Day: 8 September 2009

B1

B1 church in Birmingham featured in the first Fresh Expressions DVD four years ago. Now Ed Mackenzie of the B1 council brings their story up to date.

Breathe - candleB1 continues to be a community that seeks to reach out to the unchurched and dechurched within the city centre of Birmingham. Significant developments over the last few years have included the Breathe project and a 'recasting' of our vision and values.

The Breathe project began in early 2007 and aimed to 'help stimulate people's spiritual imaginations'. Based in a city-centre office space, the Breathe venue offered meeting spaces, spirituality discussion groups and a 'sanctuary space' for relaxation and reflection. The challenge has been to engage people within the busyness of a city centre environment, but significant relationships have developed throughout the project. Breathe has now moved into a new 'post-venue' phase where it will work closer with other churches and charities in the city centre.    

B1 church also underwent a 'vision casting' process in 2007-2008. We articulated our vision as 'Living God, Living Differently, Living Community', and identified five values central to our life together: Attentiveness, Nurturing, Community, Acceptance and Equipping. We also developed a 'rhythm of life' with spiritual practices to help B1ers embody the five values within their lives – practices include intentional 'blessing', a daily or weekly prayer of review and regular Bible reading.

At the moment B1 church is in the process of recruiting a new leader to take us forward into the next stage of our church life.

Breathe - chairs

Tolland

At first glance, if you watched the Fresh Expressions DVD: changing church in every place, the story of Tolland was an unusual one. Why does a congregation meeting in a traditional building every few weeks qualify as a fresh expression of church, you might have asked? The fact is that the traditional congregation had dwindled to four people when the Revd Margaret Armstrong made a radical decision. Instead of simply trying to carry on with formal worship in the hope more people would come, she shared her intention to build a new outward-looking, missional congregation, based on regular less formal worship events and real attempts to rebuild community. Margaret brings the story up to date.

Tolland churchOur fresh expressions ministry has continued to flourish in the parish of Tolland. We have continued to build community with a series of alternative worship events, now often held in the village church – which has become the centre of community life.

The key to its success is the involvement of the whole community in the development, selection and planning of the ‘one off’ themed services, and taking care that they focus on the experiences of everyday life in a deep rural village.

Another key is to introduce enough change in the services selected, so that they remain fresh, but also keeping enough continuity so that the community feels comfortable. So three services, The Pet Service, Harvest and All Saints, remain standards on the rota, but of course with fresh content. We have three other services in the year with additional themes. In addition the traditional Christmas Carol Service on Christmas Day is also very popular and in 2008 attracted 110 people, almost three times the population of the village. Everyone brought their extended families!

Last year the church building faced us with a huge dilemma. The bell installation, and floors and ceilings in the tower had become dangerously unsafe. The quotes to remove the bells and make the tower safe were in excess of £10,000 and more than the total assets of the church. The church did not want to focus on money & fund raising, but on continuing to build the spiritual life of the community. So much prayer went in to seeking a solution.

Tolland church bells

That prayer has been answered in a most extraordinary way. An anonymous donor has made a gift of a very light peal of 8 brand new bells to the church. The result of this amazing gift is that I have been able to get grants to cover the costs of all the restoration work, to remove the old bells, install the new ones, and make the tower safe. The entire project has been completed and paid for, without any draw on the very limited PCC funds, and without any distraction from our focus on worshipping together in new and fresh ways.

I am shortly to retire, so the future development of this little church and its worshipping life will pass to another. But I hope and pray that the light that has been lit by Christ there will be carried forward by the lovely people who live and worship in the village.