Month: May 2013
A few degrees of separation? (James Karran)
James Karran explores why leaders need to be 'outsiders' in their own community.
My most burning passion in ministry is to see communities of committed disciples that are authentic, real and honest. I long to be part of a place that is safe for people to come and be vulnerable, where they don't have to fear being used as guinea pigs by a bunch of amateur spiritual physicians who want to heal, save and liberate everything in arms reach.
In order to facilitate this environment as the leader, building relationships is crucial because without deep relationships, the community will never develop the intimacy needed for vulnerability.
But vulnerability is difficult. We have all been hurt and bruised in our stories, and the mind rebels against this idea of letting its guard down in case the bruises are ripped open to become deep wounds. Unfortunately, in so many people's experience of church, this is exactly what has happened. So we play at being vulnerable, we pretend that we are sharing our true and honest 'prayer concerns' with each other; knowing all the while that those things most important to us, those facets of our beings that are darkest, most messed up and most broken – those are things we could NEVER tell anyone. The potential pain is too great.
So, deep relationships are important. However, it's not as simple as that because there is real danger associated with it.
A leader wants to create relationships within the community so they throw themselves into the friendships, meeting up with folk for coffee, organising social events and cinema trips, nights out, meals – anything that would create the fertile ground for relationship to grow. This community becomes their main friendship circle, they invest in its members – and the members invest in the leader and each other. And it begins to work. Deep and real friendships grow. Vulnerability begins to emerge. The dream is beginning to be realised.
Here's the danger. In the midst of this process, somewhere in the milieu, the leader loses perspective and sense of purpose. The friendships become the goal; the reason for their necessity is forgotten. The little community is happily revelling in its own insular reality where everyone loves everyone and 'we' look after each other, where the universe is fine as long as we stick together. It becomes harder and harder to see anything outside this circle of loveliness.
The community becomes gated by walls of its sense of shared vulnerability. When it comes into contact with 'outsiders', the in-jokes and private conversations give a clear, if unintentional, message, "Sorry, if you're not one of us already you really can't be one of us, unless of course you prove to be 'our kind of person'. Then you can definitely be one of us". And because the leader is as much in the mix of all this as anyone else, there is no one to recognise what is happening. The community has become a clique.
This is something that I see as especially relevant to fresh expressions of church because the leaders are trying to start communities from scratch, often with a strong emphasis on relationship, so the temptation to get 'sucked in too far' is high. Also, many fresh expressions may be outside normal accountability structures; it is therefore less likely that the danger will be spotted (or understood) by those to whom the leader should be accountable.
I've come to the conclusion that a few degrees of separation between the leader and the community are necessary, and it is painful for me to say that because it is painful to do. Someone has to stand slightly outside the circle, to keep watch for the waifs and strays who God brings along, to remind the community of its purpose. This may mean that the leader will always feel slightly like an outsider in their own community, and possibly the other members will feel that of the leader too. Perhaps this is one of the burdens of leadership. I wonder if Jesus felt something of this as his lads were getting to know each other, laughing, joking and hanging out? I don't know. I do know though that the leader has a calling and responsibility, one that can weigh very heavily at times.
This is one of the hardest lessons I've learnt doing this pioneering ministry lark, and one that is a constant struggle to get right. But if vulnerability and relationships are still key, how does one facilitate these while maintaining something of a separation? Haven't quite figured that one out yet…
Llan – update May13 (formerly The Gate Faith Community)
Llan is an embryonic, new monastic community, meeting at The Gate in Cardiff. James Karran tells how its identity has been developing.
Palm Sunday together was our very first 'not-a-church' meeting. However, not-a-church meeting is a little bit of a mouthful, so instead we called it a 'community life' meeting.
Eight of us were present for this historic occasion, each of us with our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, moods, baggage and slightly different understandings of what on earth we were doing there. The first item on the agenda was to find a name for ourselves.
After we finally decided that the best way to decide on it was to have a vote, we came out very strongly in favour of Llan. When Christianity first came to Wales, the monastic pioneers would establish a llan – literally meaning 'enclosure' – at strategic locations, within which they would begin to build a base for mission, worship and prayer. This seemed to sum up exactly what we felt God calling us to be.
So after seven months of meeting together, we had chosen a name. There was an almost palpable feeling of 'connection' in the room. It was as if the act of deciding on a name – which came from the collective group as opposed to being imposed by any one individual – was a kind of mortar that helped cement us together a bit more. We took one more step down the road of ownership, of community, of knowing who we are.
The rest of the meeting included subjects ranging from thinking about our diary to asking what each of us individually wants from Llan and how we might go about getting it.
Since we started our community at The Gate in September 2012, I thought it would be a good idea to try and establish a rhythm of prayer, as it seemed like the kind of thing a monk would do. So I invited anyone who was up for it to meet at The Gate at 8.15am to pray a morning office. Initially it was just me and one other from the community who attended, and now… it's still just me and one other.
Many folk might see the routine of having to come to the same place every day to say the same prayers as just another religious rule that doesn't mean anything but that is not my experience. Coming to this same place at this same time, we go through the ritual of:
- setting up our (very) makeshift chapel – complete with print of Rembrandt's Return Of The Prodigal Son, stone Celtic cross and tea light;
- spending moments in silence to bring to mind God's love that is 'new every morning';
- saying the same words from Psalms and other ancient sources;
- holding our loved ones before God.
This all becomes something more than the sum of its parts. The light begins to represent God's presence with you in that place, the words begin to seep into your inner being and set your soul on fire with their truth, the picture begins to speak of God's mercy in a language that communicates directly with your spirit. That place, that time, that rhythm… it has become a thin place for me, a place where I meet with God.
I really, really hope that more people will come to see the mystery and power in rhythms and practises like this because they're not dead, they're very much alive.
msm Lincolnshire – Lincoln
You are invited to share a learning journey in a supportive community to be equipped for a lifetime of good practice and learning in growing fresh expressions of church.
Your local course
Luminous, Lincoln are delighted to make msm available locally. We believe it will be a significant resource for building the Kingdom of God in this area.
Individuals are most welcome, but we particularly hope that small groups from a church or fresh expression will come as this will deepen the impact of the course.
Course timetable and venue
The course begins on 18th March 2013.
View mission shaped ministry in a larger map
Fresh Expressions and the Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland's Mission and Discipleship Council has indicated it is planning for growth in numbers and not managing decline, encouraging the pioneering work of Fresh Expressions.
Reporting to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on Tuesday 21st May 2013, Rev Colin Sinclair, the Council Convener, said during his speech that a formal partnership with Fresh Expressions is being established. This will mean that the Church of Scotland can further benefit from their experience in training for and support of new expressions of church life.
He said,
This is a really exciting development and I'm pleased that in Scotland 200 leaders have now been trained in mission shaped ministry and others have experimented with Messy Church, together with other new contexts for worship.
We hope to have some taster events around the country in the coming year and also the shorter six week course. We are also looking forward to appointing a Fresh Expressions Development Worker, a joint appointment with Ministries Council in partnership with the Fresh Expressions movement. We are planning for growth, not managing decline.
msm video diary – part three
The Ark at Crawcrook
The Ark @ Crawcrook is a church, café and soft play centre near Gateshead. Deacon Tracey Hume and Superintendent Paul Saunders explain the concept.
The Ark opened its doors this month and we aim to help children and adults to talk about God and learn more of Bible stories by providing a safe space in which to explore matters of faith. We look to serve the local communities of Crawcrook and surrounding villages – as well as the wider Gateshead area.
Rev Liz Kent and Deacon Tracey Hume are the ministers there and they work alongside our centre manager Janette Lea. As a venue which can be used for children's parties, and lots of other events, we rely heavily on volunteers and party hosts.
The Ark, a not-for-profit organisation, has been built on what was the site of the Robert Young Memorial Church in the village of Crawcrook. It is a fresh expression of church which aims to be a place where the community can meet, have fun, be supported and welcomed.
We are inspired by the words of Jesus in Luke 18:16, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these'.
There has already been a lot of interest in using these facilities. SNAP! (Special Needs Access Play) sessions are for children and adults with physical and/or learning disabilities, and developmental disorders such as autism. The play sessions, which are also for their siblings, are run outside of public opening times so that the children and adults can have exclusive use of the playframe and sensory room. We've made sure that all areas of the playframe are accessible via a mobile hoist.
The playframe has been tailor made for The Ark because we managed to secure the rights to using drawings by popular illustrator and author Mick Inkpen. He's well-known for books like Kipper the Dog and Wibbly Pig but he has also produced many books based on the stories that Jesus told.
We had the playframe designed with these Bible stories in mind and we chose about six images from each story. The idea is that we will take the children into the three-storey playframe and literally 'travel through' a Bible story with them because there will be illustrations in each part of the frame to highlight what we're talking about. There are quite a few commercial play centres in this area but nothing at all like this!
Our play centre and conservatory is open to the public from 9am-3pm, Monday to Friday, for pre-school age children and birthday parties can be booked each evening and Saturdays.
Our church centre manager, in a full-time role, oversees the day-to-day running of the centre and takes the bookings for it but is also very much part of the vision. Janette is like a mission partner because she has to work with our partner organisations as well as supervise two part-time café supervisors. Volunteers help us to run the café and keep a watch on the play centre.
We also have party hosts who are going to co-ordinate the events that we will have as a party venue. Most of these hosts are local people and a lot of them are not involved with traditional church at all. We see it as being about the community trying to help the community. That's why we hope to welcome one or two adults with learning difficulties to help in the café as problems in getting employment has come up as an important issue.
One day each week we will close to the public from 1.30pm to 3pm so that local schools for children with special needs and disabilities can come in and use the facilities. We are also looking at doing money management courses and have been approached by groups for ex-addicts who want to use the space; there's certainly a lot of potential and we will keep on listening to what the community is saying to us.
Of course we have to cover our costs as well but we are working with the council in an effort to access money to subsidise places for the disabled-only sessions. Our business plan shows that the birthday parties are what pay for the building and the café. The idea is that we cover costs so we can be as flexible as we can.
Our aim is that The Ark will be self-funding, covering its staffing and other costs, in order that it is sustainable in the long term. We are also still seeking some funding for the equipment we will need for some of the more specialised needs of people with learning and physical disabilities.
Play and Praise is just one of the ways in which we are looking to provide opportunities for people to explore faith. We were very aware that we didn't want to predict too far in advance what these opportunities need to 'look' like. There will be free sessions once a month but we are also planning to do café church. We are holding off at the moment because we just want to establish relationships in the first instance but it's pioneering ministry. It's important to listen to the questions that people are asking rather than answer things that people aren't asking in the first place! It's an open book at the minute.
There isn't an existing congregation alongside us in this; we've got a blank canvas, only God know how it will develop! Whatever shape it takes in future, it will be useful for the Circuit as well because they will also be able to explore how to do new things.
This isn't about setting up in competition with anything or anyone else; it's working with people the Circuit have already engaged with very closely so we do not end up trying to meet the same needs. Yes, there will be some overlap and there will be times when families are drawn to us rather than other churches in the area but we can't avoid that. It's simply providing other routes for people to ask questions.
We are a place of worship so we can still do weddings, baptisms and funerals. For some families who find their way into The Ark it may be the only time they come into a church building. If they are then looking for a baptism, for instance, it seems a sensible place to do it rather than going somewhere which seems very alien.
It's important for us to get to know what people's physical needs are as well as their spiritual needs. Interestingly, the developing of partnerships and community links has already succeeded in opening up the eyes of the local council to what the church is all about. As a result, we are now getting quite a reputation for community involvement.
We have learned that it's not about telling them why we are doing something; instead we simply do something because it's the right 'something' to do. They see the difference and recognise where our motivation is coming from. It's a lovely thing to be involved in; it's where God has called us to be.
Fresh Expressions welcomes The Salvation Army as partners
A partnership has been announced between The Salvation Army and the growing fresh expressions movement, which encourages and resources new ways of being church.
Fresh Expressions works with Christians from a broad range of denominations and traditions and has seen thousands of new congregations being formed alongside more traditional churches since the initiative started in 2004.
The Salvation Army, a worldwide Christian church and registered charity, works in 126 countries. In the UK and Ireland, it has approximately 50,000 members, 4,000 employees and 1,500 Salvation Army officers (full-time ministers).
The Salvation Army's Territorial Evangelism Secretary, Drew McCombe, commented,
We are really pleased to be joining Fresh Expressions. We believe we can bring a valuable contribution to the movement, and it will help The Salvation Army to reach more people in future.
Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops' Missioner and leader of the Fresh Expressions team, added,
The Fresh Expressions movement has proved to be an unexpected ecumenical gift. We are partnering one another as we learn how to plant fresh expressions of church to reach those whom we are not reaching through our existing work. To have the Salvation Army in this movement can only enrich it.
Young adult conferences: reactions to the research
‘Being’ church for the missing generation (Beth Keith)
Beth Keith considers 'being' church for the missing generation.
The Church of England's annual statistics for 2011 were released to much fanfare last week with glowing reference being made to 'an increase in child and adult baptisms and a growing stability in weekly service attendance'.
All well and good you may think but the fact is that the Church, as a whole, is failing to reach or keep young adults – any stats on church attendance will tell you that. Only 11% of regular churchgoers are between the ages of 25 and 34, whilst 16% of the UK population is within that age group. In tracking church decline, the greatest losses per year are occurring amongst those aged 15 to 29.
But, and it's a big but, there are churches bucking this trend, churches which are attracting growing numbers of people in their 20s and 30s.
Over the last year I've been talking with leaders of churches who are reaching and discipling young adults of the so-called 'missing generation'. These include parish churches, traditional church plants and fresh expressions of church. It's been a privilege to hear stories of how these churches are developing and a challenge to discover more of the issues they have faced along the way.
When this qualitative research project started through Fresh Expressions (via their Young Adults Round Table) and Church Army, we were keen to look at churches based in different contexts and ensure we had examples of churches reaching young adults from a range of socio-economic and religious backgrounds. We didn't want to simply track large student churches.
As a result, I have identified five distinct types of young adults' church. They have different personalities, are of different sizes, connect with different kinds of young adults and practice faith differently. They are:
- church planting hubs;
- youth church grown up;
- deconstructed church;
- church on the margins;
- context shaped church.
What did I find? Some larger churches, with young adult congregations gathering for a Sunday service alongside midweek groups, are effectively reaching middle class, well-educated young adults who previously attended church as children. They act as gathering points, and are highly effective in attracting, retaining and discipling Christian young adults for a vocational life of mission in the world and ministry in the church. These young adults tend to move on to family-based congregations as they grow up.
But the churches managing to reach young adults with no prior faith or church experience – and from a broader socio-economic background – exhibit very different traits and practices. Meeting more often around the dining table than the church building; eating together is the new 'Sunday service'. For these small sacramental communities, access to communal spaces, such as cafes, large vicarages and community houses, can make a crucial difference to their growth and sustainability.
These more experimental forms of Christian community are greatly affected by the level of support and connection with the wider church, particularly during times of transition. But their unconventional style can be a stumbling block to this. They face a number of challenges and issues remain about permissions, authorisation, and the appropriate administration of the sacraments, alongside questions about sustainability.
Young adults attending these types of churches may struggle to make the leap to more traditional forms of church as they get older. This suggests the determining factor here is not their age or life stage, and that these new forms of church will continue to grow and develop. The recognition of these small sacramental communities as church is vital, both for the sustainability of these fledgling churches and for the building up of the wider church.
You can read more about this and the five types of young adults' church in a 36-page report outlining the findings: copies of authentic faith: fresh expressions of church amongst young adults are available now.