Captain Louise Weller, of Church Army New Zealand, tells how the X-site community continues to develop in the wake of natural disaster.
Five years ago we began an outreach into a suburb in Christchurch with high unemployment, many single families and huge needs. We began by taking our bus into the streets and followed that up three years ago by starting an afterschool programme in a local venue with the expectation that parents would come along and become involved as well.
This programme, with a strong Christian emphasis, was geared for families and encouraged the building up of the local community in a caring environment. Sadly we have lost touch with some families because of the earthquakes we suffered here in September 2010 and February 2011. Many people left Christchurch as a result and others went because of housing problems.
It was been extremely challenging with many families struggling. There has also been an increase in marriage breakdowns – partly due to the stress of the quakes' ongoing aftershocks.
The good news is that we are becoming a community of faith and it is exciting; it is just not developing at the speed I thought it might. One of the keys to growth has been our visiting programme and our dependence on God in prayer. We know that there will be challenges and this is good because we see these challenges as opportunities to see God at work among us.
We worked on a plan and a vision as how to improve that because the church building itself wasn't situated particularly well as a community venue. One of the most deprived estates in the country was on the doorstep, at one point St Ann's was branded the gun capital of Britain, and yet there wasn't a Methodist presence at all. However, I had a good knowledge of the area because of my job as Director of Business and Community at a school there.
One of our key challenges stemmed from the fact that our leadership team had been part of an established leadership of a church but we hadn't got a 'sending' church to support us in what we were doing. We looked to our Superintendent and our Circuit and received their backing – not in financial terms but their support was crucial.
This is great but it can also be very hard work. Easter Sunday morning, for instance, was very challenging. A new family came along with four children, all of whom ran riot. But this is what we are here for, so that a family like that can come and feel they can be as they really are. It may be uncomfortable for the rest of us but that's the way it is when you really begin to deal with people outside the communities we're familiar with.
I lead the worship and we sometimes have a local preacher or it's just led by the team. We usually have 15 minutes of singing which lead into a time where children (and adults) act out a Bible story all based around a theme. Then we have a ten minute break – a sort of 'interval' – and we always have a craft activity to create something to take home. The following week we always ask, 'What have you done with what you made? Have you used it for prayer? If so, how?'
We're very clearly identifiable now as Church @ Community because we all wear blue polo shirts; the community call us the Blue Shirt Brigade! At first it was just the leaders wearing the shirts or badges; now I'd say nearly 70% of our regulars have got Church @ Community hoodies or polo shirts. When we started I suggested that every time there was any sort of local event we needed to be there. We spent a long time 'investing' in things and, as a result, the local councillors got to know who we were.
We recently got to the point of asking, 'How is this going to go forward?' I told the whole church that the vision needs to be everybody's, I am happy to play my part but I can't do it all, I can only do so much. They needed to know that it now needs to be them taking it forward. We are encouraging everyone to contribute to it in some way and we have already seen a men's breakfast being started in a local pub and cake and coffee mornings.
We have just had quite wide-ranging discussions with our Superintendent about this and agreed that we will explore the possibility of becoming a bona-fide, 'official', church in September. The fear is, 'Are we going to become the same as a traditional church?'
I think there is an understanding of fresh expressions within Church @ Community but I presently don't put the Methodist stamp on it. I know I'm Methodist but does it really matter? Me putting up a big sign is not going to make people in our community come to us. Methodism was originally all about going out and starting new things and that's what I see with Church@Community. It's also important to remain flexible in approach. We keep on asking what people in the community want, and we have changed as a result.
If we stick to our values of being part of the community and not just keep focusing on Sunday services and work with other organisations, things will happen. Two things stand out for me:
Tim Carter asks whether Anglicanism must die.
Attending the introductory 'Developing Consciousness Course'.
I often struggled to find the Jesus I'd met in the guitar shop when I was in a church; the worlds seemed so far apart. I've been involved youth work and youth ministry training for about 14 years but I've always been more interested in the people 'out there' rather than those on the 'inside'.
The name, Mighty Shed, comes from my home studio, which is housed… in a shed. The Bible says that 'people look at the outside of a person but God looks at the heart' and we know that significant things can come out of something that looks very small and understated, like a shed. In the same way, we believe people are full of potential – we are all mighty sheds!
1. A community church for young people, made up of two groups – Xplosion (for school years 6-9) and the Big Bang (for school years 10 and upwards). The Big Bang, as the older group, 'owns' and runs the Xplosion younger group; it also has an investment in maintaining itself and the younger group through participation and empowerment which helps to develop young leaders. At the moment, the total turnout is around 35-45 plus 'grown-ups'. Alongside this I have spent a lot of time in primary school work and found it invaluable in investing in local community and young people – particularly if you are looking to set up something for the long-term.
We've been meeting with a small bunch of young people in a local coffee house to plan, pray and lay the foundations for all of this. In March, we had an amazing launch gig with an internationally renowned musician performing and running workshops. Off the back of that we've set-up Facebook pages and a website and run workshops. We are now planning more gigs that look to raise money for local causes and give creative opportunities for other young people.
In terms of context, Uplyme and Lyme Regis have a huge population in the summer and a comparatively small one in the winter. There is quite a lot of seasonal work so, if you are a young person, available employment is often through service industries. In general it's a very prosperous area but, like all places, there's more to it if you dig a little deeper.
At the moment, there is a meeting at least once a week of youth church or Mighty Shed in some form or another. Over time I would like to draw together these two strands so that they can feed each other.
The Bridge's worship time does take place on a Sunday, between the hours of 5 and 7. People will often come and they are surprised by how traditional it can be. We do make use of worship songs and we make use of what we call performance or presentation songs – it will involve the children right at the very beginning which often can be pretty wacky and pretty lively, they then leave for their own activities and we go into a time where we begin to look at a particular issue and focus on what the bible might be saying about something.
We have been blessed beyond our wildest dreams by the Hinckley Methodist Circuit and its commitment to The Bridge, not only in terms of finances but also in terms of staffing.
People sometimes ask, where does your church meet? When people now ask me that question I will think about the social worker who perhaps will be dealing with a very difficult child on a Wednesday afternoon, the person who is a gardener… there is no divide between what we claim to practice on a Sunday and what we live out during the rest of the week.
The crowd then sang 'To God be the Glory' and prayers were said with the laying on of hands for a fresh outpouring of God's Holy Spirit. The newly-drenched quartet rushed home to shower and change as everyone else made their way to the Methodist Church Hall for hot drinks and cake.
Those being baptised were two 18-year-olds who gave their lives to the Lord at Soul Survivor last year and the other two adults are also closely involved in what we do with X-treme. I was thrilled to be part of it and amazed to see what God had done. At one point it all seemed very different because, after three years of doing the project, no-one had been saved. I told God that I longed to see just one person come to faith and then we went to Soul Survivor and nine people made commitments!
Like many chapels it dwindled but about three years ago we had an opportunity to apply for funding from the Welsh Government to improve the overgrown and rubbish-strewn area behind the chapel to make a training garden. This would be used to encourage people in our relatively deprived area to grow their own vegetables and improve their diets.
There are not many of us – we make double figures on a good day – but we're beginning to be approached about hosting community events. These include a performance of short plays written by the school pupils, a craft evening, a community archive evening and a 'visioning workshop' by the Transition Swansea organisation. We hope we might also become an outlet for the Trussell Trust food bank.
The result might be a classed as a 'para church'. As someone who spent a considerable part of my ministry in what used to be called 'Industrial Mission', I am reminded of the work of Ted Wickham as Industrial Chaplain in the Diocese of Sheffield many years ago. The then-Bishop of Sheffield, Leslie Hunter, had appointed Ted Wickham to further the Bishop's "vision of a revitalised Church and a Church re-established among the industrial working class."