ben-clymo, Author at FX ARCHIVE...

Mind the Gap

It has been a time of great change for Mind the Gap. What started as a project in the Gateshead and Jarrow Methodist Circuit in 2001 became a church in its own right seven years later. Stephen Murray took over the reins as leader in September 2009; he tells us what happened next.

Mind the Gap had been set up to offer support, discipleship and alternative worship for those who were feeling isolated in established church. It also had a missional aim as a cell church initiative to reach people with the Gospel.

We were based in cells and also got together every month to worship, as well as offering regular faith finding courses and seeker events. The idea wasn't to plant a fresh expression of church as such, we just tried to follow what God was doing at the time and respond to that.

It was fantastic to see people being renewed in their faith, discover it for the first time, or grow in maturity and we were so grateful for the backing from people across the Circuit and others in authority who built us up with their support. So much was going on in those early days and it would have been very easy to lose sight of what it was all about, so you have to keep it at the forefront of your mind and your prayers.

Growing leaders and helping people to achieve their potential was something that underpinned everything. Elaine Lindridge was our leader at that time and she helped us through a major transition in 2008 when many members of the Mind the Gap – who were also involved in their own local churches and doing too much as a result – were released to go back to those fellowships.

A relatively few number of people remained but they saw Mind the Gap as their spiritual home and so Mind the Gap became more formally recognised as a church in 2009. I was Elaine's assistant leader three years ago before going on to co-lead it with her; then I took the lead one year ago and Elaine became my coach. Last September I took on full responsibility for overall leadership, planning strategy, and pastoral care, but I am so grateful for that model of encouraging lay and indigenous people and preparing the ground for a leadership change.

We meet at Sheriff Hill Methodist Church's building at 5pm on Sundays, and have midweek cells in various homes. Our Sunday sessions always start with food because we see that as an integral part of our worship. We now have a rota of people who come along and do a buffet tea, or something like that, for us.

Focusing on the importance of building community with food has made a big impact on the life of the church – in fact it became so much part and parcel of who we are that people have said they feel very strange not to be fed if they go to a service anywhere else!

A worship leader will start up at about 5.30pm and we'll go through to 6.30-7. There are no set rules as to what happens but generally there is a speaker or people sharing what has been happening for about 10minutes. At other times we'll use the NOOMA DVDs by Rob Bell to prompt discussion; on other occasions we use songs and projected words.

When we first started, we ran Alpha in that timeslot and that seemed to work very well for us. Now we're starting to think about how we can engage effectively in all-age worship. We are also looking at employing a youth worker just for a Sunday evening as we are a very small church and it’s a very small group of people who do the work.

Mind the Gap became a variation of what church is on a Sunday, and it's what we do in the week during the cell that makes us different. Discipleship in a cell group has stimulated a kind of shifting mindset about what the Church is and what we do in it.

There have been quite a few who have gone through Mind the Gap but others have made roots here. It's interesting to see that people today tend to be committed to God but not so committed to an individual church.

Our numbers can range between 10 and 25 but we will get a core of people here every week. Up to eight kids from the ages of 9-13 also turn up on a Sunday. In all I'd say we probably have regular contact on a Sunday, at least once a month, with about 40 people.

At the moment we have got two cells rather than three. In what is an interesting experiment one cell has divided during its weekly meeting with one half going into a room to do cell material and the other half (about four people) watching an Alpha Express DVD to see how Alpha works in a cell.

Those who have committed to cell have grown a great deal in confidence and are prepared to do more and more things. One example is when a homeless lady came into Mind the Gap having been to the main church in the morning where she had been given a crisis number to ring if she wanted to find a bed for the night. Instead she came to us, shared our food, and sat through a service after which one of our members said she would help to find this lady a bed. People are doing things like that through the growth in fellowship. It's key because it's about not trying to do things on an inappropriate scale, doing things that are right for our normal figures of 18-22 people rather than something more suitable for a church of 80-100.

It's all about being flexible in responding to change and opportunities. When we were a Circuit-wide one-off monthly event, we'd have a worship band and a lot of people would come along. Now we meet every week and usually have one worship leader but that's much more appropriate to the surroundings.

Some of the new opportunities include a family film morning with refreshments on the last Saturday of the month. What we have found is that we don't get as many church people come along to that but we have made contact with about six or seven people we had never met before. The possibility is always there for them to come along on a Sunday as well but we don't force anything, we just want to provide a service in what is a socially deprived area.

It's all relatively small numbers but it feels like it's the right thing to be doing. In 2010 we are also trying to do two to three prayer labyrinths – though in the place of the Good Friday labyrinth this year we decided to do things differently and screen The Miracle Maker animated film. Future plans include hiring the children's pool at the local swimming baths so that the little ones can have fun there. All of these community events are free, we want to be seen to be giving and not taking.

We are also looking forward to our first Mens' Breakfast in July when our speaker will be a man was a local gangster before becoming a Christian and a church leader. The idea is very much to try and engage with men in their 20s and 30s.

In future, I would just like to see the church increase in its vision for the community and get to know more and more people around us. I also pray that those who are already involved in Mind the Gap will be not so much committed to the work of the church for itself but instead be committed to mission and evangelism focusing on friendship.

I'd also like us to grow and take on the cell values, build ourselves up and help others on their journey. The Church has to be missional so we need to set up worship that's different but engaging. Deliberate choices have to be made in what you want to do and that should be to reach people who are not yet Christians. Putting on events for people just like us is not what we're about. One of our values at Mind the Gap is that we don't want to take people from another church fellowship, I sometimes feel a bit sad when I see some congregations growing simply because people are coming from other churches.

In the Church in general, it can seem that your main aim in life is to get money and raise money. What does that mean for us? We lose focus as to what we are all about. At Mind the Gap, we just try to cover costs and trust that God will provide. Yes it's important to be wise with the resources that God has given us but it can't be right if the finances push out all thoughts of reaching people for Christ.

Colin Brown

Just over a year ago Colin Brown moved to Cornwall to start a fresh expression of church amongst the artistic community. It's a slow, steady task but one Colin, Church Army and the Diocese of Truro are committed to.

It's not easy starting a fresh expression of church from scratch at the best of times, but when you are trying to engage with a dispersed community of artists on the south coast of Cornwall, it is even more difficult. Colin Brown knows he has his work cut out. "As well as the joys of being in a beautiful place, and doing what I love to do – painting – I find myself with a lot of questions", he said.

And it is quite a list: "How do I follow God's lead in this? Where do I put my energy today? How do I go about meeting people who don't go to church and help them to become aware of God in their lives… in their art? What might church look like for them, and what part do I play in developing that?"

But slowly and surely the way forward for Colin is beginning to emerge. He started with prayer, valuing the importance of listening, silence and space, and then realised God was leading him to meet certain people and opening certain doors. He was asked to help with chaplaincy work at the local art college, given the chance to mount an exhibition in a local pub, found a temporary studio space in a local vicarage and began to meet other artists at a weekly night class.

Colin is at the stage of building community amongst those he meets. It is something which he believes he needs to take slowly and gently, and is grateful that both Church Army and the Diocese of Truro, who support him, agree. "They have given me the freedom and the permission to be here, as an artist amongst fellow artists, to be inculturated in the artistic community, and to be accepted".

He is aware of the risks he is taking too. He has worked for the church for 15 years but his pioneering work in Cornwall seems to be much more fragile. He's realised how important it is to gather those around him who 'get it' but still admits that things may not work out.

"I know that in this particular moment I need to be faithful to my sense of where God is leading me, but it may be that it all just fizzles out. But I know that I have been true to myself and I know God is saying to me 'Colin, enjoy it, enjoy the journey and don't think too much about what is going to happen tomorrow'".

And deep down Colin has a dream – to see lots of artists in and around Falmouth discovering and expressing a deep sense of God coming through their work. "And who knows where that might lead," he wonders.

Fellowship @ Grannies – update Jun10

A Nottinghamshire tea room continues to host a regular week night meeting for fellowship, worship and prayer and Bible study/discussion. For a few people Fellowship@Grannies continues to be church, while others are on their 'way through', linking in – or returning to – established local congregations.

Revd Janet Tanner took on the leadership of Cotgrave Methodist Church in September last year after the Revd Andy Fyall moved on to become a Superintendent Minister. Janet outlines what has happened since then.

An Alpha course had been the starting point for Fellowship@Grannies, and we hosted another course from September to December 2009. Those not directly involved in leading or providing food and so on, continued to meet for fellowship and prayer nearby. Again, since September, we are only running one 'stream' rather than two.

We get about eight to 12 people to the weekly fellowship, including a few younger mums. They are mostly drawn from Alpha though some have initially come for the fellowship and then done the Alpha course. Others see it as a stepping stone to developing their faith.

There are people who have needed three or four years to build in faith and confidence but Grannies has really helped them to do that. A couple of them will be received into membership of the Methodist Church in the autumn.

Last autumn we focused on Alpha. In the spring we concentrated on getting into the Bible and we worked our way through Mark's Gospel. There's a leadership team of about half a dozen of us, and for the summer term we encouraged people to pair up with a Grannies leader to co-present a session about a selected Bible character. People tackled it in very different ways and we had some very lively evenings! The idea was to develop new leaders, try out new skills and help to grow greater confidence: I very much believe that it is working.

This summer we also have a focus on prayer, and the different leaders will pick out different aspects of prayer to talk about in their own sessions. All of this helps to grow leadership; in fact Grannies does seem to be encouraging people to take leaps of faith and imagination with someone considering ordained ministry and others taking on the challenges of different leadership roles elsewhere.

People are mostly going down the Methodist route because that's what they’re accustomed to though there are some folk who belong to Anglican churches and other Christian fellowships in the villages around and about who have really appreciated Grannies too. Leadership can take folk in all sorts of directions and at Grannies we have to see ourselves as building people up and letting them go. There's no doubt that it keeps everything fresh but it's a flying by the seat of the pants job at times! The ripples from Fellowship@Grannies could turn into tidal waves but not necessarily in Cotgrave.

In saying that, Grannies has certainly made a very small but quite significant impact on the local community. I believe this is due to the fact that Grannies is not only home to this Fellowship but also functions as an 'ordinary' tea room and Louise Beaumont and her staff team are there all the time. It is a lovely 'front door' into matters relating to faith and Christianity but it's not a traditional church door, something that would be off-putting to so many people.

These things are always very fragile, it all depends on who walks in – and who walks out – but there are lots of good things going on at the moment and we are very grateful to God for that.

Fellowship @ Grannies

A teashop in a former mining town in Nottinghamshire provided the venue for a week night Alpha course. It was so successful that the meetings grew into a brand new church held on Thursday evenings: Fellowship@Grannies.

Members of a local Methodist church in a former mining town just outside Nottingham wanted to repeat their experience of an Alpha course with their non-Christian friends. 'But,' they told their minister, the Revd Andy Fyall, in 2002, 'they won't come to church.' Looking around for an alternative venue, Andy rang the local teashop, Grannies. Owner Louise Beaumont was only too happy to help. A descendant of an Alpha course herself, she had, it turned out, a vision for using her teashop as a place of ministry.

'If you feel led to do something, give it a go,' recommends Andy. 'If God is in it, it will happen.'

The teashop began to open for a new Alpha course on Thursday evenings, a day

originally chosen to fit Fyall’s commitments to his three existing congregations. Adverts were placed in local publications, through doors and in the teashop. Nineteen people came, fourteen of whom stayed for a follow up course, eventually taking part in the support and leadership of successive Alphas.

Out of these has grown Fellowship@Grannies, a new church of 25 people. It meets along the cell group principles of 'welcome, worship, word, witness'. A social time of coffee and cake is followed by modern worship songs and prayer, which is spontaneous and low-key, 'often conversational', says Andy. Bibles are provided so that everyone can follow the reading, page numbers being announced along with chapter and verse. A time of interactive study follows, with a strong emphasis on encouraging members to share their own faith. Outside resources such as Missionary Church, Missionary Journeys by Steven Croft aid this process.

'Tea rooms do not shout faith, but there is something different about them and in the fellowship on Thursdays, there is a welcome and a quiet holiness that is very special,' says Louise.

Cameron House

Revd Cathy Stone is a deacon in the Diocese of Toronto and executive director of its Rural Outreach Committee (ROC). She describes how helping those on the edge of society has led to blessing for herself and the inherited church.

We have always worked closely with Cameron House, a shelter for women in Peterborough, Ontario. Cameron House staff answer the Rural Outreach Committee's crisis line at evenings, weekends and holidays and it is not uncommon for us to share cases and information.

During one debrief, a member of staff mentioned to me that it would be wonderful if I could "bring church to Cameron House." I asked permission from Bill McNabb, executive director of Brock Mission – which owns and operates the shelter. Trent Durham Bishop, Linda Nicholls also gave me the green light.

I first met a group of six to eight ladies at the facility two years ago and they all expressed a strong desire to learn more about Jesus and God. Although a few had attended church in the past, they really had no idea of why they were Christians. They acknowledged that they were burnt out, sad, and hoped that there was something "out there" in the way of spirituality that might help them.

We began with a basic Christianity course, which I adapted especially for our group, and we took time for prayer, worship, bible study and discussion. It then became clear that most (if not all) of the ladies had suffered from sexual, physical or emotional abuse as children, and also later as adults. Many had addictions to drugs and/or alcohol. They had families that they could not connect with or who didn't wish to connect with them. Others had been "hurt" by the Church and didn't trust the corporate church system or church people.

We worked our way through further courses and a Christian friend bought us 12 Life Recovery Bibles. By that time our group had grown to 10. The results have been wonderful and we have seen God at work in these lives again and again.

At first we would meet around the dining room table at Cameron House (not always perfect because other residents tended to walk in and out to use the fridge), but now we have our own beautiful room. It is our "God space." The house itself has changed too. Where it was once quite messy and dirty, we now see women helping each other to organise rooms and tidy things up. Instead of blank stares or frowns, I notice smiling faces when I drive up to the home of what has now become my second family.

One woman who was homeless and poverty-ridden when I met her in 2008 has now received funding to complete her Masters of Social Work; three of those who met with us have been baptised; another requested that her new apartment be blessed; still another revealed to me recently that she has stopped drinking and smoking and will be attending a recovery programme as well as continuing on with our group. It is not just the residents we help, but those who find shelter elsewhere continue to come back on Wednesday evenings to learn more about God's word and how it is relevant in our everyday lives. We share very personal concerns around the table and what is said in the room stays in the room. This has built a strong bond and trust with each other. We laugh, cry, pray, discuss theology, study the Bible and sing worship songs.

When I first told the women that I was an Anglican Deacon they were amazed. One Sunday, a lady asked me to take her to one of our traditional church services. During the drive there she told me that she was a crack addict and had only stopped using the drug two nights ago, but she still wanted to go to church. We had no sooner arrived than she needed to use the bathroom to vomit. I helped her up from her knees, washed her face and took her up to church, but she was just too sick to stay so I drove her home. Afterwards, when I returned to church for coffee, one parishioner told me of her own problem with alcohol and another spoke of an adult son with addictions. This lady's presence at church had helped others open up about their own struggles.

This fresh expression of church can help not only society's outcasts, but also society itself, by offering those who live on the edge a second chance to become healthy members of our communities and to bring to them the Good News of Jesus Christ in a safe environment.

The church family at Cameron House is a beautiful thing to witness and I feel blessed to be a part of their lives.

Adrenalin – update

Adrenalin reached the end of its 'life' in November 2007, and the group's founder Revd Phil White has now moved on to be associate vicar of Holy Trinity Leicester. Phil's successor as vicar of Hope Hamilton Church, Revd Liz Rawlings, has just taken up the post. The church is continuing to reach out to the community in a wide variety of ways, including through The Unit – a venue managed by the church on a Tesco's site nearby. Its manager, volunteer Ros Henwood, says a wide range of activities offers many opportunities for involvement in local life. She explains more.

Adrenalin was one of a number of things that the church did in the way of a fresh expression. In all honesty, it's difficult to say what's fresh about our church at times because some people call our whole church a fresh expression but sometimes it's just that we are a normal church doing things differently.

We consider our 'church' as such to be the small groups we have during the week. On Sunday mornings we meet for breakfast in Hope Hamilton School, it's all very informal and then, depending on which Sunday of the month it is, we will follow it up with prayer, teaching, or going out into the community to do a clean-up or remove graffiti.

Once a month we also have an afternoon café church which we call re.turn. That meets at the school at 4.30pm when we have worship, discussion, prayer, children's activities and a coffee bar.

Most of our energy over the past 18 months has been taken up establishing a venue for young people in the community. It had been an empty retail unit and we got it rent free from Tesco, we then raised funds and got The Unit fitted out.

It is really versatile in that it takes up to 59 people and sits next to a Tesco superstore. We are in a multi-cultural area, 70% Gujarati Hindu, and several Asian families have hired The Unit for big family gatherings so they can feed large numbers of people in one go.

Other things are Familyzone which is for families with primary age children and Tea at Tesco's (t@t) where about 10 women meet every Thursday for lunch, discussion and sometimes prayer at the Hamilton Tesco coffee shop. New Shoots Gardening Club has seen us work with the primary school to set up an allotment and involve the community in looking after it. It's a follow-on from what we have done as a church in planting bulbs around the estate.

Adrenalin

'Church' for one congregation in Leicester does not finish with a cup of tea and then home for lunch.

Hope Hamilton Church sets out on Sunday afternoons to a piece of recreation ground nearby. There they set up a BBQ, untangle the kite strings and another time of worship begins. Gradually, others arrive, play on the basketball court, have their nails painted, fly kites or simply chat. A story from the Bible might be included, and the time finishes with a prayer.

It’s a great time for getting to know the neighbours and for the church to be visible in the community.

Phil White the minister says:

For too long now the Church has had only one way of doing or being Church – the gathered model of coming together in a dedicated building on a Sunday morning. We believe that there are other more creative models. Adrenalin is a new model of Church.

We hope to be church centred around a mutual interest of active and adventurous sports including canoeing, power kiting and climbing. In this context we will explore our faith in God.

We consider that the essence of Church is incorporated in three relationships, 'Up' with God, 'In' with each other and 'Out' with the wider community.

We use the swimming pool at Leicester Leys Leisure Centre and the River Soar for the canoeing. We have a selection of kites and buggies and we fly locally on the public field on Sandhills Avenue, Hamilton.

Our aim is to provide an opportunity for people to have fun together as church, where life, fun, outdoor pursuits and faith interact.

Adrenalin is for anyone – people with a faith or with none. All you need is an interest in the activities – no expertise necessary.

Taste and See

The Taste and See café church in Kidsgrove appeared in expressions: the dvd – 1: stories of church for a changing culture. How have things moved on since then? Graham Harrison tells how things haven't quite gone 'according to plan'.

We have never managed to grow a congregation; God just doesn't seem to be using us like that. There seems to be a regular community but they are not a worshipping community. It hurts us in a way but Taste and See wasn't actually reaching the people we wanted to reach, so we started to approach things differently.

Times have changed and we've had to change with them in that lots of people are coming to us for help and advice so we have to respond to what the community is asking of us. Of course it does prompt the question, 'Are we still a fresh expression?' Well, we are doing quite a lot of things that would signify 'yes, we are' though a regular act of worship isn't part of the picture at the moment – but if that's what God wants, that's fine by me.

It's true that we are not doing what we aimed to do four-and-a-half years ago because we've had to adapt. As things are changing we have to be careful not to spend too much energy on mourning the past. We have been given a wonderful opportunity to show Christ's love in practical terms, and be a means to pray for – and with – people in the community.

At the moment we find that our most successful thing is simply being there for people. Quite a few community groups use our prayer rooms and lounge at the back of the cafe, a local mental health charity for instance uses the rooms during the day and it's great for them and their clients to have a coffee shop to hand.

We do quite a lot of pastoral listening and being there for customers. If one of the local churches has had a funeral, people have a "magical" way of finding us afterwards. If possible we like to have a 'spare' volunteer on duty at all times so that someone is always free to sit and chat if needs be.

Taste and See is a project within the Methodist Church Chester and Stoke-on-Trent District and we are sponsored by the Kidsgrove Circuit. They have been very supportive, particularly when they saw that the community's needs had changed and how we had adapted to those needs.

In spite of that support, things are financially very tight and we could never be 100% self-sufficient. When the coffee shop started we were on declining grants for five years and the hard truth is that they will come to an end in September. We have a management committee to oversee what we do so there are some tough questions as to whether we can replace that funding.

We are officially open from 10am to 2pm, Monday to Saturday though things can be a little more flexible than that as the café is staffed by volunteers and we're always on the lookout for new people to make tea and butties, wash-up, or just be there with a smile and a chat.

Kidsgrove is a funny old town because it has got no high street chains in it and businesses come and go very quickly. Locals will kind of look at you with suspicion for the first three years because the feeling is 'we don’t know whether we want to get involved because we're not sure you'll still be around in a little while.' When they do finally make it through the doors, they're intrigued as to why Taste and See has got such a peaceful atmosphere.

Recently the challenge has increased with the introduction of a Costa Coffee on a local Tesco site just down the road from us. It will open from 8am to 7pm every day. So why would people come out of Tesco and head to the town instead? We hope because they'll recognise that we offer a lot more than a choice between latte and cappuccino.

We have also got our eye on other things we can do. We'll be organising more regular Saturday night events when people will have the chance to have an evening out for not a lot of money.

Something that caused a little bit of confusion is the relationship between us and a project called The Galley. The first group that really came to faith through Taste and See found that they wanted their own expression of worship on a Sunday. A lot of people simply assumed that we had changed our name but The Galley is completely separate.

They first met in an old disused pub called The Galley, and then they moved but kept the name. They were without a permanent home for a couple of years, first of all going to Kidsgrove town hall and later a Methodist Church building in the middle of Kidsgrove.

These are former mining communities, and each area used to have its own youth and community centre. Staffordshire County Council is now trying to get rid of them. The Galley has saved the Kidsgrove Community Centre building and they now meet there on Sunday afternoons.

We get on well, and I'm delighted that the one thing that Kidsgrove is well served in is Christian denominational places of worship, schools, nurseries and fellowships. Pentecostal, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist, and Salvation Army – they're all here. This may be a time of change for Taste and See but it's good to know that the people of God remain very much in evidence here.

Tudeley Messy Church

Revd Pamela Ive is parish deacon at All Saints,Tudeley, and she is thrilled at the development of Messy Church in her area. She tells the story so far.

I attended the Fresh Expressions mission shaped ministry course from September 2008 to July 2009 in Rochester. It was really useful and made me rethink a lot of things about how we reach out to people and, in certain aspects, also helped me to be more realistic about which goals were achievable.

As a result we changed the style and format of midweek after-school activity we had been doing for quite a while and I have been surprised and delighted at the response we've had to it.

In the past we had a monthly meeting called Light on Thursday which was really a discussion time with a very few mums who had gone through confirmation, and a couple of others who had joined along the way. There was a minimal amount of worship while the children had tea but there was not much faith input for them. That folded after about four years when the volunteer helpers moved on.

I prayed with a member of a local Baptist Church about the direction in which we were meant to go. A third person came along from Christians Together in Capel and she had a vision that we should set up Messy Church so we decided to pool our resources and put our energies into that.

We are in a Local Ecumenical Partnership (Tudeley cum Capel with Five Oak Green), and Messy Church really came together because of the involvement of a number of churches. We also have an Ecumenical Church Council and they were happy to support it financially.

We are meeting on the fourth Sunday of the month at Five Oak Green United Church, and decided to schedule 10 Messy Churches for this year. Helpers come from the Baptists, the Anglican/URC LEP and a local charismatic Free Church.

We decided to stick to Sundays because we are quite close to London and a lot of dads don't get back until 7pm or 8pm from work during the week. If the children are aged five or six, that’s no good for them on a weekday, so we opted for Sunday from 4.45pm for an hour. I think that time of day is perfect. They have had their Sunday lunch and they may be on their way back home after time out somewhere, this is dead time and we fill the gap.

At our first meeting we catered for 40, buying two hotdogs for each person expected so we got 80. Then somebody reminded me that we might have vegetarians there so we got veggie versions as well. Thankfully we did, with a crowd of 65 on the day!

We have a very small church. When everyone is sitting down packed into rows, the maximum we can hold is about 100. It was a huge surprise to see who came because there were a number of people we had never come across before, and lots of husbands accompanied their wives so there were actually men under 40 there.

One mum said that her husband had decided not to come because he didn't think there would be any men – she couldn't wait to tell him that lots had turned up in the hope that he'd come along next time. We were just overwhelmed, it was wonderful chaos. The people who were there said they felt they could invite others to come, it was fantastic.

Creation was the theme. We had a table game and word searches, and told a story with drama involving the children. It was so packed and so noisy, we had to stand on chairs to be heard and seen.

Numbers now average about 45. This feels much more comfortable for the size of building we're meeting in – especially when we are being active. Many aspects have been very encouraging. Friends have invited others; we are building relationships within the community; and Christians who worship in different places are catching up with each other and working together (especially in the kitchen).

At our Palm Sunday Messy Church, we invited people to the Good Friday Family Service which was in a similar format. We started off by making Hot Cross buns and then baked them during the service, which meant we had a very sociable time afterwards! The service also brought different congregations together and we involved a small teenage after-school group in leading it.

As we knew that not everybody would be there on Easter Sunday we included the celebration of the Resurrection as part of that Good Friday service. There was a wonderful sense of having gone through Holy Week and to Easter with our Messy Church newcomers. We had linked things together for them in the previous Messy Church sessions by following the accounts of Creation, Noah and God’s promise, and then God’s Promise showing itself in the death and resurrection of Christ. A rainbow poster we made on our second session carried the theme through.

For Messy Church at Pentecost, we built a church with cake including gingerbread people to show that the Church is about the people – not the building itself. We then ate it!

Most people who came to the first Messy Church have been to a subsequent one and we've welcomed others too. The social aspect seems to be one of the most important to people – nobody's ever in a hurry to leave. We're very much looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Church for the Night

As a nightclub chaplain in Bournemouth, Michael French has always loved dance music and the club scene. He explains the many strands to his work in one of the UK's most popular clubbing areas.

A main focus of the work is to provide a listening ear and a helping hand to those in the club scene. We also have people going out on the streets to show kindness and love to the clubbers, and anyone else who may need some support.

The chaplaincy itself, part of the Night Outreach Work ecumenical charity set up here 10 years ago, is about helping people to explore faith and responding to needs. As part of that, we organise something every two months called Church for the Night which is an event at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, which runs from late evening to 4am.

The idea is not to 'pounce' on people when they walk through the door but to offer a free café art exhibition, and use projections, smoke machines, light ambient dance music, and a chilled out euphoric, atmosphere to help whoever comes in to find space with God.

Girls will often arrive in their stilettos and hot pants, kneel down at the front and cry, pray, hug their friends and then walk out without saying anything, but they’ve had some sort of encounter with God which is just incredible.

A new website, Spaces, is now offering us a wonderful opportunity to highlight all the Christian work that's going on in Bournemouth. There will also be an online calendar to help in the development of ongoing programmes.

I originally worked in children's services as a youth and community worker, then I spent three months in Ibiza with 24:7 Prayer – meeting up with others who have a similar love for club culture and God meant that everything changed.

I've been into dance music and dj-ing since I was 17, and involved in the club scene for the past 10. Lots of people think of the club scene as being completely bad but I would say there's a huge amount of life there; the music is amazing and the amount of creativity in terms of multimedia, people's expression of dance and the community life is incredible.

What we do in Nightclub Outreach Work is express our life in God in a different way. A lot of us have previously been members of various churches but this work is more about community – we just want to live life together, eat together, pray together, and get involved in social action with Worship, Word, and Witness.

It's going back to the roots of Christianity, having life and sharing life together – there is a lot of fear around about being controlled. That's why most people have rejected traditional church so we try to create environments where people can come together and pray without that sort of pressure. Our values are based on humility, servanthood, and accountability through the concept of D (discipleship) groups – these are three people that we meet with regularly and keep accountable to them.

All of this encourages me but I think it's not without opposition as well – personal struggles and issues are always there. In saying that, it's about actually learning from each other because I often find that my faith is strengthened by meeting with those who have an experience of spirituality in their own way but don't know where to place it.

Some of the things that happen are quite bizarre. A guy working on the door at a club in Boscombe jeered at me that I looked like a famous porn star called Ron Jeremy. All of his mates laughed, I did too (with slight embarrassment). I then got a call and had to head back to my car to collect a ticket for someone. On the way I realised I had a 'Jesus Loves Porn Stars' Bible in my car and recalled there was a story about Ron Jeremy inside.

As I went back into the club, I handed the Bible to the door man with my business card in the page that said 'Jesus Loves Ron Jeremy'. The guy was astounded, saying, 'What are the chances of that?' He told me he would read the Bible and let me in anytime for free. Result!

We are created to create; we are creative beings and looking at those things which give you passion and life are those things which I would encourage people to start. I wouldn't say it was a good idea for people to start club ministry if they're not into clubbing or dance music, for instance.

We don't discourage people from going to traditional churches. If people want to find God there then we'll take them along but the fact is that we view ourselves as church. We love God and, as people meet with us – whether it's in a nightclub, out and about, or in someone's home; God is in the club, God is in the home, God is in the streets, God is everywhere.

People tend to have a certain image of clubbers but I encounter all sorts of people on the club scene, from those in their late teens to their 50s.

We go to a dance class with teenagers and we are also linked with Christian DJs from Clean Time Sound System who work with a bunch of recovering drug and alcohol addicts. That's what I love about this job: you come across different classes, different races, different ages, different everything – it’s brilliant.