Day: 3 December 2012

Focus Service: Sheffield Church – update Dec12

The Focus Service, a church for adults with learning disabilities, was founded in 2000 by Baptist minister David Middleton, who continues to lead it. Assistant minister, Keith Blinston of the Church Army, gives an update.

church serviceFocus was originally launched as an informal ecumenical project through the collaboration of a number of churches in south Sheffield. In April 2012, it became the first ecumenical BMO in the Church of England, recognising the fact that Focus is supported and recognised by the Yorkshire Baptist Association and Meadowhead Christian Fellowship as well as the Diocese of Sheffield.

Now, eight months on from the official signing, not much has changed in the way the church operates with regards to its services and fellowship group. However, we are being increasingly recognised and involved in the wider Church life. Representatives attend Deanery Synod meetings and the Baptist area meetings. We also have held our first partners' meeting. It has been so beneficial to talk through our concerns, frustrations and ideas with them and has led us to set ourselves a number of goals to achieve.

tableAfter the signing of the BMO we had a church meal to celebrate the end of many years of negotiations; this was the first time we had done this together on such a scale. We invited all our members and their carers or parents and had a wonderful time. It was so good in fact that we are going to make it a regular part of our church life.

As part of the leadership of the church, we have two members who are learning disabled. They provide valuable insight when we are planning services and also remind the rest of us about the importance of praying. This is encouraging as one of the habits we try to encourage at our fellowship meetings is that of prayer. To see how these two (and others) have grown in confidence to pray over the years has been a joy and privilege to be part of.

These past months have seen us grow numerically with two new people coming along. We are also finding that people with similar interests are contacting us to come and see what we do and find out what they can learn from us.

Focus uses the Anglican Church of St Paul's, Norton Lees, as its regular venue. However we are a deanery-wide network church that attracts members from across Sheffield. Meetings are fortnightly on Sundays at 7pm and there is also a Focus Fellowship Group meeting every Monday evening.

Moot launches the Host Café – Dec12

Watch Vanessa Elson explaining how the Moot Community has officially opened its Host Café below.

David Meara, the Archdeacon of London, opened the launch event. Church of England priest and presenter of BBC Two's 'Around the World in 80 Faiths', Peter Owen Jones, gave a short address on the theme of Caffeine for the Soul. He looked at 'How do we understand the needs of the soul today?'

He said,

Moot EucharistThe act of living is so much bigger in every dimension than we have realised. Living as a soul is about living a radical alternative life of gift, which means you feel the effects of yourself on others, and love is the greater of that experience of being. You can only communicate life by being love. The healing from status, the poverty of wealth, the loneliness of luxury, the impermanence of our physicality, but it is earthed in giving, and it is earthed in being.

Host is a new venture of the Moot Community, a fresh expression of church within the Church of England. It is the realisation of a long-held dream to enable those outside the church to build trust in it again and those inside the church to grow in the virtues of faith, hope and love, through the practice of hospitality and generosity.

Host café signOpen from Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 4pm, Host serves direct-trade coffee, a range of loose leaf teas, pastries and cakes. Through Host, Moot is aiming to restore the St Mary Aldermary church building in Watling Street to its true vocation as a welcoming hub for the local community and a public space where friendships and connections can be developed.

As part of the weekly rhythm of worship and prayer, Host seeks to nurture body, mind and spirit in an expanding programme of arts, meditation, yoga and discussion groups. These currently include daily contemplative prayer, meditation, Serum spirituality discussions and Living the Questions dialogue group. The arts programme will include concerts, open mic performances, poetry and music.

Urgent! We need to transform the denominations (Michael Moynagh)

Michael MoynaghMichael Moynagh warns that we urgently need to transform the denominations.

In their book on missional innovation and entrepreneurship, The Permanent Revolution, Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim comment that the UK's Fresh Expressions movement has only marginally impacted the denominations. Fresh expressions have yet to be thoroughly owned by them.

This has already sparked an energetic online debate through Michael Volland's view piece but the question still needs to be asked, should the denominations being doing more to support fresh expressions of church – and if so, what?

Hirsch and Catchim may well be too pessimistic about the current situation. Some of the denominations have made substantial strides in embracing fresh expressions. The Methodist Church, for example, is writing fresh expressions into many of its policies, practices, standing orders and job descriptions. We know some dioceses are doing this too.

Even so, it is clear that we have a long way to go before fresh expressions are deeply embedded in the existing church. The situation is more dire than many realise. Unless the denominations act more urgently, the window of opportunity could soon close.

Even now, a big problem is that senior managers in the denominations don't have the time to push forward the mixed economy agenda – fresh and inherited expressions of church existing alongside each other in mutual support.

They are swamped by urgent maintenance questions ranging from employment and other policies, to new appointments, to initiating and managing re-organisation (read downsizing), to fire-fighting crises.

The problem is about to get a whole lot worse. On current trends, between 2015 and 2030 huge numbers will drop out of church as the baby-boom generation passes away. The need to manage contraction and to re-organise will increase exponentially. Senior managers will have even less time for encouraging fresh expressions.

Fortunately, as money and time become increasingly constrained, not all is lost. Here are some relatively 'easy wins' to advance the mixed economy.

  1. As posts become vacant, include 'encouraging fresh expressions' in the job description of the new holder. If this was done steadily and consistently for denominational and local-church appointments, a revolution would eventually occur in the direction of a denomination's ministry.

  2. Of course, those newly appointed would need support and advice on now to encourage fresh expressions. Each denomination or diocese should, therefore, appoint one person – in a new senior post – with the task of forming 'learning communities' among clergy and lay people who are encouraging or catalysing new types of church. Participants would meet three or four times a year to learn from each other's experiences, set goals and hold each other to account for seeking to achieve these goals. Church planters in Europe have found these communities to be very fruitful. 'Fresh Expressions Advisers', who convene such groups, should themselves be networked nationally (as is beginning to happen) so that they can learn good practice from one another.

  3. Fresh Expressions Advisers will need increasing financial support as the number of mixed-economy appointments grows. In the Church of England at least, this support should be funded from the rents of some of the clergy houses that are no longer needed due to the falling number of stipendiary ministers. Decline would fund growth.

These proposals could transform the denominations in the medium to long term. Where this has not already happened, they would require the switch of only one post in the denomination or diocese from maintaining inherited church to fresh expressions. Is this too big a price to pay?

Fresh expressions are not the only aspect of the church's mission, but they are playing an increasingly vital role.

Statistical evidence – gathered by Church Army's Sheffield Centre – from Canterbury, Leicester and Liverpool dioceses show that fresh expressions now represent approaching one fifth of the churches in those dioceses. A growing number have been around for more than five years.

Dioceses and denominations that intentionally support fresh expressions do see fruit. They reconnect with and serve parts of society that are outside the church's orbit. So why not take some relatively simple, but bold steps and clear a path for fresh expressions?