A town centre church in Hastings hosts a monthly Night Church to provide a safe space on Saturday evenings – a place where people have the opportunity to encounter God. Revd Annette Hawkins explains more.
Several people from different places had a vision to open a Night Church in Hastings. Some of them had been inspired by Church for the Night in Bournemouth (featured on expressions: making a difference and this website) as something that would work alongside and complement the ministry of Street Pastors in the area.
As we met together a team emerged and we found that the vision we shared was to create a safe space where people felt welcome and accepted. We would offer hospitality and be sensitive to people's needs; talking and praying for them if that is what they wanted but also giving them space and being careful not to get in the way of what the Holy Spirit was doing.
Towards the end of 2011 a team from various churches in Hastings transformed the interior of Holy Trinity Church in the town centre. We covered an 8ft cross with Christmas lights and decorations and set it in the chancel, organised a comfortable area where people could pray, light a candle and pin prayers to a prayer wall. We also set up a large café area with sofas, chairs and tables, good tea, coffee and cakes. The church was decorated with tealights and Christmas lights and different areas were created by using fencing panels covered in material!
There were poetry, art and multi-media displays and music and light projected out into the street to attract passers-by. Sixty people of different ages came in, some for a few minutes, others for a couple of hours. Some lit a candle and prayed silently, some chattered noisily and asked lots of questions, some poured their hearts out and shared deeply painful and moving experiences.
Most were amazed that they were allowed in at all – especially if they had been drinking, many of them expressed their appreciation and their intent to come back and bring their friends.
Encouraged, we opened the doors again on New Year's Eve and similar numbers of people came, several who had been to the first event but many new people as well. Our next event will be around Valentine's Day and we plan to open monthly from then on. Up to now we have advertised Night Church as running from 10pm to 2am but in reality we have kept it open as long as people needed us. We're thinking that we may now have a cut-off point of 3am though on New Year's Eve people were still walking through the doors at 4.30am. One person who had been contemplating suicide that night said the fact that they could come into Night Church had saved them from doing that.
Holy Trinity is an Anglo-Catholic church and a very beautiful building; the local council pay for the chancel to be lit and the light can be seen through the stained glass windows. It's one of those 'wow' sort of interiors and when people walk in for the first time their first reaction is one of amazement! The church is in an interregnum at the moment but the predominantly older congregation have been so helpful and are really thrilled that their church is being used in this way. They have also been generous in giving us storage space there. One of the most exciting aspects of this ministry is that at the last count there were people from 10 different churches and seven different denominations working together with no agenda other than to serve the community and show God's love.
Night Church is missional in that we seek to help people to encounter the living God, particularly the unchurched and dechurched. We actively discourage Christians from coming unless they are on the team. At the moment we are not in a position to disciple people although the hope is that, as we build relationships through regular contact, we will be able to encourage people in their faith journey. We are at a very early stage and are quite open to the leading of the Spirit as to what the next stage may be.
We run the film evening once a month on a Thursday night but it is more than an event because we are seeking to build a Christian community. It is taking place in the church building at the moment as we have got two fantastic projector screens in our main church area and we make the most of that – but we also try to make it as informal as possible. We also have two other halls in the church and they are also kitted out with DVD projectors so we can use those spaces if we want a more intimate setting. Cinema going is about the whole experience, not just the film itself, so popcorn and sweets are available and we have had ice creams and hot dogs in the past. About 20 to 25 people come along on average and we have an equivalent Reel Church for children which is also very popular.
When Andy and Ali moved to Dorset, the Café became a social enterprise with a board of management and a project manager running it day by day. My wife Katy and I moved here two years ago. I have been in ministry for 27 years and, at 59, I am probably one of the oldest 'pioneer ministers' in CofE history!
Mine is a five year appointment and we knew it was vital to get those strong building blocks of community in place right from the start. As a result we moved a lot of events away from Vicars Café and hosted them in our own home. We are fortunate in having a large dining room, kitchen and living room so we began to meet together as a group around meals. Food and drink became the staple of what we were doing and when people eat together, somehow there is a little heaven in the ordinary.
A real turning point came when GraceSpace came up with the idea of having a different meal theme for each Sunday in the month. On the first Sunday we have Breakfast when people turn up at 10am to help us cook breakfast together; we will then organise a spiritual thought or reflection at some stage while we're eating. The whole thing can run for about three hours as people often want to stick around and discuss things.
The fourth Sunday is based around supper time at about 6pm. It is called Ikon; this is more reflective and allows people to share what comes out of that time together. Typically they will have bread, soup, pate and cheese at that one.
This illness has prompted the devolving, training, encouraging and mentoring of new people into leadership. For this fresh expression to develop we want to create another network of community, a second GraceSpace. For that, we need leaders, though we have also taken a long, hard look at our purpose in all of this. It can't just be to build community. How do we look outside and make a difference?
However, after the first few sessions it became clear that we were not reaching the people we were aiming for. Another church in Pontypridd had started an all-singing, all-dancing café service, complete with live bands, at the same time as us and that attracted the students. We couldn't compete with that. After a few months we were at the stage of thinking Café Church was an interesting experiment that hadn't worked and we would let it die a natural death.
I also run 
1st Sunday has developed in a very different way to the Porth Café Church in that it has drawn in people who had left traditional church, whereas in Porth we have appealed across ages and across theologies within traditional churches. Our main problem in Trefforest comes with leadership because inviting people to share leadership responsibilities for something they see as part of the traditional church – which they feel very disillusioned about – makes it very difficult. One of those who comes along is an active lay preacher. She has very much enjoyed attending 1st Sunday@5 and not having to lead. I have respected that but we will have to look at people who are willing to find a way of continuing it as my term in the church is likely to end in about a year's time.
In 2009 a group of Christians hired East Worthing Community Centre for 'a couple of weeks' to trial a café church. Now, over two years on, and an average of 50 people attend East Worthing Café Church every week. Leader John Beales explains more.
I had been Elim trained and was previously an elder at Elim Christian Fellowship in Worthing for three years so I knew the area and people. My wife and I had no plans to start up a church at all but every time I went by the Centre it was as if God was saying, 'go on'. Right from the start, when we were beginning to pray about it, I spoke to all the church leaders in that part of Worthing and involved them in our thinking and plans. They were very supportive of us starting something there.
Children are welcome but they have to come with either a parent or an adult and they are then responsible for them. We get about 50 people on average and roughly a dozen kids between the ages of three and 17. It's well mixed and about quarter of the people are unchurched. We also do fun activities in the half term, As an illusionist it's great to be able to use those skills in God's service by highlighting biblical truths in a way that people can understand. Our intention is not to force 'church' down their throats. That's why I also hope to develop my IllusionandTruth ministry and use it as a tool to reach out to people with the Gospel through mime, drama, illusions and escapology in a fresh, fun and creative way.
We recently welcomed a special guest – Wolfie, the mascot for the Warrington Wolves rugby league team. People queued up to get a photo taken with him. Everyone really enjoyed that – except for fans of the club's local rivals, the Widnes Vikings!
I love the traditional, I love the inherited but that alone is not going to be sustainable in its present form for the next 50 years. What will carry Bold Street through is the network of church communities developing. New Song has grown beyond what we ever imagined. Thinking back to the original idea for it all, we might well end up going into Costa and we have an invitation to do so but the next thing is Pub Church in a local bar on a Sunday night.
In February we launched a Monday church just for them. United Media Church uses film clips and computer games to teach the gospel message fortnightly on Monday evenings. These meetings, which include a short prayer time and all-important food, take place in an informal 'café church' environment. A variety of films are used and the same format has encouraged some to return to Sunday church as well.
e now regularly attract up to 16 young people from the ages of 9 to 13, most of whom have been brought along by someone else in the group. That's very good news in that most of those children have not previously had a link with any sort of church at all but the challenge is that we outgrew our original room at Kingswood; it was simply too small for what we were doing.
They are exploring their faith and the world around them in new ways and it includes things like supporting a youth project and families in Kenya, and sponsoring a child. They have raised quite a bit of money for their charity projects, a sleepover in the church raised more than £600. This is a way of being 'church' that our young people asked for. They also give into a collection every week because the adults do that in the main church and it's important to be reminded that we are part of something much bigger.
We have always seen this as a fresh expression of church and not a church youth group and we need to keep that focus on being a different way of doing church. Otherwise it could easily become a youth club where you just come along and have a bit of a laugh.
Mark Rodel is City Centre Pioneer Minister for the Diocese of Portsmouth and Associate Priest in the parish of St Luke, Southsea. He looks at what has been happening at Sunday Sanctuary.