February 2011 - FX ARCHIVE...

Warham Community Church – update

An update to the story of the Warham Trust in Winchester Diocese, featured on expressions: the dvd – 2: changing church in every place.

The Warham Trust was founded with the permission of Winchester Diocese in the early 1990s as a direct result of house groups and Alpha courses reaching people who did not feel that they 'belonged' to any particular church. The first part-time Missioner was appointed and Sunday services were held at Wootton St Lawrence, gathering many new Christians together from a wide geographical area.

Various midweek events were held, including further Alpha courses, Marriage and Parenting courses. The core group of Warham members continued to expand, and under the leadership of two further Missioners, numbers grew.

As members' faith deepened, so did their desire to serve in their local communities and churches. The decision to move Sunday services to the afternoon released many people to their local churches, whilst still having the opportunity to maintain relationships that had become so important.

In 2009 Malcolm Duncan was appointed as Chaplain and Warham Trust became the Warham Community Church. The Church seeks to serve communities for Christ by:

enabling discipleship through teaching and training;

connecting people who hold a shared vision;

supporting mission as a lifestyle.

As a new leadership structure was introduced, Elders were recommended and recognised and a system for Church membership as 'Partners' was approved. In July 2010 the decision was made to stop Sunday meetings altogether and concentrate instead on providing an opportunity to bring friends along to midweek meetings held on a monthly basis in different locations within the area that Warham Partners live. Guest speakers are being invited who are known locally or nationally.

After an inspiring and invigorating time for the Warham Community Church, Malcolm Duncan left at the end of 2010 to pastor the Goldhill Baptist Church. The Elders decided that it was not a good time to appoint a new Chaplain whilst the Partners re-focus on the new Church mission, but will review this decision later.

Although there is some unhappiness at the ending of Sunday services, many Warham Partners are now focusing on supporting local churches, community activities and charities. Pastoral support increasingly comes through membership of small groups.

Warham Trust

It's many years since every country estate had its own church. Now, Malshanger House, just West of Basingstoke, has opened the doors of its clubhouse for the Warham Trust, an Anglican fresh expression of church in rural England.

The idea has been that we should be a fully-fledged church in our own right, at the same time as many of our people belonging to their local churches,

explains Peter Irwin-Clark, the vicar of the Warham Trust.

For the vast majority of our 100 or so core members we are their first church, and about one third of those don't belong to another church at all.

Beyond that inner circle we have contact with another 200 or so who are infrequent attenders at our worship-services but may come to one of our small groups or a midweek teaching meeting.

Earlier in the autumn some of the members were confirmed by the Bishop of Basingstoke, reinforcing the clear connection with the established church.

On Sundays, Warham holds Liquid Church — everyone worships together for much of the service, but, in the middle, disperse across the estate to different sessions offering a variety of topics and styles (including a non-verbal Creative Workshop).

On Wednesday evenings, a daughter congregation meets in Padworth, where 40 to 50 people come together for worship and small groups. The more-than one-centre element is part of what makes Warham different.

This approach to Sunday worship seems to be attractive to all ages. The clubhouse is set out in café-style and provides easy access for people in wheelchairs. This (with the excellent bacon-butties!) encourages a relaxed atmosphere, and it is less disruptive if, for example, a young child wants to walk around.

It is natural for people to stay around after the service because the church is set out so informally – and in such a beautiful setting no one is in a hurry to leave anyway!

This story was originally published in expressions: the newspaper – issue 3 (spring 2007) and features on expressions: the dvd – 2: changing church in every place.

All Saints Wingerworth

Are people coming to faith through Messy Church? Do they really become members of the wider Church as a result? Revd Dr Jo White, Rector of All Saints’ Church, Wingerworth, tells how they responded to those questions through Messy Confirmations.

At the end of January we held a Messy Church with a difference. Five children took Communion for the first time, two people affirmed their faith, two were baptised and then joined eight more to be confirmed while a further person was received into the CofE!

We had been talking with people about this service and encouraging adults to take responsibility for their faith in a variety of ways for a while but how did it all start?

Someone said they'd like to be baptized, and that set us thinking. We know that for adults the Church of England likes baptism to be linked with confirmation, but how would that work in this context? We'd held a Messy Baptism for a new baby to one of our existing families last year – so how about a Messy Confirmation?

The idea took off big time – as did the questions, 'Will I have to come to church on Sundays in future 'cos I work that day as my husband's at home to look after the children and so I can't do it.' 'Me too – I feel a fraud as I only come here and not to 'proper' church – it's just it reminds me of when I was a child and that was a terrible time for me.'

The comments just kept on coming… 'I want to get confirmed here, even though I live two hours away – I was brought up here and my family still live here, but above all these are the people who make me feel I belong.' 'I heard my brother's getting confirmed, so I'd love to do it with him.' 'This is the time for me and God. I do really want to come, I really feel 2011 needs to be a year when I reconnect with the church and my faith, too much has come between us of late.' 'I was confirmed as a kid, but I don't remember it, I wish I could do it with you.' 'Well I'm Catholic, but this is really my church now.'

So we spoke about Communion. What should we do about the bread and wine? We've never 'done' Communion before. When would you like to take it, at the confirmation service itself or shall we get together a few days later? Let's go for it! What about the kids? (In this church you have to be baptised and over seven years old) Hence we started preparing them too!

Needless to say, everyone who came to this service did know it would be different and longer! The key pressures came from balancing the need of the Bishop to follow the 'law' of the Church of England and our wish to make the service accessible and understandable for the majority of the Messy Church congregation who are either children or have none or little experience of 'formal' church. How do you make such a huge formal service needing loads of preparation and 'serious' thinking accessible to all of us at our different stages in our faith journeys?

At the rehearsal we realised that only one person knew what 'the peace' was. Things that church regulars take for granted, prayers that they know by heart, are unknown territory for most Messy Churchers and could easily divide the congregation in a service – which is exactly what we do NOT want in Messy Church.

We pared the service requirements to the bone, chose the shortest Communion Prayer and then added opening and closing prayers that were in everyday but in very meaningful language; trying hard to keep the theology of the occasion without dumbing down or making it so simple it was meaningless. We wanted this to be a memorable time for all those involved – in a good sense!

The service sheet, more of a book really, included absolutely every word and instruction. But it did mean that everyone could take a full part on an even footing. We made sure that there was a regular churchgoer you could follow if you got lost at the front of church and said so in the 'Welcome'.

We moved everything we could out of the 'service' section – like the prayers – and into the 'activity' section that comes first; trying to shorten the service without losing any of its meaning or worship elements. The children brought forward, as they often do, a collage of all our prayers written on paper cut-outs of our hands and glued as feathers on a dove. Come, Holy Spirit!

We chose songs that we often have at Messy Church and included some simple new ones either with a tune already known or that we’d introduced at other services in recent weeks.

A few weeks before Messy Church, Rt Revd Humphrey Southern – the Bishop of Repton – asked everyone being confirmed or otherwise involved to write a few lines about themselves and he wrote a few for them. On the day he arrived in good time to join in with all of Messy Church, including the activities in the first element of our Messy service, and chatted with everyone including the candidates all together. This set good practical examples of relationships which passed on to the service itself.

We began the service in the same way as usual, casually, with no 'procession' – and me, as minister, in my 'home' clothes. To save time, the Bishop was robed from the start, and I popped mine on during the first song. There were two Welcomes, first one from myself and then one after the first song, from the Bishop. I gave the practical details whilst the Bishop reinforced the views that all are welcome, there's not one way to 'do' church, and we all worship a living God in our own ways at our own levels. In other words – we may have a bishop, we may be dressed differently, the service may be longer BUT it's still the Messy Church we all know and love.

Bishop Humphrey's address talked about faith being in different layers and each one has value in itself – you don't have to wait 'til you get to the middle to get the gift. He'd brought 'Posh Pass the Parcels' which had a gift under each layer, just like our faith, so wherever we are faith has value and each layer brings surprise.

The taking of Communion was done kneeling or standing at the altar rail. We decided not to use sidespeople to indicate when to come up but to leave it open. In the event I (as the Rector) acted as maître d' in the sanctuary while the Bishop gave bread to everyone and two lay assistants gave the wine. In this way I was able to 'introduce' the Bishop to young children by name and tell him a little about those who were not taking Communion but had come up for a blessing, and just about everyone did come to the rail. His prayers of blessing were then made by name and were very specific for that person. The sight of him walking on his knees to give blessings at that rail to the many children squeezed alongside each other will stay with me for a long while.

So 75 minutes later (it's usually a 20-minute church service element) we went to eat our buffet tea together that our wonderful cooks had prepared. Something for everyone and a large celebratory cake with coloured icing that the Bishop cut – a final sharing. We're still smiling at the experience and wondering when we can do it all over again.

A key component in bringing all of this about was that 18 months ago, with the help of a diocesan mission grant, we created a new post here – Connecting with Families Co-ordinator (CFC): and that person has since been accredited by the Diocese as a Lay Minister in Fresh Expressions after completing the mission shaped ministry course.

Early discipling, encouragement and support takes dedication, time and vision!

Now we need to create something for those now recently confirmed or otherwise involved who are thirsty for more but still don't want or can't make Sunday services or more 'formal' church. At the moment we're thinking of late evening weeknight services, including Communion sometimes. Suggestions for inclusion welcome.

Side Door

The Side Door Youth and Community Church, featured on expressions: the dvd – 2 and once threatened with closure, now attracts more than 150 people – aged between 4 and 95 – every week. Circuit youth co-ordinator Elaine Watkinson explains the turnaround in fortunes.

Side Door is based in the Laceby Road Methodist Church building. Laceby Road ceased to meet in May last year but the community church is open seven days a week, running a variety of different groups on the Nunsthorpe estate.

The changing status of Laceby Road prompted fears that Side Door would also have to call it a day but Grimsby and Cleethorpes Methodist Circuit decided to allow a year's trial from March 2010 to prove that we could become self-sufficient and secure its future. Our members are now responsible for maintaining the building, setting budgets and keeping accounts.

The Circuit has supported us very well and provided oversight of all we have done. The first months of being sole trustees were extremely successful and it has been marvellous to make the most of any opportunities that came our way. Of course we didn't have to wait to get permissions to try something; it was up to us to get on with it! Having the freedom is excellent but we still need an income from the building for it to be worthwhile.

The local YMCA now uses our building once a week and so we have been able to engage with all their young people, we even did a panto with them. Here is a church that is 'being' church, 'being' outreach, affecting the lives of ordinary people on the street. That's why I can find it so difficult when we seem to be continually questioned as to whether we're really 'church' or not. It seems particularly odd when there so many churches which cannot lay claim at all to 'being' outreach or affecting the lives of ordinary people and yet their status is never queried.

The situation will be reviewed at the end of March but, at the moment, we continue planning on being here for the foreseeable future because this is a live and going concern.

It's an awesome responsibility, an albatross of a responsibility at times, because the Laceby Road building is a huge, rambling place but is also so right for what we are doing here. I wouldn't say we 'wanted' the building but we do need a base and it's perfect for that. There was a time when we would have fitted in a tent on the lawn outside Laceby Road but there's no chance of that now!

We are very forward looking and intentionally missional because we know this building has got to earn its keep. We are not going to meet that by relying on a membership of 25, many of whom are at university, or short of money, or older in years. We are very reliant on God's grace.

We have a church council and everybody who comes along to The Side Door is, more or less, on the church council and our leadership team. They can't all vote of course but they do all have a say. There are about 35 people who come regularly to worship with us and that's great.

Side Door started as a project but developed into a church. We had our outreach before we were a church, which is the opposite way round to the way it usually works. It officially remains a Circuit-based outreach more or less owned by the church. Some churches can exist without outreach. We can't. Now the outreach needs the church, they are inseparable.

We are open every day of the week at some point in the day and the breadth of people we are in contact with is staggering because of all sorts of activities. It may be something for children aged five and over, lunch clubs currently attracting people up to the age of 95, and the YMCA crowd which include that missing generation of 30-somethings.

We are still very much focused on reaching young people but others are now being drawn in. There is a community event on a Wednesday lunchtime where those in their 40s, 50s and 60s come along from the local estate to sell items of their personal clothing or belongings in an auction. We were unsure of letting it go ahead at first and we were quite uncomfortable with it but this is something that is very much needed in this area and now we are so glad we said yes because we have been very blessed as a result. All sorts of conversations are now underway that we would never have had without it.

Those on the estate will, in all probability, not be moving on from there because many will not have that freedom of choice. Those people are now saying to us, 'We want to spend time with you.' The mindset has changed completely. In turn we have to be prepared to cope with ways of thinking or doing things that we may personally find difficult or strange.

There are pressures involved in all of this, of course there are but we all feel called to be there. No-one is here out of duty, we are here out of love. We are as vulnerable as any other church but I'd say the difference is that we are very aware of the need to avoid complacency. There's too much to do and too many people to reach.

Reside

Reside is a Christian project evolving in response to growing housing developments to the south of Loughborough. It is led by Methodist Deacon Ellie Griffin, Reside's full-time paid worker.

The original vision for a worker on the development came from the Loughborough Churches Partnership and is mainly funded by the Anglican and Methodist Church. The rest of Reside's team is made up of volunteers from a range of denominations, most of whom live in the housing developments we serve.

I have been here for just over three-and-a-half years and am based on the Fairmeadows estate but also work on the new Grange Park housing development. Generally I attempt to co-ordinate the various activities of Reside and enthuse people to get involved.

Our vision is to be an evolving Christian network that provides safe and welcoming places, explores the Christian faith, cares for the community and collectively expresses each element of Church.

This is an affluent estate but we are in the parish of the Good Shepherd CofE Church which is based in a far more socially deprived area. In saying that, they still provide part of the funding for Reside and the vicar, Eric Whitley, is on our steering group. In some ways it's quite difficult to be taking support from a church with such limited resources themselves but, as often happens, it's those with less who tend to give more. They saw the vision of what we were trying to do and have gone for it – and we're very grateful for that.

It was only 25 years ago that the whole of the Fairmeadows estate was nothing more than a farmer's field. Eventually the community will consist of about 1600 homes. When the original plans for this development (known as Grange Park) were first set in place, the churches in Loughborough saw the need for the potential community to be developed and so looked to appointing a full time worker to live on the estate. I moved here with my family in September 2007.

It wasn't long before Reside was 'born'. We aim to contribute to community by enabling residents to be actively engaged in developing the area in which they live – whether that's through the residents’ association, involvement with schools, Neighbourhood Watch, litter picks or working with children and young people. The opportunities really are endless and the range of skills needed is diverse.

We want to get people excited about getting to know their neighbours and to provide opportunities for building relationships. There aren't many meeting places on the estate and so we are trying to be imaginative in how we address this so that all groups within the community can interact more with each other. Recently we made a trip to see a project near Malton which uses a council-funded facility called the 'Ryepod'. It is a converted mobile home hired out to various organisations for a range of purposes. This is the very beginning of our explorations but we are excited by the possibilities.

In some ways, Loughborough has got quite a lot of pioneering stuff going on from Pioneer Network, New Frontiers International, student work and a huge variety of other churches. In saying that there is still an idea or expectation as to what 'real' church looks like; trying to convince those part of inherited models of church that Reside really is church can be quite difficult. Even if people can cope with Reside not having a building as a base they will still ask, 'why aren't you gathering for worship every week?' It can be so difficult for them to grasp that Reside may never have a big gathering for worship but it's very much church in a different way.

Reside cares about every aspect of community life and the individual lives of the residents who make up this community. This comes from our belief that God cares about every aspect of lives too and that the Christian faith has something to offer in each situation.

So far Reside has been involved in the Haddon Way Residents Association working with them to listen to the community's needs or concerns and hosting Community Fun Days, a Big Tidy Up event and an outdoor Christmas Carol service. We have also hosted Easter Fun Days on the Grange Park housing development two years running giving the families opportunity to meet their neighbours and have fun together.

Through support from SOaR (Schools Outreach and Resources) we have been part of a prayer group for Outwoods Edge Primary School, led assemblies and delivered Easter lessons. Leading on from this we have been invited to lead the school community in celebrating harvest and Christmas and are currently exploring further ways of engaging with the school.

Offering the opportunity to ask questions about God and faith, we ran a six- week exploration course. In small discussion groups we used film clips, news articles and other medium to stir debate offering insight from biblical teaching and Christian thought. Reside has also hosted craft sessions, parties, a police drop-in, quiet space and Open House, all providing a variety of opportunities for residents in the area. All of our activities are provided free of charge as a gift to the community to express God's abundant, no-strings-attached love.

The Residents' Association was one of the first links we made into the community. At first they thought it a bit odd that someone from the church turned up and they wondered what we wanted from them. It was also a little confusing because I didn't 'fit' their idea as to what a church leader looked like! Once they became accustomed to the fact that I was attending as a resident and not just as a church representative, everything was fine.

It was interesting that after a community event run jointly by the Association and Reside, the chairman said to me,

I still don’t know what you're after. The church has bought the house you're living in and they're paying your wages for five years, what are they getting out of it?

It had taken him three years to ask that question directly and it was only because we'd built up such a good working relationship that he felt able to ask it at all. In turn I could tell him there was no catch; that it was all a gift to this community because God loves this area and the people who live here.

Over the next 12 months we hope to:

Develop the work we do with the local schools;

Explore the possibilities for a mobile meeting place;

Provide opportunities for residents to get to know one another;

Network those already actively serving this community;

Provide opportunities to explore the Christian faith;

Grow a number of 'Cell' groups;

Plan for long term sustainability of Reside.

We are very much developing cells at the moment and we're just starting a pilot cell of people who will be leaders in different cell groups. We have got lots of good contacts now on the edges of the community but how can we take it a bit further? I think the cell church model, tweaked to this context, would be a very good model for us. I pray that it will take off and that the trust between groups will become stronger.

The work with the primary school has been awesome because initially it was closed to what we were offering to do. The vicar would go in for standard assemblies at key times of the year though they were a bit worried about taking anything further than that. Slowly they have begun to open up and this Easter we are working with them to host an exhibition of Hope where members of both the school and wider community can creatively offer their Hope for the future.

Again this has all taken time. Thanks to the gradual building up of relationship they invited me to be on their governing body and now they approach us to do things rather than the other way round. It's amazing to think that when I started here there was no link between anyone on the estate or anywhere to go so I used to sit at home praying, then walk around the streets and pray a bit more.

I was pregnant when I took up the post so that did mean I could meet other mums as a way of getting to know people. It also meant that any immediate expectations were lifted as to what I was to 'achieve' in the role; otherwise the aim was that I'd be involved in building a community centre by now because that was one of the points in my job description! The developers of the estate are providing space for a community centre of some description and I'm hoping that Reside and the residents will be able to work together on creating a special space where all sorts of activities can take place.

A five-year funding plan was put in place for us so we are now at the stage of looking at how things can be sustained in future. We are already starting to get some income from the local community but it's nowhere near enough for us to be financially sustainable – and that's in an affluent area! How can people hope to achieve that sustainability in poorer areas?

Also, the context has changed so much here in just a few years. Lots more people have moved in, mainly young families, but many head out for work early in the morning in their cars and the estate's almost dead in the daytime. The nearest shop is nearly a mile away and all of this can combine to incredible isolation for those left behind. There are actually quite a few older people here as well and the community – on the surface predominantly white and middle class – is actually quite a diverse one.

In serving them, Reside will never look like a 'normal' church. I think it will always be messy, an evolving network continually listening and continually responding to the needs of the community. I think that's why many traditional churches have come to a halt – because they stopped listening.

The Beacon

It used to be an industrial heartland but the Dartford Bridge area became ripe for redevelopment and housing schemes began to spring up on Thames Gateway sites previously dominated by factories and business. The Beacon came into being when the local Methodist Church appointed Bart Woodhouse as lay leader of a new church plant team.

I moved on to the Bridge development in north Dartford with my family while the bulldozers were still very much in evidence in early 2008 so we were among the first five or six people to be here! At first we simply started just to try and meet anyone else who was around so we’d take our children out and about walking, bump into our neighbours and get some conversations going.

As more and more people began to move on site, I was very keen to start a Residents' Association. We put letters through people's doors and organised an informal meeting in one of the new buildings; about 40 or 50 people come along to it.

We made it very clear that we were a church and that we wanted to work to try and build community here, firstly by getting residents together in that Association and giving them a voice.

That was a really effective way of initially getting the community together and being able to listen to what was going on. In new developments there are always issues with houses and how well the windows keep out water and so on – I was able to actually get some movement on those issues. We saw that as part of our role of building Kingdom. Part of our witness here as Christians was to consider how we could make this place a strong, vibrant and healthy place to be – so very early on we did things like holding a community carol service.

We then stumbled on the national Big Lunch initiative which encourages communities to get together for food and activities. We had a very popular tug of war, a bouncy castle and a barbecue. We also got local people to bring along some home-made food that expressed something of them and their background – a kind of signature dish. As a result of that we had goat curry and many other wonderful things! About 60 or 70 people come which, from the small community that we are at the moment, was quite a big proportion of the people here.

In our desire to help shape community we'll also be working to help create a community garden on a small plot of land on site that couldn't be built on because there's a high pressure oil pipeline underneath it. The youth club will be involved by creating a piece of art or sculpture for the centre of the garden.

We had quite a small group of people with us when we started and now there is about nine and 10 on a core team. They all have a real sense of call to be doing this kind of work but we are learning again what it means to be community and what it means to be church together. We've also got quite a large and growing fringe group and we are using things like the Y Course and other things to encourage that fringe to maybe explore the Christian faith and then hopefully transition into the cell life of the church.

It has been very much about winning trust, listening, forming real relationships and friendships with people and trying to demonstrate something of God's love to them in a practical and real way.

We meet on a Tuesday evening in cell groups – or Beacon groups – and then on one Sunday in the month we all have a big meal together, maybe with some sort of interactive prayer time. The Dartford Bridge Learning and Community Campus has been built on site and we have a room there which is just the right size for us. We also launched a celebration service at the new school on the Bridge Development in January.

Some people want to try and argue that what we're doing isn't really church, saying that it's just an extended house group or something but I really would want to defend what we're doing here by saying that we are authentically church; we are a worshipping community together. We are also about God's mission, demonstrating the Kingdom in this place, worshipping him and finding ways that are relevant for us to do that. We certainly are creating disciples in what we're doing and encouraging others as to what it might mean to explore being disciples of Christ in this place.

There are a number of challenges that I think we face in trying to shape a full and healthy Christian community here. One of them is that I'm a lay person in the Methodist Church and so I'm not able to preside at the Eucharist meal. I think there needs to be a real integrity about these new communities we're forming in being able to celebrate that meal – and all that it means – together.

We aim to:

Build a strong church that is rooted in the fullness of God's grace and demonstrates the 'Jesus life' to our community and our world;

Always strive to foster a strong and real sense of community, one that isn't invasive but supportive;

Discover a pattern of Christian life that is 24/7, not limited or detached from the rest of our lives;

Follow Jesus, and by his Spirit, demonstrate his message to others.

Our long term vision here is to create a kind of pattern of church that is so integrally part of this new community and yet is authentically a church expressing all the Kingdom values and living out the message of Christ, seeing people discover faith in Jesus and having their lives changed as a result.

Crossnet – update Feb11

Crossnet, launched as an Anglican network church in 2004, has seen many changes since then. Its leader, Nick Crawley, gives an update.

Our vision is to be a community of people who love God and each other, learning to follow Jesus in every aspect of life and seeking to make him known outside the church. In what was a major development in September last year, I became the vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Hotwells – a parish church in the centre of Bristol – as well as leader of Crossnet.

I now split my time 50:50 between the two churches, a move that was totally in line with a suggestion made to Diocesan Authorities in the 2010 Crossnet Report. This structure brings greater stability to the pioneer work and will help to bring together the pioneer and inherited ministry patterns.

It is a significant boost to this pioneer ministry, as it is essentially a strong encouragement from the authorities to press on with the work. We still call ourselves a network church though 'network' can mean almost anything you want it to. Our experience, over six-and-a-half years here, is that our ministry goes in phases. We are now in our third phase and what we find is that people tend to come in batches and then disappear off to other places – almost always because we have a ministry with younger people, most of whom have been 30 or under. This means that we see quite a lot of people for a while and they then buzz off to go to London or abroad.

It hasn't been entirely what we expected. At the start we thought we would be planting something like a House Church or Vineyard Church within the Anglican system but, for various reasons, it's not looking like that at all. Yet we have learned not to be worried by that and instead we just work with what we've got.

We have occasional meetings in cafes and other public places but we mainly meet in our home for discipling and Bible study. The figures vary a great deal. Sometimes we have been up to about 50 and we are now fewer than 20 but in rather a strange sort of way we find that it carries on. There has been ample opportunity for this whole thing to die but instead it continues! At the moment those who come along are mostly from a church background, in the past it has often been non-churched.

I found the instability of it really quite difficult – it was a bit too vulnerable, too chaotic and I couldn't really cope with that – but becoming vicar of Holy Trinity as well has had a great stabilising effect. In terms of my own funding, I will no longer be paid by the Diocese on behalf of Crossnet from this summer though at this moment it looks like I will carry on.

I find that people here are very comfortable with the idea of 'mixed economy' working. Very, very occasionally I may get a comment along the lines of, 'All your young people can come and join us' but that really is extremely rare.

It has gone through many stages but my wife Lucy has played, and continues to play, an enormous part in it all. One of Crossnet's key aims – apart from a base ministry of meeting on Tuesdays for a worship service at our home – is to focus on teaching the Bible. I'm pioneering new forms of teaching that and Lucy, as a systematic theologian, is a teacher as well.

We also disciple people with specific, focused, intentional mentoring. We tend to find that men rather than women come to that because there's something about biblical discipleship that really appeals to men. Working out what faith means in your life and putting it into practice with the help of someone challenging you and helping you to do that is very rewarding.

Crossnet

Church of England minister Nick Crawley knew that he wanted his next post to be about mission not maintenance. So he wrote to the Bishop of Bristol to suggest launching a network church. After a series of meetings he began work on his new 'parish' of Bristol-based young adults in 2004.

We have no church building, no parish, no PCC, no inherited congregation,

Nick says.

I had no weddings or funerals to do so I was free to start from scratch.

An original team of three families drawn to the network church idea began meeting in Nick's family home in central Bristol. As the new church grew, it began to rent space in Starbucks. It now meets in a larger coffee house on Tuesday evenings attended by an average of 30 people who eat, worship, discuss and pray together. Roughly half of these were not previously attending or committed to a church.

One-to-ones and training teams continue the work of discipleship.

Nick attributes the growth of this network church, Crossnet, among students and young professionals to 'word of mouth'. The church has seen four conversions and others growing in their faith.

The two emphases are mission and discipleship,

says Nick.

There is no doubt that the commitment people have to loving one another is growing.

Crossnet aims to be self-funding by the end of 2009.

Video discussion starter: The allotment – a short story

The allotment – a short story

A modern-day parable by Steven Croft.

Low-quality preview – downloadable version is higher quality.

Video discussion starter: Discipleship

Discipleship

Small group discussion starter around the area of discipleship. Features Anne Maclaurin, Graham Carter, George Kovoor, Martyn Atkins, Sara Savage, Graham Tomlin, Dave Male, Jonny Baker, Beth Keith and Steven Croft.

Accompanying discussion notes and a transcript can be found on the expressions: the dvd – 2 page.

Low-quality preview – downloadable version is higher quality.