s intercession) with vigor.
Comment by Cal on March 14, 2026 at 12:32 pm
Funny… or maybe not. The mainline church degenerating into farce.
Comment by Qohelet on March 14, 2026 at 5:58 pm
Yep. Let’s mock the mainline whilst right wing Christians are bombing children and trying to bring about the end times by slaughtering innocent civilians.
I’ll take a few mimes and tattoo artists any day over Christian Nationalists.
Comment by Different Steve on March 14, 2026 at 6:52 pm
The last comment (by Qohelet) is rhetorically strong but logically weak. Here are the main issues.
1. It commits whataboutism
Instead of responding to the article’s argument about Fresh Expressions and church mission, the commenter redirects to political violence:
“right wing Christians are bombing children…”
That shifts the discussion from church practice and theology to global politics. Even if the claim were true, it doesn’t answer the article’s central question:
Should church ministries focus explicitly on making disciples and proclaiming the Gospel?
So the argument avoids the topic rather than engaging it.
2. It uses overgeneralization
The comment lumps together a huge and diverse group:
“right wing Christians”
That category includes millions of people with widely different views and behaviors. The commenter implicitly associates them with violence and extremism, which is a classic guilt-by-association fallacy.
3. It creates a false dichotomy
The statement implies a choice:
Either tolerate unconventional ministries like mimes and tattoo-parlor gatherings
Or support violent “Christian Nationalists”
But those are not the only options. One could:
Criticize Fresh Expressions theologically
Reject Christian nationalism and political violence
Still support traditional church structures
The comment collapses the debate into two extremes.
4. It substitutes moral outrage for argument
The comment is emotionally charged:
“bombing children… slaughtering innocent civilians”
Emotion can be persuasive, but here it replaces reasoning. The commenter never actually addresses the article’s criticisms, such as:
whether evangelism is being minimized
whether church community should be permanent or temporary
whether innovation risks losing doctrinal clarity
5. It reframes the debate from theology → politics
The article is about:
evangelism
church structure
the purpose of ministry
The commenter reframes it as a political conflict between liberals and right-wing Christians. That changes the entire frame of the discussion.
In short:
The comment is emotionally forceful but intellectually thin. It relies on whataboutism, overgeneralization, and false dichotomy, and it doesn’t directly engage the article’s theological argument.
Comment by Wilson R. on March 17, 2026 at 10:42 am
The worst part about this piece is the implication that a “mime ministry” is some major new direction for the UMC–something that you might expect to see in most any large UMC congregation. And it’s not.
But the headline, “Methodist Mime Time,” is designed to draw you in and spark outrage with the implication that the UMC is abandoning the Gospel and Wesleyanism. I’ve never heard of any churches using a mime ministry. I’d never heard of Fresh Expressions. I looked it up after reading this.
I didn’t see a single thing that I found theologically problematic. There were dozens of references to Wesleyanism and nothing about mimes. I had to use the search feature to find 3 passing references in their archives. The writer here was either lazy or deliberately disingenuous.
It sounds like the only form of worship she finds acceptable is in a traditional church space–in other words, a space very much like the downtown UMC congregation I’m part of now. She disparages the call to “get out of the building” as squishy and trite.
But the reality for millions today is that traditional church spaces are uncomfortable. For a variety of reasons that are too long to detail here, they won’t come there. So after the main worship service, our church has a more informal gathering (in fact, it’s called The Gathering) that is billed as “church for people who don’t like church.” They meet in office spaces or coffee shops. There’s music with an acoustic guitar and even communion. the pastor gives a five-minute version of his sermon, and there are intimate conversations in small groups about the message and the scriptural text. I often attend both our traditional service and then go wherever The Gathering is meeting. I find it a deeply spiritual experience, and most of the people who attend (all ages) would not come to a formal service in a sanctuary. It is thus a valuable ministry.
From what I can tell from their website, that is the kind of thing Fresh Expressions is promoting–different ways to reach people. I get nothing from praise music, but others do, so I’m OK with it. I get nothing from liturgical dance, but some do. I like worshipping in a sanctuary, but the Jesus movement started in house churches, so how could I be opposed to house churches? I’m a Wesleyan, and Wesley took his preaching to coal fields and factories–I remember how moving it was to stand on a site in Leicester where Wesley had preached to 20,000 people in a field–so how could I possibly oppose Wesleyans today going out to meet people where they are?
This ain’t about mimes. And shame on you for suggesting that.
Comment by David on March 17, 2026 at 10:45 am
Long before the United Methodist Church’s recent split, Methodism had derailed. The UMC wasn’t United. It wasn’t Methodist. It wasn’t a church. It was a denomination that sprouted from from a long line of failed or failing denominations. Methodism’s history is quite similar to that of the Early Church. As the Early Church was a spiritual revival within Judaism initiated by Jesus, Methodism was a spiritual revival within Anglicanism initiated by John Wesley. The Early Church was composed of small bodies of the greater Body of Christ that met in the homes of disciples for the express purpose of helping to bring people into relationship with God. This was the model upon which the Church functioned until about the 3rd century when, as faith communities grew, they began to build sanctuaries and, ultimately, went to bed with the Roman Empire. The Church continued to spread, but in its wake would follow repeated and often bloody schisms. The early Methodists met in homes and other small spaces afforded to them for the same reason as the Early Church. Methodism functioned under this model until after the American Revolution when the first Methodist denomination was established. While Methodism continued to spread across the land, in its wake followed a history of repeated denominational schisms as leaders went to bed with the secular world in the name of Christ. What sustained the town center churches with the big pipe organs and clanging bell towers for so long was not the making of new disciples. They survived via procreation. Certain families controlled those institutions, until socio-economic changes forced younger generations to pursue careers and lives in new locations and the large nuclear family declined in number. I’m a pastor serving the few remaining elderly members of a big pipe organ church. Christianity should’ve never moved its operations out of parishioners’ homes, for in so doing it opened its arms to the Devil.
Comment by Wilson R. on March 17, 2026 at 11:28 am
David, I grew up in traditional churches like that during the 1960s. I call them Kiwanis Clubs with Jesus because that’s how they functioned. More like benevolent social service organizations with a thin overlay of discipleship. People joined as much because of social pressure and conformity than genuine commitment to the gospel. So I agree with you that a movement back toward house churches can be a good thing.