Month: September 2009

Twilight @ Costa

Methodist minister Jeff Reynolds reflects on starting Twilight, a fresh expression of church in Costa Coffee in Stafford.

This is a salutary story that if, as a minister/leader of church communities, you give people the chance to use their initiative – don't be surprised if they do.

In Stafford, we have been looking for opportunities to express church 'outside' of our church buildings. One of my members approached me and said 'what about doing Church in Costa Coffee in the centre of Stafford?' I was immediately intrigued and excited about what that might mean. What I didn't realise was that my words of challenge to my churches in previous months had been heeded and this member had done an enormous amount of groundwork to help establish a 'new' church in the centre of Stafford.

The vision came out of the challenge and in January 09, 'Twilight@Costa' was born. It is a monthly gathering on the last Thursday of the month at Costa Coffee in the centre of Stafford. It is a relaxed evening with no discernible elements of more traditional church services but an opportunity for people to come and share together in an excellent atmosphere that has a Christian ethos at its very core.

The more we have sought to establish Fresh Expressions of Church in the Stafford area, the more we have realised that you can have the best church services that are relevant, humourous and non-threatening and where the welcome is the best it can be, but there are still many who find physically entering a church building an impossibility. So our vision has been to create a church where people are, rather than where they are never going to be.

We have been running for six months and it is going really well. Each evening is about 90 minutes long and involves coffee (obviously) and a myriad of other excellent drinks and food, music, chat, quizzes and fun. The evenings are theme-based and so far we have tackled fair trade issues, people-trafficking, debt problems and also held a jazz evening. As always with any fresh expression of church we realise that it is an organic animal and that we will change things and tinker with our ways of operating to make it the best that it can be.

We hope and pray that we will continue to develop and establish this expression of church and that people for whom more traditional forms of church are a turn-off, will continue to feel that Twilight is 'their' church. Please feel free to join us on the last Thursday of each month at Costa in the centre of Stafford.

Around the firepit

A community evangelist and development worker, Peter Homden, has been 'visiting and engaging' with gypsy travellers for more than five years and talks to Emma Garrow.

The settled Gypsy Traveller community makes up one of the largest ethnic groups within the parish of St John’s Heatherlands (and the Church of the Good Shepherd) in Poole.

The church's community evangelist and development worker, Peter Homden, has been 'visiting and engaging' with the gypsy travellers for more than five years and is gradually 'building church in the community'.

'It is a community that is evolving,' says Peter. 'When you take a nomadic group of people that becomes sedentary and settles, it places stresses and strains on the culture.' This estate, and its local church, are both close to Peter's heart, since it was here he grew up and first started attending the Good Shepherd. His vocation took him to mission work in London, training college and then back home, where his role has been funded by the St Aldhelm's Trust (out of the Diocese of Salisbury) for the past three years. This summer he is to be ordained pioneer minister.

'I’m back full circle,' he says. 'The estate has changed but I'm beginning to see the issues I saw in London 25 years ago.'

Peter lives in his own home in the middle of the estate, where the diocese has placed a building that operates as an office-cum-counselling room in his garden. 'There is a regular stream of people at my door asking for help, especially the young people,' he says. As part of his involvement with them he has set up a bike project where they mend bikes together, and 'talk about life issues'.

He describes his work on and for the estate as 'broad'. It has involved talking to the local police on the subject of prejudice, training community workers looking to engage with the Gypsy Traveller community and the general building up of relationships through door to door visiting.

'Lots of the work is done in homes,' he explains. 'We have mini prayer meetings with the families. With about 80 per cent I could knock the door and before leaving they will ask, "Pray for me, pray for this" '. 'Prayer is at the heart of what we do.'

It is also very much a part of the 'gatherings', held quarterly, to which members of the gypsy traveller community are invited. Gatherings meet in the church's spacious grounds around a firepit and involve karaoke, accordion playing and 'copious amounts of tea', with the aim of building a worshipping community. Up to 30 people attend, bringing with them their own unchurched, non-gypsy friends from the estate.

This autumn Peter hopes to build the work further by developing a drop-in centre for coffee and chat, but also for practical support and public services. 'Our remit is for a holistic gospel,' he says. 'For faith that brings change.'

Messy Church goes to the beach

Messy church goes to the beach and makes history as two different fresh expressions meet up. Janet Tredrea reports.

Tubestation, a fresh expression of church in Polzeath, Cornwall opened its doors to nearby Wadebridge’s regular Messy Church at the end of July.

Messy Church at the beach - villageDuring the winter months, parents, carers and children from Wadebridge have been attending Messy Church – a new form of church for families held in the local primary school. When the weather was really fine, attendance numbers dropped, so it was decided to take Messy Church to the beach… where the people were.

The session, Bible Seasides, began with funky drink and biscuits before everyone went down to the beach to construct a sand village made of eastern shape houses of 2000 years ago. The weather was definitely not brilliant, but the builders seemed unperturbed! We left a sign for those visiting the beach later that we had constructed Beach Street, Galilee.

On the return to Tubestation, a dozen or so crafts were on offer all with a Bible Seaside theme. One of the most popular was Lim-PETS, God’s creatures with our own adaptations!

eMessy Church at the beach - paintingAs the crafts finished, so the worship began with musicians from Tubestation and Rev Jerry with Buzz the albatross (all the way from America!) with their message based on the house that was built on the rock. Hot dogs were served from the outdoor BBQ and the fun and the fellowship was complete. A great chance for two fresh expressions to work together.

Wootton

Ian Mobsby talks to Rona Orme, Children's Missioner for the Diocese of Peterborough, about the beginnings of a fresh expression in a new-build area of Northamptonshire.

Wootton - surroundings

Wootton was a classic English village on the edge of Northampton, which in the last ten years has been absorbed by the building of new housing to become a larger suburban part of greater Northampton. The needs of this population have steadily increased, many of which are unchurched families of young parents with young children. The local Parish Church of St Georges has not been able to make an impact in many parts of this new community, whilst developing its continuing work to the older parts of Wootton.

 

Two years ago, a new parish priest was appointed who began to develop a more engaged ministry with local people. Although requests for baptism and numbers attending monthly Family Services have grown, it soon became apparent that she did not have the capacity to engage further with the people living in the 'new-build' areas with its two new primary schools, secondary school and growing community of unchurched families.

Additionally, there were very few local links between the old village of Wootton, and the community developing in the new-build area, making things even harder for the Parish Church to have an impact in the newer areas of its community. In effect, two parallel communities were emerging out of the local context. So the Diocesan Mission Enabler, Children's Missioner, Archdeacon and Parish Priest became increasingly aware that the mission and ministry needs of the new-build area of Wootton remained unmet.

  

This then raised the need to develop a 'mixed economy parish' – deepening and developing the work that had already been started, alongside beginning something new and pioneering to address the needs of those parts of the local community the church had not been able to reach.

An opportunity presented itself, when the Church of England Commissioners offered the Diocese of Peterborough money for setting up four posts to engage with new-build housing communities with pioneering mission initiatives. It was offered to assist the Diocese to engage in mission with a local population expansion of 20%.

 Wootton church

Providentially, these posts were to be focused on meeting the specific mission and ministry needs we had already identified in Wootton. So the Diocese quickly explored what a potential pioneer post could contribute in assisting the Church to engage with the needs of largely unchurched families with young children living in the new areas of Wootton, which is now the key focus supported by the Diocese, Deanery and Parish.  

 

Already partnering discussions have begun with one of the local Primary Schools. Preston Hedge's Primary School was very keen to develop collaborative pastoral support for working with children facing family relational difficulties, and to develop after school clubs exploring faith and other issues. The school see the need as supporting the emotional and spiritual development of pupils, creating an exciting opportunity for contextual mission and ministry. There is now a real potential for birthing something really interesting and innovative in a local mixed economy of church.

The Diocese are currently seeking the appointment of a full time Pioneer Minister (open to Lay or Ordained Pioneer Minister) to lead this exciting new project, with support from the local Parish Priest, Diocesan Mission Enabler and Children’s Missioner. It is hoped that this work will build an evolving ecclesial community coming out of mission and ministry needs of local children and their families in a school context.

Tomatoes

Peter Gilbert, a member of Church of the Martyrs in Leicester, tells the story of how Tomatoes has proved to be an innovative project in engaging with unchurched local families.

In October 2007, Tomatoes began as an initiative of our Curate to explore a Saturday morning breakfast activity aimed at mission to the many students of higher education who live in the urban area of Leicester. We soon realised that this was a foolish endeavour, as what students do you see around on a Saturday morning? However, we quickly realised that it could be a great project to engage with local unchurched families. We are situated in a multi-ethnic urban context, with a Hindu Temple nearby and very different people living near each other in the local community.

The Parish Church of The Martyrs in inner-city Leicester is right next to a church hall and on Saturday mornings, the hall is taken over by an independent ballet school which is very popular with local families. Given that this was next door, we invited these families to come along to Tomatoes for a free breakfast and an opportunity to build relationships with local people. Surprisingly the connection worked and food is always popular! It began with mums and their children, but soon grew to partners coming along too. Now, people still come even if ballet is not happening, as it has become an important part of people’s local rhythm of life. We now have around seventy to eighty people and their children arriving for Tomatoes, coming every other Saturday. Most of these people do not go to church or have any faith background. Also a number of Martyrs folks come as well.

Tomatoes - kitchenWe were very fortunate that the Diocese of Leicester Mission Fund gave two grants to get us going and sustain us in the first three years. Running costs are around £1 per person.

So what do we do? Well we have a café style set up in the church, with newspapers, drinks and food. We don’t charge but allow people to make a donation.

We used to have a theme to each Tomatoes event and have a number of talented musicians in the church community play in the background with visuals and videos where appropriate. We usually have someone talk about some issue to do with faith, and this can lead into discussions. We have had discussions around news items in the papers. At first people were reluctant to talk about spirituality and its application into modern life, but it is now much easier to talk about these things. The key focus remains on building relationships. There is also the opportunity for people to write down prayer requests and give them to us, and then a short time of prayer is given after the talk part with a quiet reflection.

Tomatoes normally operates between 9.30am and 11.45am every other week. The focus then is on building community and showing the church as part of that community. Most people are not yet ready to explore Christianity in a formal setting, but are definitely now more open to spirituality. So these sessions do not encompass worship or being church, they remain a focus on relational mission.

The website and local advertising and particularly word of mouth have increased the visibility of Tomatoes, so we are working hard with ten of us as volunteers to keep it going. We are looking forward to Church of the Martyrs having a new vicar, as there has been an interregnum now for a while and whilst the project has really worked we would like to see more of the congregation involved in it as a way of enjoying themselves and of outreach to the community – one of our stated aims.

We are really pleased that the project has been able to listen to local needs, and responded with Tomatoes as a form of loving service, which has helped to build a community. The greatest challenge then from this is how to address the need for discipleship and Christian formation and then the need for authentic yet contextual forms of worship. There is no way that people can just go and attend an Alpha Course for example, as it will not relate to the context, so we are really not sure how we make this next step, and we need the Vicar or new curate to start working at Church of the Martyrs to help us explore possible ways of doing Christian formation in this particular context. We were pleased to see that some unchurched families were able to come to a Christmas Service, some were able to make this shift, but this will be a minority. So many we are in contact with are pre-Alpha and interested in spirituality rather than anything religious including Christianity. So discipleship and forms of contextual worship with its own distinct approach remains an important dream for the way forward.

In Tomatoes people tend to drop in and out of it in a fluid way, so there is not really a culture of people starting and finishing at the same time, so doing any form of discipleship ‘course’ with this type of set up just will not work.

Tomatoes - tablesSo we do see Tomatoes as a community but not yet church, full of potential we hope to become church in the future, but not yet anywhere near ready to go that way. You can’t rush or force people to go there, it has to be in the right time.

It has taken us three years to get this far, I think it is going to take quite some time for people to make the next shift to being interested in Christianity.

Another challenge we face is balancing the needs of unchurched families alongside a significant homeless population all in the same space. This can lead to some tensions when there are a lot of small children in the place, so we try to practice hospitality but also keeping the space safe for families.

In the meantime we need to be careful we do not burn out with the pressure of Tomatoes on top of very busy lives and we do need to get the Church of the Martyrs more fully behind what we do. But so far, Tomatoes has been a privilege to be part of, and something we hope will develop.

Summer nights

When ordained pioneer minister, Ben Norton, was watching the tv one night he suddenly had an idea. Before long he got hold of Sam Foster a fellow pioneer in the next town to see if they could do something in their area together. They were soon taken aback by the amazing response. Ben takes up the story

The idea came from watching an episode of Top Gear when the presenters all travelled to Asia on mopeds and stopped over somewhere taking in the sights. One of the things that amazed them was the sight of hundreds of floating tea-lights being sent off down a river at night. The visual impact of this was amazing and even made the all-male macho petrol-heads stop and think.

I pondered what doing something similar might provoke in members of the public here on the Yorkshire coast. So Sam Foster (pioneer minister) and Shena Woolridge (pioneer minister and Church Army evangelist respectively, both based in Scarborough) and a handful of others set off to light up a section of the local beach and see if it would invoke something of the spiritual in passers by.

We were not too sure how it would be received, but were totally blown away. Two hundred people stopped and looked between 7:30 and 11:30pm.

Some lit a candle and walked off, some stood and chatted, some asked for prayer, and some told of their own spiritual journeys. But one thing I noticed throughout the night was that those who chose to take part in whatever way, ended up leaving the space in a different direction. For those who were walking on the beach they would have continued walking on the beach if we had not been there but they walked off up on to the pathway and vice versa.

I wondered if this was a symbol of what was happening spiritually for people? This event was maybe not life-changing, in the sense of making a 'u-turn'; but for many it was more of a 'tilt of the axis', for some ever so slightly. That night there was an encounter that maybe changed something, somewhere in their journey.

We are hopefully going to do some more summer nights up and down the East Coast and when we do, more info will appear on the St Maxs website and my blog.

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.