Who would have thought that a visit to a children's indoor fun centre could inspire church steward Caroline Holt to oversee a dramatic shift in the fortunes of a small West Yorkshire Methodist church?
Caroline made the trip to a commercially-run activity zone with her god-daughter, and wondered why such a venture had never been provided in church buildings? Surely it would bring in countless children – not to mention their waiting parents?
As a member of Howden Clough Methodist Church, Birstall, Caroline was faced with the challenge of a dwindling congregation and a community that appeared to have no need for the traditional church building on their doorstep.
"Seeing all those children in these awful places to play made me really stop and think," says Caroline. "I thought, 'why don’t we do something like this at Howden Clough?'"
Her dream has become an amazingly successful reality – thanks to the efforts of a dedicated volunteer team, key sponsors, and a church willing to take what was seen as an enormous risk. "As far as I'm aware, nothing like this has ever been done anywhere else in Britain," says Caroline. "We now have 3,000 sq ft of play area, a café that operates alongside it and a supportive local community who have taken it to their hearts and now use The Wesley Playhouse as the venues for birthday parties and celebrations. We've even had several Christenings there as a result of people feeling so much part of what has very much become their own fresh expression of church."
Since its launch in 2007, the project has seen over 24,000 people come through its doors. It's a long, long way from the days when the pre-Playhouse Howden Clough Church had just 10 members attending regularly.
Caroline explains, "There was no doubt about it, we were facing closure. We had tried various attempts to get local people into church but nothing seemed to work so in 2000 we decided to leaflet the community and find out what we could do to serve them.
"When I put the idea of the Playhouse to our members they were mainly supportive, though some people obviously did have concerns because it's quite a difficult thing to imagine in a Chapel building that has been around since 1871! But, God bless them, they backed the idea and it all snowballed from there."
Finance was the first major hurdle. The church needed to find £120,000 to get the scheme off the ground, and they had £3,000 in the bank. But the money came rolling in – thanks to the Methodist Circuit, District and Connexion providing £78,000 in loans; individual supporters; and £50,000 from the Biffaward landfill community's fund.
Twenty people from different churches across the area came forward to offer their staffing help for the project, and Howden Clough began its transformation into multi-coloured Playhouse and The Ark Café. Work started in February 2007, with the Playhouse opening in October of the same year.
Services take place in a room re-designed as a chapel downstairs every Sunday morning, and a Playhouse Praise is now a regular event on the first Sunday of the month. The young visitors, their families, and older members of the original congregation share the facilities on offer, and Caroline is now working to bring them even closer together.
"It's fantastic to see how many people have struck up friendships and are happy to be part of this community," says Caroline. "People have asked to have their babies christened here and been amazed to discover that we can do this in The Wesley Playhouse. I explain that we may have climbing frames and all sorts of things all over the place but we are a church, and we’re here because we love God and we love them."
And the ongoing challenge? Caroline is clear: "At the Playhouse itself, it's to lead people to faith and disciple them; to help them find out why we've done what we’ve done with this project and encourage them in their own walk with God.
"Personally, I'd love to see The Wesley Playhouse 'brand' go nationwide and be part of making that happen. Maybe other churches in similar situations to us are wondering how they could get something started along the same lines. I want to be the person to help them do that, and with God’s help and blessing, I will be."
With the congregation aging, he saw skateboarding as a way to show youth that there is room for them in the church. He enlisted the help of avid skateboarder Thor Stewart, a Perth and District Collegiate Institute student, who runs a skate shop in the town. But before the idea could take off, the pair needed the approval of the parish council.
Pioneering Baptist minister, Simon Goddard, explains how RE:NEW grew in rural Cambridgeshire.
So in September 2006, 'Sunday Club' was launched with personal invitations for each of the sixty or so children that had been to the holiday club, and adverts in the village magazines and through the schools. It was advertised as a 'holiday club on a Sunday' and this meant that there would be video, games, craft, action songs, a creative prayer activity, and a very short talky bit focussed around a memory verse. A number of families from the holiday club joined us at the first event and although a few didn't return, many continued to come each fourth Sunday.
This development, however, was not how the members of Lode Chapel had initially envisioned 'Sunday Club' progressing. The fellowship’s hope was that 'Sunday Club' would provide a way for the main Chapel congregation to grow, but although one family had come to a few services, they had not stayed. Families were still coming month by month to the school event, but Chapel services were so different from 'Sunday Club' that it seemed such movement was unlikely. To me, rather than being engaged in an outreach activity, it seemed that we were now involved in planting a new congregation. Although it was difficult for the Chapel members to understand, I felt that my commitment to this new initiative was critical.
There have been some challenges as we've slowly realised that the two styles of event connect with two different groups of people. Whilst the Swaffham Bulbeck event was accessible for the 'un-churched', many of those coming to the 'Kids Club' could be described as 'de-churched' – having some previous, but not current, connection with church. But as we've clarified the vision there have been some exciting times too as a growing number of people at Lode Chapel have grown in commitment and enthusiasm to this mission activity. Many members have a more active role in the 'Kids Club' which is now accompanied by a 'RE:NEW Café' where parents chat over a coffee and watch a Nooma DVD. Jonathan and Emma, whose particular calling is to work with the 'un-churched', are now taking a leading role in organising social events and 'community blessing' activities.
Wendy Sanderson, Night Club Chaplain, Church Army Evangelist, Lay Pioneer Minister and co-founder of Solace tells the story of this unusual fresh expression of church in South Wales.
From the beginning we met a lot of people who were into clubbing who were interested in Jesus, God and faith but often, not traditional expressions of church. So we began on April Fools Day 2007 aiming at people who were searching for something. I am 32, and clubbing is part of my life, so Solace has grown out of our lives as clubbing people. On our launch night over one hundred people turned up, mostly I am sure out of curiosity, and now on Sundays we draw on approximately fifteen to twenty people a week. When the Archbishops of Canterbury and Wales came, of course numbers rocketed. We like guest speakers!!
We engage with the de- and un-churched – in fact anyone who is interested in exploring faith. We have wanted to break down the negative stereotype that many hold concerning Christians and Church. Most of the other churches in the area are geared up to the needs of young families with children, but we are uncompromisingly focused on the many younger adults who are single. There are many, many single clubbers in their twenties and thirties who do not relate to forms of church which seem to over-focus on families. In many ways, Solace is a spiritual community, a society of friends where clubbing is an important part of our lives, and most of us are single. We are pleased that Solace has developed into a place of hope, a place of peace and safety. Some have said they value it as a place where you can be completely yourself and be accepted unconditionally and where people are non-judgmental.
When it comes to discipleship, we specifically work on a one-to-one basis, where the themes and discussions on Sunday nights encourage people to explore or re-imagine spiritual things. We allow people to challenge each other on Sunday nights, and encourage people to dig deep with the Christian faith and the stuff of life. This is learning about the faith through proactive engagement in activity. Something like an Alpha Course or Emmaus just would not work in a clubbing context.
A fresh expression of church that is 'fuelled by coffee'… Matt Ward, a chaplain at the University of Leeds, takes us behind the scenes at Emmanuel Café Church.
Café Church operates in 10-week bursts during term-time. Obviously, as we operate in a university environment, we always miss the major festivals. That's a bit of a challenge for a church community… but there are still ways to celebrate 'together', even when we're not in the same place at the same time.
Every year has seen quite a sense of growth in the life of the church, and in the lives of those who have come and found faith or confidence in their faith. My hope for the future is that Café Church continues to be shaped in a way that serves the needs of the students who come in and reaches out to students who don't. If it looks the same in 12 months as it does now, it won't be doing that.
It was initially conceived out of unmet needs of a 'mission audit' completed by a local Methodist Church. To complete this, we went out into the estate to ask questions about what people thought the needs were. The most significant finding of the survey, was that local people thought the church was irrelevant and had nothing to contribute. One of the greatest needs that people did identify was the need for a drop-in for older people to be able to come to meet people and socialise in safety, and also a place for younger people. At that time the estate was known for being a rough place with problems with drugs and anti-social behaviour. This coincided with an offer from the owner of the butcher's shop to the Methodist church, to use it for something to help the community. I was asked if I would assist in the exploration of potential solutions to the meeting of these needs and sought other agencies to see if there were any opportunities for partnerships to be able to take on the shop for mission and ministry. So the vision for a community café gradually emerged.
I was one of the founding members of the initiative, as I was involved with it in the early days of my training for Methodist ministry. I quickly discerned that God was asking me to stay with the Terminus Initiative, which at the time was completely against the usual expectation of Methodist itinerant ministry. So I kept this discernment to myself (not even telling my husband) waiting for it to be confirmed by someone else to test it. Within a few weeks, our Superintendent Minister at the time, Ian Bell, asked me if I would consider staying on and co-ordinating the Initiative, but that there would be no money for a stipend. As I had retired early on a pension from the National Health Service, I decided I could cope, and committed to it.
The Terminus Initiative is now in its eighth year. The café is open three days a week, targeting different groups in need, and the premises are used by other community groups when the café is closed. The Terminus Initiative, with its other projects, has supported asylum seekers, refugees, drug users, people with alcohol addictions, people with mental health needs, young people, and older people. In fact there are many social activities going on all the time including discussions/Bible studies, and prayer underpins it all.
In the many partnerships we have, we focus on the spiritual needs of those who come into the Terminus building. We hope that the work of the Initiative has challenged people's perception of the church as 'irrelevant', replacing negative stereotypes with a greater respect for Christianity and the Church. We have seen many people seeking to explore the Christian faith coming out of the community and loving service they have experienced at the Terminus. Many of these people have gone on to discipleship groups of the partner churches, as we seek to be a committed local 'mixed economy' of church finding unity of purpose in mission.
Ted's story
When a congregation in Leicester had to move out of their dilapidated building, they were given the chance to start a fresh expression of church in a local school. With that came the opportunity to do some serious listening and to refocus church life around the needs of those they were now in contact with. Revd Alison Roche takes up the story.
The church had a history of being good at outreach and community involvement. They took the risk and went with it. So a couple of Septembers ago, thirty people marched with me from the old church to the new building. We are now in a fantastic location, very accessible public space, with people dropping in and out of the building all the time. I loosely have a chaplaincy role to the school, which has reframed my job, but I am still the vicar of a parish. So we have used the relocation as an opportunity to listen and explore the possibility of new forms of loving service to local people.
We have focused on the real needs of families with children, mostly because the parish is in one of the highest areas of social depravation and educational need. We have therefore consciously worked collaboratively with the school to address the particular community and spiritual needs of the area.
Our main challenge remains how to engage more with the families of children who go to the Academy School who are not Christian and unchurched. We haven’t quite cracked this yet. The good thing about the Academy School is that there are no selection criteria for attendance which is purely geographic. So the challenge for us has been to develop an accessible Christian ethos in a Church of England school where most of the teachers, parents and children are not Christian.
Regarding discipleship, it remains a real challenge how to engage people from a non-book culture. We have been using the START course by CPAS, but like everyone else we don’t find it easy to find appropriate resources. START is good because there are things to make and do, and is less wordy than some discipleship courses, but this is an ongoing struggle. People in a UPA are may not necessarily be the sort of people who are confident sitting around in a group. One thing that we are actively doing is to ensure discussion groups in every other Sunday service to make it more participative, more effective and grow confidence.