Day: 28 January 2013

The Gate Faith Community

Baptist minister James Karran is looking to develop a new monastic community at a Cardiff arts centre. He tells the story so far.

I used to be part of a fresh expression called Solace, a bar church in Cardiff that I started with Church Army officer Wendy Sanderson in 2007. Sadly, Solace came to an end four years later but what didn't come to an end was my vision of incarnational Christian communities that meet in pubs!

The idea of setting up a new monastic community was inspired by a retreat I went on to The Northumbria Community in August 2011 at a time when I was considering where God was leading me next. While there I was thoroughly impressed by the type of community they modelled: namely one defined by openness, acceptance – and, most of all – hospitality. It was this coupled with a long-standing desire of mine to see pubs and bars in Britain 'redeemed' from the bad reputation they currently have that led me to the concept of a new monastic community that was based in a pub or bar.

After the initial inspiration, I began prayerfully pushing doors and this led me to a conversation with the executive director of The Gate Arts Centre in Cardiff, Paul Hocking. Paul, a retired evangelical minister, shared the same vision for authentic, hospitable and incarnational Christian community. The idea of starting a new monastic community at The Gate emerged out of this conversation and the proverbial ball started rolling.

The Gate - cross and communionThe Gate is perfectly situated to be the soil in which a new monastic community could grow because it has all the key elements – a good reputation, people who regularly come in, existing Christian connections and a bar! There are also amazing opportunities for ministry amongst the groups already connected with the venue.

We had our first community meeting in September 2012 and there were five of us, none of whom really knew each other or had much of an idea of how this would work. All were Christians, but mainly Christians who had been wounded by – or else fallen away from – mainstream church in the past. Since then we have grown to 11 members; some are already followers of Jesus but others have never been to church in their life before. We are currently developing a rhythm of prayer and a 'way of life' for the community to live by, as well as learning in general what it means to be a community of spiritual pilgrims who come from diverse backgrounds.

Our meetings take place on Sunday afternoons at 4.30pm in the Cafe Bar of The Gate and they are always based around a meal. We each contribute an item of food and fit in elements of worship, prayer and reflection around our eating, laughing and chatting together. In this, the meetings resemble something of the Sedar meal of Jewish tradition. The meal element is extremely important and illustrates the emphasis on hospitality that we want to place. Jesus is the ultimate host, inviting us into the great celebration of his resurrection, and we want to incarnate this in the small corner of the world God has placed us in. In this way, the meal also becomes central to our understanding of outreach.

As a community we live by a code of three principles:

  • learn from Jesus as best we can – become an apprentice;

  • serve others selflessly – become a host;

  • never judge anyone for where they are on their own life journeys but to help them discover where God is leading them to next. – become a pilgrim.

The Gate - FeastThis whole venture is non-stipendiary so I have no regular income though I do run a tentmaking enterprise called Solace Ministries – as part of which I conduct religious and civil weddings, blessings and funerals. I am still exploring a vision in the longer term to see a new monastic community that is based in, owns and runs a cafe bar/pub. The 'abbey' or 'Monastery Pub' would be a home, hub and base for the community, providing a centre for meeting, mission and ministry. It would provide a centre to go out from and come home to.

A number of 'new monastic communities' in Britain are geographically dispersed but bound together by a common rule and set of core values. The community I envisage would be of this type. Some members would (by necessity) be geographically located in proximity to the 'abbey', but many others would be elsewhere and find their sense of identity through adopting the community's 'way of life', taking an avid and prayerful interest in the life of the community and 'returning home' to the abbey for family worship celebrations at certain important seasons during the year.

As well as the dispersed community, eventually local communities would be established around the country for localised accountability, prayer support and worship. These smaller communities, known as 'cellae', would be bound together and to the larger community by the way of life, but would also undertake pilgrimages to the abbey at certain times. Establishing these local discipleship communities would be the primary focus for the community's missionary activity.

Sermons: in or out? (Norman Ivison)

Norman Ivison asks whether sermons are in or out.

I must have visited over fifty fresh expressions of church in the last few years and in only a handful have I heard a sermon as part of the gathering for worship. That's not surprising. The emergence of post-modernism with its dislike of authority and meta-narrative, contemporary educational theory and real attempts to create contextual learning experiences, all cast the traditional monologue-sermon in a rather poor light.

It's a brave blogger who dares criticise the sermon model though, and personally I love the challenge of preparing and delivering a well crafted sermon. In fact many see the conventional sermon as God-given, although I still need to be convinced that what passes for preaching in many churches is anything like the preaching and teaching we read about in the New Testament. Indeed, according to John Stott's I Believe in Preaching, the sermon is 'indispensable to Christianity'. David Day defends it too in a workbook for preachers, saying that whilst the monologue-sermon seems to be universally derided, the speech per se is not dead, citing the popularity of stand-up comedians.

But do traditional sermons make an impact? According to research done by staff and students at Durham University, many Christians look forward to the weekly sermon, but under 17% said they frequently changed the way they lived as a result of hearing one [The View from the Pew, CODEC/College of Preachers, 2009].

When I surveyed 34 fresh expressions of church, it became clear that a wide range of alternatives to the sermon was employed including group discussion, practical action, individual mentoring, and online learning. But to be honest, some of the teaching I experienced seemed rather superficial and one-dimensional, and felt as though it had been prepared at the last minute. I know you can say that about many more conventional churches too, but I guess I expected better from those really wanting to engage people who have never experienced church before. One leader admitted he woke up on Friday mornings with a heavy feeling in his stomach and a thought buzzing round his head: 'what am I going to say to the community this evening?' Transformational preaching and teaching seems to be in short supply both in conventional and fresh expressions of church.

I did though come across some excellent examples of a thought-through strategy to teaching and preaching. One city centre fresh expression based its modes of teaching on the four Honey and Mumford learning styles, based on those of educationalist David Kolb, as spelt out in his book Experiential Learning. He claims that people learn mainly:

  • by feeling rather than thinking, preferring to trust their hearts more than their head;

  • or by watching situations and impartially describing them, preferring to observe rather than experiment;

  • or by thinking more than feeling, preferring to use logic and ideas;

  • or by actively experimenting as a prime way of learning, preferring doing rather than observing.

That seemed a creative way of acknowledging that sermons don't work for everyone.

So before we throw the homiletical baby out with the pedagogical bathwater, we need to try very hard to find good alternative models to the traditional sermon, if we do believe this one-size-fits-all, tried and tested model, no longer works well for most people in our context. We also need to make sure that a balanced diet is offered. David Dunn-Wilson, in his book, A Mirror for the Church, says that every church should be teaching in six areas: the missional, pastoral, apologetic, ascetic, liturgical, and doctrinal. But it is so easy in a fresh expression, to major on the pastoral and missional and forget the rest.

So here is the challenge: tell us how you teach and preach in the fresh expression you are part of. How do you plan what you do and at the same time remain sensitive to the contemporary needs of your community? How do you measure the effectiveness of your teaching? How do you provide opportunity for interaction and discussion? If you engage mainly one-to-one, how can that be sustained as your community grows?