06/27/2012 - FX ARCHIVE...

JustChurch

A new church for young adults has been growing in Bradford since the appointment of a city centre Mission Priest, Chris Howson, in October 2005.

The church takes inspiration from Micah 6.8, which exhorts concern for justice, and by liberation theology, expressed by Chris as

get involved in your context.

Liberation theology teaches people to act first, reflect later,

he explains.

Our job was to hit the ground running, to see what worked and ditch what didn't.

One of the first ways Chris sought to grow church was through JustChurch, a weeknight meeting that focuses its worship on the writing of letters on behalf of lobby groups like Amnesty International. Around 15 to 25 young adults attend, most of them new to church practice.

The old Anglican chaplaincy centre near Bradford University where JustChurch meets is also host to a fair trade café. On the first Friday of every month up to 80 young adults – most new to church – meet there for an evening of live music and poetry called Soul Jam.

It's about being alongside people and having fun, so people discover that this is a church that lets them be themselves,

says Chris. But he is also concerned to connect people with the wider church and holds a weekly Eucharist on Sundays at noon. Soul Space is a relaxed, informal Anglican service where the Bible is told as a story rather than read and discussion replaces a sermon.

We emphasise listening and making discoveries for ourselves,

explains Chris. The service, attracting around 25 young adults, lasts about 50 minutes, then moves to the café for refreshments. Sundays also see an afternoon discussion group on faith issues and an evening service of Christian meditation.

Young adults are introduced to any of these events through friends, and through actions such as peace vigils in the city centre, work with campaign groups, and a bike repair service run by church members jointly with a local squatters' collective.

Our aim is to encourage real discipleship, to show that the kingdom of God is about showing love, and that we can make a difference in the world,

says Chris.

God seeks to transform society: The Terminus Café

This story illustrates the principles of God seeks to transform society in the Guide.

A Methodist church on an estate in Sheffield in 2000 went on to the streets with a questionnaire asking their neighbours what mattered to them and what the church could do to help.

The majority of people didn’t recognise that the church could play a role and were surprised at the question,

recalls Joy Adams, a Methodist minister on the Low Edges estate.

The church discovered that the most pressing local needs were litter picking, a drop-in centre for the elderly and youth activities. It also realised that any response would need to come from all the local churches and so formed an ecumenical prayer group.

At the same time, local shopkeepers were keen to lease their premises to the churches for community ventures. Recognising an opportunity, the churches set up The Terminus Café.

From the start we worked in partnership with the different agencies on the estate,

says Joy.

We said right at the start that we are four churches working together to open a safe place and we are motivated by God’s love.

When you are open with people, they’re open with you, we’ve found.

‘I feel safe when the café is open’

The café is self-financing, includes a charity shop, and opens three days a week to around 60 visitors a day. Its Christian remit is made clear by a monthly service, ‘Worship at the Terminus’ at 4.30 on a Thursday afternoon. Bible study groups happen in series of four or five at varying times and venues to suit the differing needs of local residents.

When the idea of the service was first mooted, it was greeted with ‘shock’, Joy says. Low Edges is notorious for anti-social behaviour and drugs.

Café staff open and close the day with prayer which is visible through the window. In 2004, as a result of witnessing this, visitors began to ask for prayer. A prayer board is now situated in a discreet part of the café and one-to-one prayer is available under strict guidelines.

Volunteers now staff the café from across the church and community, and The Terminus Initiative has been created to cover the café, an asylum seekers befriending service and a Credit Union.

Other café initiatives include a Tuesday night youth café where young people can hang out and play computer games.

When assessors for the Duke of York Community Awards visited The Terminus, they asked its neighbours for their opinion. The Sikh shopkeeper, next door but one, replied,

These are the best neighbours I’ve ever had and I feel safe when the café is open.

Now the elderly of Low Edges have a place to go, the young people have an event just for them, and while litter is still evident, anti-social behaviour has reduced in the area.

Where it does happen, the local police approach the Terminus for help.

God immerses himself in human culture: Legacy XS

This story illustrates the pinciples of God immerses himself in human culture in the Guide.

The Church of England-born Legacy XS youth centre in Benfleet, Essex, grew out of a small youth group meeting in a vicarage in 2001.

These youngsters were initially friends of the vicar's kids, though they also included a few from church families,

says leader of Legacy, Pete Hillman.

Numbers grew through friendships and

chatting about Jesus developed,

says Pete. A trip to Soul Survivor saw twelve members become Christians, and a youth congregation, Legacy, was started, led by around half a dozen 'leaders' who nevertheless saw themselves as members of the community first and leaders second.

By now the group had moved from the vicarage to Pete's house and again to a church hall, a 1940s old army hut.

It was growing in spiritual depth and identity and we were recognising there was a limit to our impact,

recalls Pete.

So we developed a vision for a drop-in centre in Benfleet.

When, on that year's trip to Soul Survivor, there happened to be a skate park,

the two ideas came together.

We were very aware of the local need for such a facility which local youngsters had been calling out for for years. So after discussions with the young people in the community, we decided to press ahead with plans.

Eric Liddell, in the film Chariots of Fire: 'When I run, I feel God's pleasure'

The hunt was on for a warehouse that could hold both services and a skateboarding arena. After several months with no success, Pete went to the local authority which granted a piece of council land for a peppercorn rent.

Since this land was in the neighbouring parish to Legacy's founding church, permission was also sought from the congregation there, and given.

Now the Legacy XS youth centre hosts both the Legacy Sunday congregation and a drop-in centre for all young people in the area for schools' work and for fun. A café, a computer gaming room, a pool table and other activities make the centre attractive. Sunday worship sees a congregation of up to 80 young people worshipping and growing in their faith, some of them as a result of attending Legacy XS in the week.

And skateboarding sometimes forms part of the worship.

Pete explains:

People ride during songs, or to drumming, or they use the ramps for prayer. One example would be when one group stood at the side of the ramps holding a piece of paper with a name on it, praying silently for that person, while others held names while they rode or skated the ramps. It's using something normally done for fun as a prayer.

Pete's favourite explanation for the thinking behind this manner of worship is the words of 1920s Olympic runner, Eric Liddell, in the film Chariots of Fire.

He said, 'When I run, I feel God's pleasure',

Pete says.

It's not a gimmick, it's landing tricks for God, the one from whom all blessings flow.

I don't skateboard, but the young people, both Christians and non-Christians, say that they notice a difference when prayer is involved.

Another important difference about Legacy XS is the number of males it attracts, something Pete and his team are keen to encourage rather than balance out.

We do lots geared up for the young men,

he says.

We took some to Snowdon where we carried stones covered in names up the mountain and built a cairn near the top. Luke (19) said afterwards that he was not good at praying because he was not good with words, but he had realised that he didn't need to be because carrying the stone for three hours had been the prayer.

God works through communities: The Bridge

This story illustrates the principles of God works through communities in the Guide.

People ask, when does The Bridge meet? Well, the answer is that it meets on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays,

says lay leader of this Methodist fresh expression in Leicestershire, Tim Lea.

The Bridge, begun in 1995, maintains an active community life involving cell groups, a badminton club and Sunday evening meetings at which eating and drinking is as important as any other activity.

In fact, teatime takes up half of the two-hour meeting which begins at five o'clock with a gospel presentation.

It's not just a service, but sharing time together and building community around that,

explains Tim.

One of our biggest drivers is to have a sense of community that welcomes people.

For this reason, Sunday meetings are held in a local school, a place already familiar to many in this small town.

The presentations are always all-age, at least in part, relating the gospel in simple and jargon-free ways, often using highly visual, interactive illustrations, such as the children taking part in a high jump competition to teach how God has lowered the bar for all people. Once a month, the 15 children and 50 adults remain together for the whole hour.

Some Sundays in each year are devoted simply to being together. These happen on 'low Sundays' around Christmas, Easter and the summer. They may involve playing games, BBQ, going on a treasure hunt, or a day out with a picnic, but they always involve food.

The Bridge community has discovered that sharing socially creates good opportunities for questions and discussion, and friendships grow. For Tim Lea, this is church as much as anything else.

God believes in creative experimentation: TANGO

This story illustrates the principles of God believes in creative experimentation in the Guide.

TANGO (Together As Neighbours Giving Out), a café and recycling centre for a Merseyside community, was set up by the local Anglican church in 2000 to bring care and 'give and take' back into the local community. A purely social service, it nevertheless provides opportunity for Christian witness through action and conversation.

We show God's love first,

says chairperson, Avril Chisnall.

We realised that God's love is out there all the time; that people have experienced that and all have a story to tell.

Avril and her team invited TANGO customers to a monthly gathering in a pub on Sunday morning (toast and tea all round). Invitations to this were placed on the tables at TANGO and personal invites were given to those Avril and her team knew might be interested.

'We weren't radical enough. We began to follow the same pattern. We should have been in tune with them more and let them set the agenda…'

Over time a few came to what, Avril realised, had become too much like a 'regular church'.

We weren't radical enough,

she says.

We began to follow the same pattern. We should have been in tune with them more and let them set the agenda, putting God's values into that'.

A positive outcome of that time was the baptism of a 'dysfunctional family' (two in the pub and one in church), every member of which now helps out with TANGO's thrice weekly midday café and shop. Good food at a very reasonable cost and quality second-hand goods are set out in a market-type environment for those living on a tight budget.

However, the Sunday morning pub sessions were abandoned, partly because the team realised that a lack of public transport on Sundays was preventing people from coming.

A new gathering, Buddies' Breakfast, was started in the late summer of 2006. From nine until ten o'clock on the first Tuesday in the month, breakfast is served at the old church hall which is home to TANGO. The team put out invitations by card and word of mouth to those they feel might be interested.

'Church people often want quick results. Just serve people, give them what it is they need and wait until the thing blossoms.'

The invitation is to 'partner and support' the new work that TANGO as a community project wants to develop and to encourage a real sense of belonging.

In God's kingdom every person is valued and has a part to play,

Avril believes.

It's being together, serving them, having a laugh and a chat, establishing friendships that prove we can be trusted.

A flow of people has passed through Buddies' Breakfast, which is usually attended by 60 to 70 TANGO volunteer staff and customers.

We have been honest with those customers who have come, and have said that God is the motivator behind all that we do,

says Avril.

Church people often want quick results. Just serve people, give them what it is they need and wait until the thing blossoms. This time we are looking for a sense of belonging and partnership and have already seen two or three people move into the Tuesday weekly cell from which Buddies' Breakfast was born.

Avril also advises,

Keep flexible; if something's run its course, be brave enough to finish it, then wait and see what God starts to do next with the work he's asked you to get involved in.

TANGO

The TANGO community project at St Mark's, Haydock, has been running for 12 years. The project's chair, Avril Chisnall, and co-ordinator Christine Kay explain how a fresh expression of church has become part and parcel of the ministry there.

When we first started TANGO it was quite a difficult thing to know how we were going to bring God into it – especially when volunteers joined us from the community. We didn't want to impose something which involved us standing there quietly to pray so instead we always treated it as an invitation to come and reflect on why we were there as part of the project. And then we always finished with a prayer. Then people began to trust us more and started to join in different ways.

We now do have a cell in TANGO and cell is important to our church but that's OK for those people who genuinely want to go forward with God and enquire and learn more. That's the right environment for them but we've got lots of people in our teams who are sort of 'iffy' about God. We know he's in their lives but they've not acknowledged it themselves so how do we get them to move on?

We've introduced what we call the 'Three Ps' as a way of opening up some of these issues. Chris and her team regularly meet with all the other teams once a fortnight to look at Purpose, Problems and Presence of God. We also have breakfasts when staff and volunteers, which we consider to be our church, get involved with a God slot.

I think people now realise that church isn't doing it to them but church is here as part of the community – and church is not a stuffy old place, a building they have to go to; instead people actually make the church, us and them together.

I've been a member of the Anglican Church for many years and love it but I feel very frustrated that the church is stuck in the way it sees how church should be done and they're still expecting that church can carry on as it is. Many churches are seeing their numbers dwindle but are still not prepared to change their ways of doing things. They might introduce some new songs and various creative ways of doing things but it's still very much traditional church and won't reach the people we live among.

I appreciate that it's scary for church people and leaders to support a fresh expression because it's risky but Kingdom values are the important things. All those years ago, God asked me to do something different with a team of people and the result is that it is 'not the same church as I'm used to'. It's forced me out of a way of viewing church into seeing people differently and trying to communicate his way with them.

I get really wound up when people try to measure what church is. We certainly believe that what we have with our volunteers and community members is very much a church. The frustration kicks in when people come along, ask you to fill in a form, tick boxes, and say, 'How many people have you had in your church this week?' Most of the time I simply do not know the answer to that but we know that what we do here is very much a one-to-one with people. Thanks to God, we change people's lives by meeting them, praying for them or talking about God to them. We can't measure those sorts of things and that's really difficult.

It is often not measurable in an 'official' way but I'm looking at what happens here in Kingdom terms. As such, it doesn't matter that I'm a lay person; I will keep on doing this stuff because God has asked me to do it and pass it on to other people to do as well. We also know that's what we need to do and investment in other people with God's values is vital.

If TANGO goes on for another 12 years that'll be down to God and the investment we've put into the people's lives for them to want to carry on doing Kingdom business in an ordinary way. Lay people are so important to this type of fresh expression it's important to risk letting those who are not ordained take the lead and do what God's asked them to do.

I'd say, 'go out there and have a go and really listen to what God's saying to you.' We've passed the idea of TANGO on to three other parishes but it's not the same TANGO that we've got. They're doing the same sort of things but they are different people in different sorts of community. That's why it's very important to find God's heartbeat for the community in which you live but – for goodness sake – get out of your church and go and do it.

Coordinator Christine Kay adds:

God is the heartbeat of everything that we do; without him it would just be impossible. Every morning, before we open at 9.45am, we have what we call Quarter to TANGO when as many of us as are free come together. It is not a formal prayer time by any means but we give out notices and things that are coming up in the week but there’s also a time to share.

In the past we've done lots of things which we've been brave to do but we've been even braver to stop them when they've not been working. Now we're looking to do something called TANGO on a Sunday. Lots of people find Sunday a very long and lonely day so we've decided to give it a go, it will be in our café – a chat over a cuppa about some question brought up in a very informal way. We're not really sure how it's going to pan out but I feel that God is asking us to do this and we're just watching this space at the moment.

You are not going to get people into your churches in this day and age; they just want you to go out to them. They don't even want that, they don't know that they want that, the only way to be with them is to be where they're at; not threatened by anything that's churchy. That's why we try not to use churchy words at all. We are just ordinary people; they respect that and respond to it as well because they see we're not holier-than-thou. Hopefully they just feel comfortable and safe in the kind of environment we encourage here. God is opening this up for each of us to be part of other people's lives and for them to be part of our lives as well.

Garage Praise

The splitting of a house group that had grown in size was the opportunity for new life to develop in a Church of England parish in Shropshire.

While one half of the house group wanted to concentrate on Bible study, the other half, including Sarah and John Wildblood, preferred to explore outreach. The Wildbloods and their group were particularly keen to make contact with local families, many of whom had dropped away from church during an interregnum.

After discussion with the new rector, and prayer, they began to look for practical ways to serve.

A reunion of the two house group halves for a social held in John Wildblood's business premises, a garage on an industrial estate, provided inspiration. The bring-and-share party 'was very successful', says Sarah. 'We wondered whether this was the way to bring families back.'

They began to look for practical ways to serve

She and her ten fellow house group members now hold occasional Friday evening meetings at 7.30pm in John's garage. This involves worship, a bring-and-share supper and a mix of a talk, musical performance and video. 'Garage Praise' is popular with about 80-90 people of all ages from the local churches and surrounding area, but particularly teenagers, who are about to be given their own slot in leading the evening session.

We thought we would be for families, but the youth are more keen,

says Sarah.

We are trying to go with it and see what people want. A lot of local youth hang out in their cars near the garage. We always invite them and hope that they will join in with us sometime.

A desire to reach out started with people the church had lost, but ended up attracting young people and others with an interest in more contemporary worship, without the formality of a traditional Church of England service.

Sunday 4:6

A year into Mandy Wright's job as Deanery Evangelist with a group of 21 rural Anglican churches in Devon, it occurred to her that if anyone wanted to attend church as a result of her evangelism, a Sunday service would likely put them off.

I thought, I've got to do something to appeal to people right outside church,

she says.

She hired the village hall for a new monthly meeting advertised as a friendly, non-judgmental space in which to bring questions and enjoy food and drink.

The first meeting, held at 6pm on a fourth Sunday in a month in 2004, attracted 33 people, more than four times the usual attendance of any local church service. Quite a few of those were churchgoers, but a good few were others known to Mandy through her work among the largely elderly community.

That first evening was spent getting to know each other, finding out where we were on our spiritual journeys,

she recalls.

Although numbers fell by half on the second meeting of Sunday 4:6, over the next half year more and more unchurched people began to realise that this was a place where their questions and thoughts could find a safe hearing.

'Fresh expressions are not clear-cut; they are pretty messy'

Another half year later and local churchgoers were catching on.

Starving Christians began to come gradually,

Mandy says.

They were wanting more worship and slowly the seekers were leaving by the back door. Now the numbers are up, but they are all churchgoers.

At the beginning of 2006, a vision evening was held, at which the group of 25 defined its first year of existence as one in which community was built, but expressed the desire that the second year focus on worship.

I had promised from the start that Sunday 4:6 would be theirs,

Mandy says.

It is meeting a huge need for Christians to explore their faith more deeply; lifelong churchgoers have discovered faith perhaps for the first time. But it's not my original vision. I want to work with those outside the church.

She is now developing a core team from within Sunday 4:6 to take over its leadership and hopes to find new outlets for her ministry to seekers from the local communities.

Fresh expressions are not clear-cut; they are pretty messy. Even the good news ones have questions,

she says. Following the transformation of what began as a seeker group and developed into a fellowship of Christians, Mandy is now asking which is more important: reaching the unchurched or feeding 'the needy churched'?

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