Month: February 2014

The Studio

As a fresh expression of church in The Congregational Federation, The Studio is still finding its feet. Its Missioner, David Richards, explains how it came about.

Heaton Park Congregational Church in Prestwich, Manchester, was built in 1881 but it closed down five years ago because the Grade II listed building had fallen into a serious state of disrepair.

The elderly congregation found it increasingly difficult to use the site and there was a big question mark over the future of this particular church. They decided to sell it to a developer and the church was converted into 23 apartments and penthouses. A new, modern worship area was also built next to the old church as part of the scheme and this is now used as The Studio community space.

When The Studio first came into the ownership of The Congregational Federation, General Secretary Michael Heaney explored how best it could be used. At that time I had just finished a pastorate in Rhiwderin, South Wales, and Michael told me about this space in Manchester. We met and the whole thing just snowballed!

The Studio - cathedralI was a photographer's assistant at a studio in Cardiff and we were very much part of what was going on in our area so this was a big move for us because we didn't know much about Manchester at all. We did quite a lot of preparation before we came, researching the area and the feel of the community. We also came up to see the building a few times and thought in detail about how it might best be used – though we could see the concept of it being an art space straight away.

We drew up a comprehensive report along those lines and presented it to the Council of the Federation. They were very supportive and the Federation paid for a nearby manse as rented accommodation for me and my family. The three years of initial funding take us to end of next year and we've now been given a further three years after that.

In our first year here, we had a general concept of it being a studio space so we did lots of things just to see what happened. It was a frustrating time because it was a very slow start.

At the start of the second year we connected with a woman who was very much a person of peace to us. She had an artist friend called Micah Purnell who had an exhibition at The Studio which attracted a bit of media attention and it kick-started a lot of other activity. Since then, there have been several exhibitions and we have got at least five in the diary for next year. It did take us a while to find that niche but once we started to get the contacts, it snowballed.

The Studio - smilesThat all continues to go really well, both with Christian and secular artists, and – in other developments – we have also made some strong connections with local community groups. We are starting to break ground locally and in the wider North West area where we are making some key faith connections with various projects. For the next stage, we need a few others to partner with us in prayer and resources. We need to build a group that can take it on, strengthening each part of it because there's a lot of potential here.

Our Sunday Gathering meets every week at 3.30pm as there are quite a lot of other churches in the area and we didn't want to set up yet another 10am service! It's very informal, café-style and we generally end up with a group discussion based on a biblical theme and look at how it applies to our day-to-day lives.

At the moment it's still a relatively small group. We have had our ups and downs with it but we are holding it very lightly because we would very much like a new church community to generate itself through what happens at The Studio. The Sunday Gathering is more a place of support for us as a team coming from various church backgrounds than a place where new people would ultimately end up. We are trying to see it as a bit of an experimental ground for ourselves but it would be marvellous to eventually have two emerging faith communities running simultaneously.

The Studio - wordsThe Sunday Gathering group includes people from The Congregational Federation's national youth and children's office, based in our building. They have three main employees and an intern and they were all 'transplanted' into the area when the office moved to Manchester. Their presence not only makes the building much more sustainable in its usage but they have also been a great support to us.

What we wanted to do is to have another church community that could quite easily emerge from people who express an interest in it. The Sunday Gathering is an opportunity but it isn't 'be all and end all'. As we start to put our heads above the parapet and say to people, 'We would like to explore with you,' then that would give us the beginnings of an emerging congregation. As a pastor that's what you want, that's the position you want to come to and it's very easy to become impatient but I need to keep on reminding myself that God is on the case.

One of the things we are trying to look at is how best to have spiritual interaction when the exhibitions are on. At the moment we give people a postcard to write down their own opinions and thoughts but we are currently trying to figure out how to do that in a more effective way than at present.

The Studio - Day 1In terms of accountability, we have a management group in Nottingham and I go over and meet with them. I also have a direct line manager and I see her quite regularly in order to pray and talk through where to go next. Until now, lots of the strategic thinking has been coming from me. This has involved bringing forward an idea, working through it, getting a feeling for it and looking at partners who will join and the relationships that will bring. What has become clear in recent times is that we need to have more people involved in local planning because the management group are not in the city. They can take it so far and then we really need to get people on the ground to act as another group to take it forward from there.

The Studio has already attracted attention from people wanting to start similar projects elsewhere. A Manchester-based charity, called The Mustard Tree, has launched an art course for homeless people and they are going to be doing an exhibition with us as well.

This is all really good news but we have got quite a few things that are on hold because of the challenges of resourcing them. I'm 'officially' part-time and involved for about 18.75 hours a week but, of course, it tends to be longer than that though I try to be as disciplined as I can. I know I'm very fortunate in pioneering terms as a far as funding is concerned, I'm very privileged. However, I still rely a lot on my part-time wage; I'm doing additional bits and pieces but it's not sustainable particularly when know that, for many organisations, the fifth year of a project is seen as the 'make or break' crunch year.

The Studio - secretOur programme is quite varied and all of our projects look for new ways to engage with people about our connections with God. They include:

  • Doodle: an art and craft group for toddlers and their carers every Wednesday from 10.30am to 1pm during term-time;

  • PAUSE: encourages busy people to take a few moments to stop and reflect on life. The technique used is loosely based on an Ignation meditation exercise;

  • varied exhibitions;

  • Gotosofa: A community that meets once a month at a cinema as an opportunity to discuss life and meaning through the medium of film.

Our Sundays currently look like this:

  • Gathering Around A Screen (1st Sunday of the month). Short video, small group discussions and a video;

  • Messy Gathering (2nd Sunday of the month) Fun family time with art and craft activities leading into a time of short reflection;

  • Prayers and Praise Gathering (3rd Sunday of the month). An inspiring time of music, art and creative prayer;

  • Gathering at the Table (4th Sunday of the month) Share a meal together, including Communion;

  • Gathering with a Guest (5th Sunday of the month).

The Studio - greyIt would be great to hear people say, 'We see the value in what you have established and we would love to come on board and help'. That might come from other Christians in a local fresh expression of church or a totally different source. Time will tell.

The Church of England needs to wake up and smell the coffee (Gillan Scott)

Gillan Scott looks at the latest church growth research and challenges the Church of England to wake up and smell the coffee.

The history of technology companies is littered with casualties and failures. During my childhood, my friends and I played on Atari consoles and began programming on Spectrums, Commodore and BBC home computers. Polaroids were cool cameras and we started renting videos from Blockbuster. Even now Nokia and Blackberry, two once mighty mobile phone companies, are shadows of their former selves. Resting on your laurels, trusting in your own brand or failing to spot and adapt to culture changes or innovations are all ways to condemn your company to a slow and painful slide into irrelevance and then extinction.

Churches can learn a great deal from the success and demise of businesses. The church is, after all, a form of business – although instead of dealing in commodities and seeking to make money; it sells truth and relationship with salvation as its greatest product. Most companies, if they want to increase their market share, know that investing in order to grow is a fundamental building block. Get your strategy right and you can achieve massive success. Fail to have a strategy, or get it wrong, and you’ll be consigned to the dustbin of also-rans.

Crudely put, Jesus knew that building his brand would be the key to changing the world, which was undoubtedly his intention. He explained to Peter that he would build his church with him as its rocky foundation (Matthew 16.18). Before his ascension to Heaven he told his followers to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28.19) and that they would be witnesses starting where they were in their local context and then going out to the ends of the Earth (Acts 1.8). The whole book of Acts records the initial massive explosion and spread of this amazing new product called Christianity.

Of course, experiencing a relationship with God through the death and resurrection of his son is far too incredible to be compared to something you buy off the shelf at John Lewis. Christianity is not to be consumed as a lifestyle choice and the analogy can only be taken so far but, just like some of those once ubiquitous brands of the 1980s, the Church in the West has become, to many, irrelevant and outdated. The difference is that it still clinging on to life.

The Church of England, which mostly has taken little useful action to address its slow disintegration over the last few decades, is finally beginning to get its act in gear. It is rather late in the day to be acknowledging the overwhelming evidence that it is in trouble, but at least now there are increasing attempts to think seriously about avoiding going the way of Kodak and others.

Much of the vibe coming from the upper levels of the Church of England over the last few years has been focussing on stemming the tide of declining numbers. It is only recently that genuine growth has been getting much attention. With the release of the Church Growth Research Programme's extensive and important findings, there is something of a spring in the step of researchers that things aren't all bad and, in some places, they are actually quite good. Significant growth in fresh expressions of church! Cathedral attendance up a lot! Nearly one in five churches has grown in the last decade!

This is all great news but, alongside that, we have the more usual stories of a quarter of churches declining and the disturbing facts that (a) the average age of congregations is now 62 and (b) in almost half of our churches there are fewer than five under 16s. That strongly suggests that, despite some positive signs, the Church of England is going to decrease in size a lot more over the coming years as members die off.

There's too much I'd like to say to fit in one blog article on this, but there are a couple of observations on this latest piece of research that I'd like to explore here:

  • The Church of England still struggles to appreciate what makes for a good vicar. Clergy play a pivotal role in the Church of England, but if it wants to see significant growth in many churches there needs to be a fundamental shift in how those seeking to be ordained are selected and trained.

If you want to find a vicar who will have a positive impact on church growth, don't pick one who describes their strengths as emphasising or persisting. Instead go for one who is more interested in motivating and envisioning, who is more extrovert and likes to focus on the bigger picture. It also helps if they are younger and probably not liberal. That profile doesn't appear to match the sort of people who are often selected to be ordained.

  • The Church of England's selection panels are turning too many good people away for the wrong reasons. This is counterproductive in itself, but to add to this those who do get selected are not getting the right sort of training to be effective leaders.

A church is never going to reach a significant size or be remotely effective unless lay people play important roles in leadership and are engaged regularly in its work. Vicars need to be able to lead teams effectively, especially if there are paid staff at a church. They need to encourage and enable congregations to take responsibility for much of a church's activities. Any church that thinks the vicar should be doing all of the work will go nowhere. However most trainee clergy will spend a massive amount of time learning how to write and preach a sermon, but next to no time on the mechanics and principles of the leadership skills required to handle organisations fruitfully.

The church has a big job on its hands trying to reverse its fortunes. Culture and society marches relentlessly on. New companies with their finger on the pulse forge ahead to take the places of those falling by the wayside but if the Church falls by the wayside, who or what will fill the gap? Atheism? Islam? What else can provide the moral compass that Christianity has provided this country for so long if the Church loses its voice?

This country needs the Church for many reasons, but it also needs a Church that is healthy and functioning well at all levels. For too long this has not been the case. It may be an ancient institution but it needs to be prepared to think like one that is planning to be around for centuries to come and that means putting growth through discipleship and mission at the top of its agenda.

There are plenty of other areas beyond clergy leadership that the Church of England needs to seriously address. The Church Growth report touches on many of these, including:

  • taking younger generations far more seriously and allowing successful churches, that are often attractive to younger generations, space and freedom to thrive – rather than treating them with suspicion or as cash cows to prop up other churches that are shrinking;

  • the Church needs to take risks and allow the grassroots members to be creative and provide momentum, rather than it being imposed from the top;

  • young people need to have churches they feel part of, where they feel valued and are able to play their part with encouragement and support;

  • churches need to allow God to control the agenda rather than structures, some of which are more of a hindrance than a help.

Thankfully, there are at least two things that the Church has in its favour that even the best companies and brands cannot boast that will ensure it endures:

  • It has the greatest message of all. Nothing compares to the wonder of the grace, healing, and forgiveness offered through the Gospel of Jesus that can restore even the most wretched of us.

  • The Church has God on its side and we can see over the course of history the way He has kept it alive – even in the most desperate of situations. The Church is ultimately His and our job is to do what we can to reflect that glory as a witness of Christ.

There are plenty of churches in the Church of England and elsewhere who are getting it right and their practices and ethos deserve to be shared and espoused. The model of a church like Holy Trinity Brompton that is driving revival in parts of London will not be able to be directly copied in rural Dorset, but qualities such as passion, spiritual hunger and a missionary zeal can.

I have no doubt that the Church in this country has an exciting future and a crucial role to play. It can be vibrant, Spirit-filled and attractive to those both inside and out, but significant growth doesn’t happen without radical faith, thinking and action. For the Church of England, as the Church Growth Research Programme finds, there is still a long way to go on this front. For those who are still in bed, it really is time to wake up and smell the coffee.