Day: 23 December 2013

Down Community Church

County Down, in Northern Ireland, is the setting for a missional community reaching out to people who feel they 'don't fit' into a traditional church context.

A group of friends, including pastors Karen Sethuraman and Gordon McDade, had a vision that was launched in a hotel in the market town of Ballynahinch in October 2010 as Down Community Church or dcc. Karen and Gordon tell of the story so far.

The vision was conceived after many years of effective community outreach by active churches. The challenge came when it consistently proved difficult to integrate our new community contacts into the life of a more traditional model of church. We used to hear the same phrase again and again, 'I don't fit in there', and so we started to ask the searching question, 'What would it be like to plant a church for people who feel they don't fit?' We've been trying to answer that question for the last three years! In the process, we have discovered that there is a vast chasm between church and community when it comes to spiritual transformation and discipleship. We have not taken in any way from the other churches in the community but are seeking to be a different kind of spiritual community with the specific focus of reaching people across the whole community who have no connection with church.

Down Community Church - group on sofaIt has been a very steep learning curve for us, not least because we initially failed to appreciate how inaccessible even a contemporary expression of church with songs, prayers and a talk, could be to people with no church background. So began a season of what came to be known as 'unlearning' which proved to be both unsettling and yet creative as we explored relevance and innovation together in the pursuit of meaningful belonging and believing.

Over time, and with many mistakes, a template has evolved within our journey that enables our fledgling community to engage with God and what it means to know and follow Jesus. For us, belonging is paramount and – because we see ourselves as a family and intentionally relational – a domestic motif has emerged to help us define and develop our model of community. Our vision has been galvanised by our values of grace, acceptance, equality, creativity, generosity and risk.

The Sunday morning gathering is known as the Living Room. Set up in café-style, there is endless coffee and extensive use of visual media in seeking to be culturally relevant with a recognition of the power of story and a conversational teaching component which is dialogical and interactive. There are about 50 people connected to dcc currently and attendance can be anywhere from 5 to 30, understandable in a world where commitment in general can be erratic and changeable. We have been constantly challenged by the need to reflect on our use of language and on our understanding and explanation of the gospel.

Down Community Church - groupAt the heart of the community are strong friendships based on accepting one another as we are – no matter what. Down Community Church is an open community where you can be yourself and – whether on a journey with God or not – be loved and supported. That support has meant trips to hospitals, courts, pubs, drying-out wards, prisons and homes of all kinds. The good news of Jesus has transcended divisions of class, politics, gender, sexuality, age, culture and ethnicity. Failure is never final in our community.

On alternate Wednesday evenings, we hold the Kitchen; a smaller group in a home with a culture of fun and family and faith. The model is conversational as we discuss and apply bite-size chunks of Bible to increasingly hungry appetites. This is where we are seeing significant spiritual growth in the community.

We are intentionally programme-light in dcc to enable us to engage in community events and so make new connections where we are. We enjoyed learning Irish recently and made some new friends there; it was wonderful to have an Irish carol at our Christmas gathering last year. And we have held our own events, which we call 'gates' – ways – into dcc. These can be curry nights, pub quizzes, sports events; all are organised simply to meet people. We have partnered with other community groups to run a food bank, do a litter lift and reach out to families bereaved by suicide. There is no them and us in dcc, in our community everyone is us.

We have set ourselves up as a limited company with charitable status and have a small board of directors who lead the community. We anticipate that future leadership in dcc will be nurtured from within the community itself. All of us within the current leadership team have other jobs, working in A&E, in coaching and consultancy, even selling beds, to sustain ourselves.

Down Community Church - kitchenWe have experienced some hostility from local churches but enjoy considerable favour from the community, who have strongly encouraged us to stay and value our friendship. We are a different kind of church. We have hundreds of followers on social media and a number of sponsors who give generously to our mission. We have had opportunity to share our story of unlearning and innovation with many organisations and conferences and received such interest and support.

We are excited to link up with the fresh expressions movement and are keen to learn from the journeys of others.

Church: what time is it? (Rich Tweedy)

Rich Tweedy asks what time it is.

Pioneer ministers are restless people.

There's a driving sense of urgency that we need radical ways of doing and being church – and that if we miss the immediacy of this challenge, the church will die. At the same time there's a frustration that other people just aren't getting it. I've learned that one of the first tasks of pioneers, therefore, is to enable others to see the urgency in such a way as to recognise how to respond to it.

I'm working as a curate in a group of churches in rural west Worcestershire, which is led by the effervescent David Sherwin. It is growing a remarkable blend of both traditional and radical forms of church. We face similar issues to many rural churches: traditional Sunday services attracting 10 people, mostly aged over 60, where three decades ago there would have been 40 people of all ages.

It's not hard for a traditional church stalwart to see that there's a problem here. The issue is to understand why it has occurred – and only then can new forms of church be considered. For this, it is important to explain what time it is. I have had to go on a 'journey' myself in order to be able to recognise and answer that question.

I originally trained as an astronomer. Thus, when some years later I joined a large and inspirational New Wine church in Cheltenham, I was perplexed by one recurring theme: that we live in a post-modern culture and need to engage with it. My science training makes me realise there are certain incontrovertible facts: the earth goes round the Sun, the speed of light is constant, entropy always increases; I'm therefore not very receptive to post-modern denials of objective reality. However, there came a point when I realised that it doesn't matter what I think of the philosophy itself, the fact is that the culture has changed from the one I was trained in, and 'post-modern' is a meaningful and accurate description of this new culture.

I then realised that if the gospel is to be communicated in the 21st century, it has to be done in ways that are meaningful to people living in a post-modern world – not in ways that I personally feel more comfortable with.

This journey helps me to couch the urgency of the present in terms that regular churchgoers seem to find helpful. I find myself saying, 'You and I were born and brought up in the modern era, within Christendom. However, we now live in a very different world, which is post-modern and post-Christendom. Therefore, what worked 30 years ago doesn't work now. This isn't your fault: it's a symptom of the culture around us changing so rapidly.'

Pioneer ministers will know that the post-modern world opens new opportunities; we recognise that people are keen for authenticity; more open to spirituality, and desire genuine relationships. Thus our job is to enable established churchgoers to recognise and embrace these opportunities. Explaining the obvious problem of declining congregations in terms of the cultural changes points the way to how a fresh expression of church might be an effective response – and this means more people buy into the vision.

In west Worcestershire we've therefore had some success with a Sunday morning café church in two of the villages because it's high on relationship and low on religious structure. It's vital that it's welcoming to those who would rarely step inside a church and that it's family-friendly – but it's also an opportunity for elderly stalwarts to get out of the house, meet people and have a chat. It's still early days and we're constantly learning and growing but it is an exciting journey to be on.

  • Some readers may recognise 'what time is it?' as one of the worldview questions advocated by NT Wright in books like The New Testament and the People of God. The other questions are 'Who are we?', 'Where are we?', 'What's the problem?' and 'What's the solution?' Each of these might usefully be asked in most church contexts.