Am I part of a ‘beautiful failure’? (Mark Rodel)

Mark RodelMark Rodel asks whether he's part of a beautiful failure.

Two years ago, the St Luke's congregation in Somerstown (in the heart of Portsmouth) moved out of its building and began meeting in Wilmcote House tower block.

With the Bishop's permission, we stopped Sunday services and opened the Sunday Sanctuary. Now I'd say, looking at the terms with which we started out, Sunday Sanctuary has failed. The idea was that if we created something on a Sunday morning within a particular setting, people would come to it. We thought it would be sort of like turning up in their front rooms. It wasn't.

Some have come but there hasn't been a breakthrough in numerical growth. We have interacted with a large number of people since 2009 but we have good strong relationships with a total of just three families.

On the positive side, one of those is a family of eight and we baptised five members of our community on 20 November. Of those (four children and one adult), only one came from a family that I think would have explicitly defined themselves as Christians a couple of years ago. Six more members of our community were also confirmed at Portsmouth Cathedral on Sunday (27 November). People whose connection to Christian faith has been very basic and tenuous have discovered a lively faith for themselves.

I would describe Sunday Sanctuary as a beautiful failure. We have come to realise, not that it was a bad idea – and we are not to stop doing it – but we were still operating a 'come to us' model even if it was 'come to us in a different place'. If we are going to really make a difference in Somerstown, it's probably going to be one family at a time, building relationships and investing in them from personal resources, energy and enthusiasm. It's risky and costly and it exposes you.

The baptisms and confirmations remind us that we are part of the wider family of the Christian church, so I suppose I use the language of 'failure' provocatively. In terms of 'traditional' success criteria and measured outcomes, we have put them aside at Sunday Sanctuary and instead shared our lives with those who have come along. These are no longer people who have been added to the community (as in 'them' and 'us'); they are us.

It has become clear that it's not a case of 'if we tweak this event, the people will come' – they won't come

It has become clear that it's not a case of 'if we tweak this event, the people will come'. They won't come. We can't yet say if this is a lesson for fresh expressions generally. I suspect the lesson is not to remodel church to make it more attractive or accessible; instead it really is about going to people where they are and sharing life with them.

That asks big questions of us as ministers. I live in a house provided by the diocese; I don't live in the tower block – which we see as our focus. One begins to wonder whether the only authentic way to engage in this sort of ministry is to live the same sort of lives that 'your' people are living.

I would say that fresh expressions of church who sometimes seem to try and achieve something that we know – through experience – simply doesn't work. If we just change church, the people won't come in. Maybe in some places they do but in housing estates, in city centres, in tough environments, people don't go to anything. The only way you make a difference is if they trust you and they will trust you if they have found you to be trustworthy. And that takes time.

What are the resources that sustain you in that highly costly and demanding way of engaging with people? It's about a depth of spirituality. What we need from the church is not hugely effective managers of projects but holy men and women, boys and girls to tell the stories of doubt and question and love and joy and frustration.

At the beginning of this role I thought it would be a Pauline sort of thing with me getting something going and then others would come through from the community to take it on. I was wrong. Now I can see this taking a decade or longer to kind of get to a centre of gravity that might sustain itself. It's going to take years.

In terms of specific needs of our community, text-based materials are not useful at all and we are thinking much more about what we do with our bodies and say with our mouths. There are only just over 20 of us gathering together and our youngest members don't read (yet). They make up a significant minority of our small community so we take their needs seriously and you can't put words in front of them. If they're disengaged, you know straight away because we're all together!

Three years in and I feel like we are just beginning. I'm enormously challenged both by the call to ever more radical discipleship and how that makes sense to me and my family. I'm not prepared to play at being a Christian.

The Sunday Sanctuary (Mark Rodel)

Mark RodelMark Rodel describes The Sunday Sanctuary.

One month into our great adventure in Portsmouth. What has been going on? What have we learned?

On 22nd November, the tiny congregation who met in the parish church building of St Luke's, Southsea, said goodbye to that place. In a special service, we moved around the building, stopping at various points – the main entrance, the font, etc. At each 'station' we marked some feature or character of the church's life, symbolised by that particular piece of church furniture. We committed ourselves to carry that aspect of our common life forward into our new future.

Why did we do that? Because from then on, we were putting a stop to the 11am Sunday service in the church building and instead meeting in the community room attached to a nearby tower block. But it's not just a matter of geography. We haven't moved our Sunday service of Anglican liturgical worship. We've ended it.

The time for the intentionally Christian community's worship is now on a Tuesday evening as part of our home group. Each week we share a meal, a Eucharist and prayer and engagement with the Bible in my home.

On Sundays, between 10am and midday, we now open what we're calling the Sunday Sanctuary.

We provide breakfast and refreshments all morning and some sort of craft-based activity. Alongside that, we also offer one or two light, reflective activities. We've been describing it as a family drop-in in the publicity material. Is that what it's been?

We're not expecting people to come to us and do what we do without space for question or doubt or just exploration in conversation

Already, we have experienced a steep learning curve. I anticipate that our Tuesday night gatherings will include some lively conversations from now on! The first surprise was that people stay all morning. We had been working on the assumption that people might come for 30 or 45 minutes and then go. One or two craft activities are sustainable for that length of time, but not if people are there for two hours. So we are having to think pretty rapidly about creating a broader range of things to do.

But at the forefront of our minds is the need to ensure that all we do is intentionally spiritual. It would be easy in lots of ways to resort to 'entertainment', but we aren't a youth or kids' club. We're a church operating a family drop-in. We're not about forcing anything on anyone. Everything is optional. But everything we offer comes from who we are – ourselves and our faith.

The difference between what we're doing here and a regular church service is that we're not expecting people to come to us and do what we do without space for question or doubt or just exploration in conversation. The activities we offer share some of the things that we have found meaningful. They invite others to imaginatively enter into that world of meaning – to 'try it on for size'. But we will always respect people's freedom and if they find themselves taking a different point of view, it will not affect our welcome of them. Watch this space…

Lady Bay Mission Community

In a first for St John's College, Nottingham, a group of students are now getting to grips with life in a 'mission laboratory' in the city's Lady Bay area.

The Community Mission Pathway has come about through the College's partnership with the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. Its leader is Mark Rodel who is Tutor in Pioneer Ministry at St John's, and Pioneer Minister in Lady Bay – or to give him his full title there, Pioneer Minister and Vicar at All Hallows, Lady Bay with St Edmund, Holme Pierrepont and Adbolton!

Six students, all of whom are Church of England ordinands, signed up for the first year of the Pathway which sees them become part of a new monastic community, sharing together a rhythm of prayer, learning and mission. Their studies continue to be based at St John's but they all live in, or near, Lady Bay in West Bridgford. They are on 'continuous placement'.

Two of the students live in a three-bedroomed Diocesan house in West Bridgford – with potential for two more people to join them later. The other four, all married, live in their rented homes nearby.

Mark RodelMark Rodel: Nobody wants leaders in mission who see themselves as 'lone rangers'; this work really needs to be shared  if we're going to get away from the idea of everything being dependent on just one person with a specific set of gifts and talents. We're looking to model a way of living and working and discerning that will very much be seen as putting into practice what we are learning.

For me, it's a juggling act. How do I balance my role at St John's with being a pioneer and a vicar? There are a lot of demands but what I have been working on is greater and greater integration, drawing together a community of students so that my practice here – with others – is the means by which students are trained and formed for ministry and the base from which I reflect and teach.

It's also a mixed economy setting in that the dispersed mission community will be able to engage with churches in the area and see how the inherited church and fresh expressions of church might work together. We're calling this a 'mission laboratory' in its scope and size.

Sharing their lives so closely, discerning God's call as a group and learning more about the context they find themselves in together will help prepare them to get new mission communities off the ground. This might result in new forms of church emerging or existing congregations could be renewed and re-energised in mission.

Our Community Constitution and Rule makes it clear that the Lady Bay Mission Community has been established for two complementary and integrated purposes:

  1. the renewal of Christian mission in Lady Bay, through the renewal of the parish church of  All Hallows, and through starting, developing and sustaining one or more fresh expressions of church;
  2. the training of Church of England ordinands, ordinands of other churches, lay ministers and independent students for pioneering ministry and leadership in mission.

As we develop a vision for a fresh expression of church in the parish, we will relate to the national Fresh Expressions movement through the regional FEAST (Fresh Expressions Area Strategy Team).

When I first arrived at All Hallows, Lady Bay, it was a real learning curve because they weren't specifically asking for pioneering or fresh expressions. So, for them to hear that they were getting someone who would be a vicar and a pioneer was quite difficult.

The first year was pretty tough, there was no honeymoon period, but then we had an event at which I read out part of my job description and it was quite clear to everyone that the role I'd applied for was all about change. That was the breakthrough.

Some of it was also about adopting a different pastoral approach. The full scope of my role hadn't been as widely understood as it might have been and some people thought it was my job to mediate the situation. Thankfully, I had a lot of support from the Diocese, the Director of Ministry and Mission, Nigel Rooms, and the former Archdeacon of Nottingham, Peter Hill, who is now the Bishop of Barking.

The other thing that has helped us to open that up is our involvement with US-based organisation, Church Innovations, and its consultancy service, The Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) founded by Patrick Keifert.

Through PMC, we join together with a small group of congregations from our Diocese (Southwell and Nottingham) and the Diocese of Leicester in a three year process which explores what part we might play in God's future for our local communities. St John's College supports us in that and we meet as a cluster three times a year, to reflect on what we're learning and prepare for the tasks we do locally between each gathering.

This has already helped us to ask the question, 'What can The Partnership for Missional Church and Fresh Expressions learn from each other? There is lots of crossover. PMC is asking us to consider that if we're investing in new things, does the inherited church just roll over and die or do we invite them into newness? It's a process of what we call adaptive change rather than technical fixes. We ask what we need to be and take the steps to get there.

Along the way, we learn and practice six spiritual disciplines or 'holy habits'. So far we have learnt two – Dwelling in the Word and Corporate Spiritual Discernment.

The mission community also demands a lot of attention and care but I'm not going to be a sort of 'Daddy Pioneer'. Instead, we'll meet and mutually support each other as a part prayer, part reflective practice group.

The conviction to me is about community. I haven't tried to establish a fresh expression, the process of looking and listening needs to be a long and engaged one. It's important that we discern these things together. I have got lots of bright ideas so I can all too easily say, 'Come and join me to make things happen' but what is God calling to come into being in this place? That's the sort of thing we'll be considering as a group.

Darren (Howie) is the only member of this community who has been through pioneer panel – but the way I have launched the course to them, even if they're not pioneer, is to say that it's for anyone who would look to be pioneering in their approach. After their time here, there will be a range of destinations for them, some of which may look more like what a pioneer would look for or it may be a conventional parish.

It's about being a community where we develop the skills and convictions and aptitudes to lead the church into new engagements with a wider community and possibly into churches.

It's hugely exciting. I have been working on this for two years  and we had no idea in January whether anyone would come; I thought maybe we'd get two or three but when six people said, 'yes please' – six people with their own richness in learning, passions and giftedness – I was staggered.

The rhythm of life is the heart of it; it's that coming together every day but also being part of the wider family at St John's. That has made such a difference already. Being serious about disciplines means a commitment to prayer – and commitments in both attitude and practice when living to a community rule. That involves rhythms of:

  • eating, including Eucharist;
  • praying;
  • sharing/generosity;
  • learning;
  • growing and working together – looking to see God's Kingdom come, see church grow in depth and numbers and new forms of church to emerge.

As part of our corporate spiritual discernment, we are working with an established monastic community to hold us spiritually accountable to our Rule. Our  'visitor' is an Anglican Benedictine Order, based at Mucknell Abbey, Worcestershire, and we will meet every year with a representative or representatives from Mucknell Abbey to review the Rule. We also each have a spiritual director with whom we meet at least once a term.

It's important that we are not just 'making this up' as we go along so it's wonderful to be linked in with the Order as a group who have done this for a very long time!

Community Mission Pathway students

Gail PhillipGail Phillip: I trained as a teacher and worked with a pioneering Singaporean missionary couple in Thailand. I was with the Anglican Church, based at Christ Church, Bangkok. I came back to the UK four years ago and worked with children in full time residential care but there was a strong sense of calling to ordained ministry so that's why I'm here.

I'm pioneer with a small 'p', working through translation! One of the things that attracted me to the Community Mission Pathway was that it was not just dismissing the people who have gone before but discerning how is God working so we can move together. There are lots of opportunities here; this is an area of 4,000 people with two pubs used for all sorts of community activities. 

Jess McLarenJess McLaren: I started my career in Human Resources and I worked my way up a corporate business ladder for seven years. I became a Christian in 2010 and pretty quickly felt a call from God. I started to look around and see other doors opening up. Within a month I found myself working for my bishop (Bishop of Kensington, Paul Williams) with a project in the diocese of London. It all happened for me on a night when we were commissioning 2,300 young people at St Paul's in April 2012; that night I really felt that God was calling me. I tried to push it down but the thought wouldn't go away and I went into the discernment process in 2012.

In the last year, I was working as a parish assistant for St Mary Magdalene Church, Littleton, and helping with chaplaincy work in schools.

Andi ThomasAndi Thomas: My wife, little boy and I live just outside Lady Bay because we couldn't find a house right on the doorstep but it's great to feel part of this Pathway of pioneers. I have just spent about 20 years doing inner city youth work and managed a youth church plant. We were all part of Aston Parish Church, Birmingham.

I didn't plan to do any of this and I remember when someone had a message from God that they believed was for me. The message was that I should consider full-time ministry in the church and I started the discernment process in 2011 but I swore I'd never become a vicar but, more and more, I had the feeling of wanting to be in the glasshouse rather than keep on throwing stones at it.

Darren HowieDarren Howie: My wife and I have been involved with St John's studies for several years now and I've been pursuing the call to ordination; got through Bishops Panel in March and decided to stay because we're really excited about the Community Mission Pathway. This is a great chance to discover about community living at first hand.

I originally knew that St John's was the place for me because, after a very difficult time involving church, I went to the chapel service and Nick Ladd simply said, 'We are just going to wait on God'. Well, the presence of God in the room was overwhelming. I was in the right place. Now, we'll look to see what happens as we learn to live in community with others.

Ivor LewisIvor Lewis: This process has been quite a long one. I was a youth a community regeneration worker in Aston, Birmingham (the same parish as Andi) for quite a long time so I'm really out of my comfort zone here! I'd never really thought of ordination before but I was at my youngest brother's wedding when this minister, who I didn't know, came up to me and said, 'You are going to be a vicar'. He said it in front of my family so I couldn't even pretend it didn't happen! I tried to brush it aside but I went to an urban youth work conference in 2008 and what I came away with was the conviction that God was asking me to take the call of leadership seriously.

I finally did that in 2011/2012 and I made links with DDOs and people like that but all the while I was thinking, I know how hard these guys work, I know they have no life outside that, do you really want to sign up for this? But then I did the paperwork and I felt as if a weight was taken off my shoulders. At the Bishop's Advisory Panel, I felt the Lord was with me. I still wondered what type of ministry I wanted to be involved in and what sort of training that was to be; it was the rhythm of life that attracted me here. This is not inner city Birmingham and I am out of my comfort zone in a sense.

Ed SauvenEd Sauven: I'm from London and have been there for the last eight years. One of the things my wife and I have been thinking of more and more is authentic Christian community. What does itlook like and what does authentic Christian community doing mission look like? I've been involved in lots of things to explore that and I've also tried to get involved in lots of things to explore that but – for one reason or another – they didn't work out.

At one point we were part of a network church looking to connect with 20s and 30s but I struggled with the network setting and not having a sense of place. In trying to discern how you might build community, I heard how these things will come from communities of prayer and I found that new monasticism really resonated with me.

I had a Bishop's Advisory Panel coming up and I was travelling the ordination route but the new monastic movement seemed to be something of a tangent. I hadn't considered prayer to be the centre but then we came to St John's and talked to Mark and found out what he had been doing here. I sensed a very clear answer to prayer. I really wanted to develop community with prayer at its heart and it's from that you go out and do mission. I feel that from a place like that you can do mission sustainably.

Sunday Sanctuary – update Apr12

Mark RodelMark Rodel is to leave Portsmouth in September to become Tutor in Pioneer Ministry at St John's College, Nottingham, and Priest-in-Charge at a benefice in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. What is to happen to Sunday Sanctuary?

I have real mixed feelings about moving away; I wasn't looking for a move. Instead I was thinking about how taking things forward needed committed presence and then I noticed the job at St John's… I tried twice to seriously put it aside but it wouldn't go out of my head.

It's a big step for me in growing as a minister and as a contributor to the whole church but I am stepping aside from leading the Sunday Sanctuary here at a sensitive time. I know there is probably never a good time to leave but it does feel quite soon in Sunday Sanctuary's lifespan.

The news has been received with sadness but people are not devastated; they are sad that we won't be part of the future of Sunday Sanctuary but positive that there is a future. I'm not leaving them without leadership and support – thanks to my marvellous colleague, Rev Dr Alex Hughes, Priest in Charge of the parish of St Peter and St Luke. We were licensed together in the same service in 2008 and we have worked and prayed together very closely ever since. He is now bearing full responsibility on his own for both parishes and Sunday Sanctuary.

Sunday Sanctuary - ferryHe already has an inherited expression of church, St Peter's, to sustain and look after and he is considering the shape of his own vocation in this place now that things have changed. We have to take a good look at what Sunday Sanctuary needs now. Does it need another priest and would that priest also take on a bigger role within St Peter's to release Alex a little more? Or do we need to be looking at an evangelist, a schools' or youth worker, or a community person?

Establishing Sunday Sanctuary was part of pushing out into the community. What we definitely don't want to happen is to retrench but we do need to ask, 'How much are we actually doing to make a difference in the life of the poor?'

We get 25 people on average, sometimes 30. There haven't been new people at Sunday Sanctuary for quite a while but, to be fair, we haven't told people we are there for quite a while either. More recently we did make a bit of a splash with the local community again when we brought a mobile farm – including a donkey – into the courtyard of the tower block where we had a short celebration for Palm Sunday.

We put out 2,500 invitations and I spent about eight hours personally delivering most of them. We had an estimated 150 people coming for breakfast and the farm visit, with at least 60 of them staying for the short service at the end. The children loved seeing the animals, we had chickens and sheep and all sorts of things – though the donkey flatly refused to take part in anything! I also gave away 86 tickets to the Easter egg hunt which took place as part of a joint service at St Peter's on Easter Day.

Sunday Sanctuary - harbour sign

We also had a parish weekend away in Bournemouth when about 70 people from both communities, parish church and Sunday Sanctuary, came away together to consider the future. We had a lot of fun together and talked about lots of things there, including 'What is the Church for?' and 'What should it look like?'

As part of this transition period, I know there are people to whom I can hand over more responsibility for the Sunday Sanctuary sessions. In fact, we can see that this has already started to happen.

One of the questions I'm personally asking about the whole thing is, 'Why did God need me out of the way?' Maybe having two separate things on a Sunday morning (in the parish and at Sunday Sanctuary) – a home expression and an away expression – isn't what needs to happen any more. We are apprehensive about Sunday Sanctuary just 'being absorbed by' St Peter's because that would mean that St Luke's, as it was, has simply disappeared – and that feels like a retreat.

We will use this opportunity to look at everything, including the place where we gather. The City Council housing department, which runs Wilmcote House where Sunday Sanctuary meets, is very happy we are there but we will review what we are doing. Is it the still the right place to be? We would have to think very carefully about what it would say to the people in the block itself if we did decide to change. Another thing we'd look at is the focus on all-age; the way I have led certainly reflects my preoccupation and priorities with that – I was committed to adults letting go of their addiction to words but is it the way it should continue?

Sunday Sanctuary - sail

The language of fresh expressions is not one I'd use with the community because it would be meaningless to them; instead it's language that we use with the hierarchy of the church. I'm wary of it sometimes because it can make people shut off to the reality of what's happening on the ground. In terms of a sort of 'shorthand' it has some use but maybe decreasingly so. What it does do is keep on the agenda the question of looking at what the church is doing in any given place and time.

None of us yet know how we take this forward and we won't know by the time I move on but hopefully we will be nearer an answer as to what sort of licensed, ordained or authorised ministry needs to be part of this mix. It's difficult to think about leaving it all behind because there is so much that I'm passionate about and committed to here but there are now increasing times when I have to draw back and let people do it for themselves so that I become a consultant to the process – rather than leading it.

We have been very fortunate to be part of a very supportive cluster of parishes in the city centre; the personal relationships are good and the respect is strong. The Bishop of Portsmouth (Christopher Foster) twice came to Sanctuary as our guest, on a Sunday morning and at our Tuesday evening gathering, and that was wonderful. He also wrote to me to say how hugely appreciative he is of this unique community and what it is doing. We know that no one model of fresh expression should be 'pickled' and preserved as it is and the people at Sunday Sanctuary would expect to see it change – though nobody is going to want it to move backwards. The bishop assured us of his support and that means a great deal to us.

A lot of changes will start to happen after Easter. St John's College wanted to do some preparatory work with me before I officially move in September so, from Monday 16th April, I will be spending three days a week in Nottingham before returning to my family in Portsmouth for the rest of the time; they will move up with me permanently at the end of the school year.

I do think that as we ask all these questions of Sunday Sanctuary, we also need to be asking the same questions of St Peter's. I wouldn't be devastated if the outcome of my leaving was that the bigger, broader Christian church regrouped in order to look at how we reach out in a different way. Things can be for a time, for a season and I think those things can discussed a lot easier when I'm out of the way. But one of the big things for me has been working in a relational mode. The people I'm leaving behind are not my congregation, they are my friends…

Sunday Sanctuary – update Dec11

Mark RodelMark 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.

Looking at the terms with which we started out, Sunday Sanctuary has failed. Those terms were that if we created something on a Sunday morning within the particular setting of a tower block, people would come to it. We thought it would be sort of like turning up in their front rooms. It wasn't.

Some have come but there hasn't been a breakthrough. I think we had an idea that more people would be attracted than has been the case. We have interacted with a large number of people over the two years we have been operating and a few people have been on more than one occasion but, when it comes down to it, we have good strong relationships with a total of just three families.

On the positive side, one of those is a family of eight and just a few weeks ago we baptised five members of our community. Of those (four children and one adult), only one came from a family that I think would have explicitly defined themselves as Christians a couple of years ago. Six more members of our community were also confirmed at Portsmouth Cathedral on 27 November. People whose connection to Christian faith has been very basic and tenuous have discovered a lively faith for themselves.

I would describe Sunday Sanctuary as a beautiful failure. We have come to realise, not that it was a bad idea – and we are not to stop doing it – but what we have discovered is that in a sense we were still operating a 'come to us' model even if it was 'come to us in a different place' and in a way that felt very much less imposing than a Parish Eucharist. And so we gathered, did quite a lot of work in local schools to let people know what we were doing, sent out invitations and waited for people to come to us.

The baptisms in the tower block and confirmations in the cathedral are interesting because we are always conscious that we are part of the wider family of the Christian Church so I suppose I use the language of 'failure' provocatively. In terms of 'traditional' success criteria and measured outcomes we have put them aside at Sunday Sanctuary but our growth in depth of relationships has been marked. Those longstanding Christians who have been able to stick with it have grown in faith as they've engaged with new people in an unfamiliar setting. Newer members who had only the most nominal faith have reached a point where they are making a public commitment to live as a Christian. We've all grown in the breadth of our spiritual experience as we've moved closer to becoming united with our sister parish of St Peter's.

We have shared our lives with the newer members, they are not people who have been added to the community (as in 'them' and 'us'); they are us. What we have discovered in the way it has actually turned out is that if we are going to really make a difference in Somerstown, it’s probably going to be one family at a time; building relationships and investing in them from personal resources, energy and enthusiasm.

We are a tiny community and what we have discovered is that we work in a relational way. We now know that it's not a case of 'if we tweak this event, the people will come'. We now know that people won't come.

In terms of specific needs of our community, text-based materials are not useful at all and we are thinking much more about what we do with our bodies and say with our mouths. There is only just over 20 of us gathering together and our youngest members don't read (yet).They make up a significant minority of our small community so we take their needs seriously and you can't put words in front of them. If they're disengaged, you know straight away because we're all together!

Three years in and I feel like we are just beginning. There are enormous joys but there is also a very real temptation to 'spin' things positively. However, the fact is that a lot of what we traditionally take for granted simply doesn't work – it's really tough and it calls for radical discipleship.

Sunday Sanctuary

Moving out of a church building into a tower block may not be everyone's idea of progress but The Sunday Sanctuary in Portsmouth is proving to be a hit with newcomers to this fresh expression of church.

Revd Mark Rodel, Portsmouth's city centre pioneer minister and associate priest at St Luke's Somerstown, Southsea, led the way when the 20-strong congregation set up base at Wilmcote House to encourage newcomers. And encourage them they did. In the first month, 24 extra people came to get-togethers at the 11-storey high-rise. Mark is encouraged but aware of the challenges ahead.

This is about taking seriously the call to be where people already are, rather than expecting them to come to us. We often expect people to cross the threshold of our churches and immediately start singing or speaking words that they don't yet believe or understand. Our gathering is much more conversation-based.

We don't always judge our success or failure on the basis of numbers, as the quality of relationships is also important. But I'm very encouraged; we moved locations specifically to encourage local people to join us, and they have. Several of them have been more than once. And the people we're meeting seem to be genuinely open to what it is that we're doing.

In fact, we had thought people might pop in and out for just a few minutes of our morning get-togethers. In fact, many of them have stayed for the entire morning.

Sunday Sanctuary - gingerbreadWe had a trial run at Wilmcote House on four successive Sundays earlier in the year. As a result of that, one family – who live in Wilmcote House – decided to join us. At Christmas we had the Wilmcote House Nativity. All ages were welcome and children had the chance to dress as an angel or shepherd to hear the Christmas story, enjoy a free breakfast and take part in some craft sessions.

Our vision is to be a mission community that plants congregations, and ultimately we'd like to see a network of small, local congregations in this area. In the meantime, this is a massive step and there is excitement and trepidation. We recognise that it's a risk, but we think it's a risk worth taking.

Worship is continuing at St Luke's church building from Monday to Saturday, and the venue is still being used by community groups. There are lots of other things going on in the area too. Across Portsmouth diocese, there are multi-media 'Blessed' Eucharists at St Thomas's Church, Elson, in Gosport; Messy Church at St Wilfrid's Church, Cowplain; meditative alternative worship called 'Ethos' at St Nicholas Church, North End; and a Café Church will launch in Waterlooville's Costa Coffee from January 2010.

I have also started a new thing on Sunday nights when I offer a chance for 'spiritual-but-not-religious' people to meet up at a local pub to talk about faith, spirituality and life over beer.

Weatherspoon's kindly set aside a table for me at the Isambard Kingdom Brunel pub from 8pm-10pm. The evenings are called 'Sanctuary' and are publicised as 'spirited conversation and skinny ritual'.

It isn't a church in a pub. There's no worship or preaching involved. It's just a chance for people who would feel uncomfortable in church to talk and think a bit more deeply about what they do believe. My aim isn't to get them into church, but simply to give them space to explore these issues. So far I've chosen some fairly broad discussion topics, like life after death, or what things we might regret.