We know, at least intuitively, that some things work in mission and some don’t. We can point to Bubble Church, Messy Church, particular church plants, fresh expressions that have taken root and borne fruit. The temptation is to move too quickly from that observation to replication: this works, therefore let’s do more of it. But that instinct, while understandable, misses the deeper truth. What works, works because at its heart is contextual mission.
The truth is to be effective it has to be about contextual mission. A basic understanding of systems evens backs this up for Worship First church planting models. This is something I have reflected on before using the Cynefin framework. In the bottom right-hand corner of Cynefin, the simple domain, we are dealing with contexts where cause and effect can readily understood, so worship first large scale plants can work, because you know the soil (context) they need to be planted in. Ie Resource Churches is areas with high student numbers, where the employees suit the context. You cannot impose a solution from elsewhere and expect predictable results in the Complicated Zone, here you need contextual adaption eg worship first church plants in a market town may need a families worker instead of a student worker. Then in the Complex and Chaotic Zones context comes even more to the fore, you probe, sense, and respond. You listen. You pay attention. You act humbly and experimentally and so Listening or Community Church planting, at its best, lives precisely here.
This all works not because any of it follows a universal template, but because it all begins with a level contextual awareness. The plant knows where it is, who it is among, and what the Spirit might already be doing there. That attentiveness to context is not incidental; it is the very reason fruitfulness becomes possible.
At the heart of the things that work in mission is not a model but a posture: listening to the Missio Dei and the context.
Take Bubble Church as an example. One could argue quite clearly that Bubble Church works because it is contextual mission. It is not magic, nor is it universally transferable. It works because local vicars and clergy have listened carefully to their context, often noticing young families on the fringes of church life, parents seeking connection, children needing space to be themselves, and have identified Bubble Church as a resource that fits. The model is then brought in not as a franchise, but as a contextual response. The same can be said of Messy Church. Its effectiveness lies not in crayons and craft tables per se, but in the way it emerged from listening: to families, to patterns of time poverty, to the desire for intergenerational belonging that does not rely on cultural fluency with inherited church. Messy Church is context-first mission that happened to crystallise into a recognisable form.
Even in church planting circles that talk about being “worship first,” the same dynamic is at play, whether or not it is always acknowledged. Worship-first plants do not appear randomly (or if they do they tend to fail). They are often planted into areas with high student populations, or significant numbers of young adults, or cultures where music and gathering carry particular social weight. The decision to centre worship is might itself be more the result of contextual listening than many assume.
This is why fresh expressions remain so important. Fresh expressions are not primarily about novelty, nor about ecclesial experimentation for its own sake. They are about starting with context. They are about taking seriously the conviction that there is no such thing as a generic mission field, and therefore no such thing as a one-size-fits-all church.
I have argued that mission takes place within complex, adaptive systems, that culture is semiotic. Therefore, Churches, neighbourhoods, cultures, and networks are not machines to be engineered but living systems to be engaged. Within that framing, More recently I have suggested that faithful mission involves thinking carefully about how we scale: not just out, but deep and up as well.
Scaling out: replicating a model in new places, can be fruitful, but only when accompanied by contextual discernment. Scaling deep is about embedding practices, values, and theological depth within a particular place, allowing mission to become part of the local ecology rather than an imported programme. Scaling up involves influencing wider systems, structures, and cultures, enabling learning and resources to flow without flattening difference.
The common thread running through all of this is about taking context seriously. The danger comes when we adopt a consumerist logic: identifying a successful model and attempting to roll it out indiscriminately. Scaling Bubble Church simply because Bubble Church “works” risks misunderstanding why it worked in the first place. Without the right context, without listening, without local ownership, the model becomes hollow. It may look right, but it will lack life and longevity.
At the heart of all good mission is context. Not context as a box to be ticked in a planning document, but context as a theological commitment: the belief that God has taken the particular (be that place or interest) seriously enough to become incarnate, and therefore we must do the same. Contextual mission is not a strategy; it is a way of seeing.
If we want to be faithful rather than fashionable, fruitful rather than frantic, then the task before us is not to find the next thing that works and copy it. It is to cultivate communities that know how to listen to God, to place, to people and have the courage to respond in ways that may look very different from one context to another. That, ultimately, is why what works, works.