Day: 13 August 2015

Wrestling on the frontline of ministry (Richard Higginbottom)

Richard HigginbottomRichard Higginbottom is wrestling on the frontline of ministry.

We are going through a 'transformation period' with Tulloch NET. The vision to develop a fresh expression of inclusive and indigenous church in Tulloch, north west Perth, had come into being in 2004, three years before its official launch. The aim has always been for that church to be based on relational networking – not traditional ingathering.

The area is a mix of social and private housing with a population of around 4,000. In partnership with several denominations and supported by Church of Scotland seed-funding and grants from various agencies, we have been working hard to build up relationships within the community before setting up any sort of worship centre.

In September, the trustees and staff had a strategy meeting to address recent challenges. Having averaged 20 weekly visits to our Room 4 U drop-in earlier this summer, suddenly we attracted the attention of local primary age children and their parents over a period of six weeks or so.

Now we're averaging over 40 visits per week and are rapidly changing into a permanent holiday club for children! It's a great challenge, but has raised issues like staffing levels, child protection, health and safety, resources, etc. Do we extend our opening hours, change our direction, re-structure? We don't have easy answers, but the Holy Spirit is shifting us, nudging us, unsettling us.

It involves wrestling with being on the frontline in a deprived area of a council estate among totally unchurched people, in troubling times, learning as we go

We (our trustees, staff, volunteers) come from traditional church backgrounds. We struggle with such risks and challenges – as do our 'clients' (addicts, children, Forces' veterans, lone parents, ex-offenders) within our changing society in a double-dip recession. More than ever, we need to offer a safe sanctuary to vulnerable local people – while being constantly asked by our friends in traditional church: 'Do you have a Sunday worshipping group yet? Do you know how many converts you have?' The answer is 'no' on both counts. We're still building relationships, gaining trust, having spiritual conversations.

It involves wrestling with being on the frontline in a deprived area of a council estate among totally unchurched people, in troubling times, learning as we go. Yet, Kyra, one of our eight-year-old regulars, recently filled in a Beliefs Survey form and posted it in our prayer box – without any prompting from us. She says she definitely believes in God, wants to go to heaven, believes Jesus is the Son of God and yet is not sure if she wants to know God personally…

It's all scary and yet exciting. And, as we prayed on our strategy day, someone quoted Jesus' words in Matthew 9.35-38 in which he described the crowds as being 'harassed and helpless'.  Maybe we're a bit 'harassed and helpless' too but, unlike those crowds, we know our shepherd and we hear his voice… and we already have the harvest workers. Are we just too frightened to heed the call to carry on harvesting?

What is the true language of incarnational mission? (Paul Bradbury)

Paul BradburyPaul Bradbury asks what the true language of incarnational mission is.

This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.

Mark 4.26-27

Three years into a pioneer post in Poole, Dorset, I get asked a lot: 'How's it going?' I hate this question. I haven't really worked out how to answer it. We've made progress, built some good relationships, seen people start to explore faith. But the questions behind the question seem to be: 'How big are you now?'; 'Have you seen much growth?'; 'Are people becoming Christians?' The answer should be in the form of a number. A big one would be nice. But somehow, even though I could, I don't want to answer that question in that kind of way.

It's not that I'm not interested in people becoming Christians – I am, passionately. It's just that the kind of culture and approach that those sort of questions and assumptions are associated with does not do justice to the mission I am engaged in. These questions, this hunger for results, numbers, growth, etc, seems to belie an impatience, a belief that God, who we rightly believe to be capable of extraordinary things, is somehow in a hurry.

Our culture is saturated with hurry and urgency, with growth and with graphs that head ever upwards and to the right. At times we import this culture, its assumptions and techniques into our mission, and in the most part it is in danger of killing us.

I am trying then to explore and give voice to a different language to describe mission and its progress. The roots of that language are in the gospels and in the parables of the kingdom. They are in the trajectory of the gospel story which climaxes in an event that is about as far from growth language as you can imagine. The cross was an utter failure to those disciples who witnessed it. A hopeful, fruitful ministry had come to an end. Three years of building momentum, with a growing following, seemed to be about to climax with a major PR launch in the nation's capital. But it didn't work out that way. It was shattering.

Kingdom mission is organic, not mechanistic – it will not fit the sort of charts we dream in our minds

'How's it going, Jesus?' After three years, not very well perhaps. But Jesus was working to a different beat. The disciples were in a hurry too. The completion of the project was surely round the corner when Jesus came triumphantly into Jerusalem. Yet Jesus had laid down enough clues to suggest that that was not the scenario they should have expected. The parables speak a different language, one of organic, slow, patient transformation. A process that starts with the death of a seed. The burying of a small insignificant grain of matter. The humble, vulnerable downward movement into darkness and hiddenness of something that holds great hope.

Kingdom mission, mission in the wake of Jesus, is organic. Not mechanistic. It beats to a different drum. It speaks a different language. It will not fit the sort of charts we dream in our minds. It will not bend to our logic and our demands. It is paradoxical and out of our control. Our call is to partner with it, not manage it for our own schemes. And it requires a spirituality and life that is downwardly mobile, able to walk humbly in step with it.

I've been invited to explore this theme in a series of pieces on the Share blog. What does an organic approach to mission and ministry look like? What does it require of us? How can we be faithful to the pace and rhythm of God's Spirit and his kingdom? We need to tell an authentic story of incarnational mission in a language that is true.

Sharing together, learning together (Andrew Dunlop)

Andrew DunlopAndrew Dunlop asks how we share together and learn together.

I recently spent a very enjoyable day meeting pioneers on new-build developments from the St Alban's diocese. Both Peterborough and St Alban's dioceses receive money for pioneer posts from the Church Commissioners and we have a reciprocal arrangement for mutual accountability and encouragement in how the money is being spent.

I found it immensely useful to hear from others about what they are doing. It was also clear that although the house designs may look similar, no two new-build developments are the same.

I first visited the de Havilland Community Project near Hatfield with Nik Stevenson, a pioneer in Oakley Vale, Corby, and Brian Withington, Bishop's Adviser on Pioneer Ministry in Peterborough diocese. The project is run by Community Development Worker, Jason Blight. The development is built on the site of a former British Aerospace factory, where the de Havilland planes were built.

The first thing to note was that Jason was moving into a development that had already been there for seven years before he arrived, so there were lots of issues from the start. After seven years of not much community engagement, there was a high level of anger against the developers and others for things that were promised but not yet completed.

His role was envisioned by local ecumenical groups to build community, not to start a church. This he has been doing very well over the last two and a half years, running summer clubs for children, Saturday gatherings for the whole family, youth clubs, a community choir, mentoring disadvantaged children from the local school, engaging the students who live on the development into joining in (Hertfordshire University campus is on the doorstep), and even running free guitar lessons.

Although the house designs may look similar, no two new-build developments are the same

He wasn't really expecting church to form and tries not to assume the label 'pioneer minister', but there have been enough people asking questions about faith to warrant starting a 'not church' group, as he called it. This 'non-pioneer' is starting a 'not-church'!

The second place we visited was the village of Wixams just south of Bedford. This is being billed as four adjoining villages, but when it is finished it will be one fairly large new-build town with its own railway station on a line into London. Tim Jackson, the pioneer minister, has been in post for about six months.

This development seems more straightforward. A pioneer moves onto the development near the beginning of the building (there are currently about 450 houses built), so the issues he faces are more familiar: lack of places to meet, lack of shops, lack of infrastructure, developers still in charge of the land and open spaces, etc. He has begun by learning as much as possible from an existing community worker employed by the local housing association and by getting stuck into meeting people in the local school. In many ways he is still searching for a strategy and a core team, but I'm sure it will come. A village hall will be ready in the next six months and he is in talks to ensure a management committee is ready when it opens.

The benefit from days like this is in hearing, being encouraged and working out whether anything you've heard can be applied in your own locality. I've taken a few ideas away and I'm sure the others were similarly challenged too. In a few weeks, Jason and Tim will come to Northampton to visit me and Jacqui Burgess, pioneer with the Wellspring project in Wootton Fields. Sometime after that, we'll all make the trip to Corby to visit Nik and the new pioneer who will be installed there.

Soul of Sheffield: after the dam, the monster (Ric Stott)

Ric StottRic Stott discusses what happens when the dam bursts.

A group of us in Sheffield have got together to develop an idea we're calling the Soul of Sheffield. The plan involves exploring the stories of the city and how places hold meaning for us, how our lives are shaped by the places we live and work in and how they in turn are shaped by us.

From autumn 2011 we will be using an open space in one of the empty shops in the city centre where we will be building a model city based on the plan of Sheffield.

Artists, local businesses, schools, community groups and passers-by will all be invited to contribute – to build the model city in as concrete or imaginative a way as they wish. The exhibit will evolve and grow over time just as the city has done and will be a celebration of the history, the stories, the joys and sorrows of all who make the city a living and vibrant thing.

There is a great creative energy in our group, but all of that energy is being held back behind a dam as we try to find a suitable venue. But when the dam bursts and those with the power say 'yes' then that creative energy will be released.

In recent weeks we've been shown round some of the empty shops in the city centre for possible use. One or two of them look quite promising, so it seems that we will be able to press ahead soon.

Whilst there's an excitement at the dam bursting, along with that comes trepidation. If we had a firm 'no' then all our dreams and ideas would have been able to stay pristine, if unrequited. Now we have the dirty business of trying to make a dream work in the real world. Talking with other artists who are involved in this project, I get the sense of a seething mass of untamed energy that somehow needs to be corralled into something concrete and real without losing its life and vitality. As the dam bursts, so the monster emerges.