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Kairos

The Kairos Centre has opened its doors as a building for the community in Grange Park, Northampton. It's a dream come true for project chairman Charlie Nobbs and the start of another chapter in the story of Grange Park Church. Anglican minister Charlie tells the tale.

It has been such an interesting journey for us all at Grange Park Church. What started off as a germ of an idea has become a reality in the shape of a central place where people can get together from all walks of the community for all sorts of reasons at the same time.

We have worked with many people along the way but, most recently with South Northamptonshire Council, to transform an empty shell of a building into a much-needed facility. It is the vision of Grange Park Church to follow the call of Jesus to be the good news to Grange Park and beyond – and the Kairos Centre will certainly help us in that.

As an Anglican and Baptist Church Local Ecumenical Partnership we meet together on Sunday mornings in Grange Park Community Centre in a nearby part of the village but the Kairos building, in a parade of shops opposite a doctors' surgery, is the base for our church office and coffee shop.

The Kairos Centre is not a church – it’s a place where people can have 'kairos' moments. Kairos is ancient Greek for a critical moment in time, a moment when God draws near and the opportunity to take new direction or restoration is available. Jesus uses the word in Mark to announce the drawing close of the Kingdom as he starts his ministry.

Our vision is for a place that provides facilities and a home for the existing church family, provides services and relationships with the wider community and ultimately will be home to future fresh expressions of church. We are just relaunching a café style evening service and hope to develop an after-school club fresh expression and maybe even a film church – as and when we are able.

The larger meeting room can take about 60 people and there is also a quiet room; a place where people can have 'kairos' or just find some peace from the hectic pace of life. The lounge area also has a coffee shop currently open four mornings a week as well as a small meeting room and the church office. These rooms can also be used for affordable conference/meeting facilities.

Lots of people these days are concerned that new housing areas run the risk of becoming soulless dormitory estates, but we are working hard to combat that. We also hope to develop a menu of wellbeing and lifestyle events, such as advice on debt management, counselling, social events for adults and children's and youth activities.

Looking back, and I was just coming to the end of my curacy in 2001 at St Giles Northampton when it was suggested I could maybe do a church plant in this new housing area.

I gathered a few people together but the Baptists had beaten us to it! They felt that God had called them to plant a cell church at Grange Park and we had a similar sense of calling to what God was doing so we joined forces and started to gather a team.

Just a few hundred houses had been built at the time; you could walk around the place in an hour or so and knock on every door. I joined the parish council, while my Baptist colleague helped to set up Neighbourhood Watch in the area and got involved when the primary school was being built.

Initially we were church planting with a traditional Sunday service plus small groups model rather than a fresh expression, but we were keen to connect with those who might not usually attend a traditional church and focused on young families.

To launch the first public worship, we did a holiday club type 'thing' called Kidzone. There was no building to have anything in and all the issues with child protection were getting to be a bit of a nightmare so we set up a 'camp' around one of the school playgrounds – we had lots of gazebos and each gazebo was an activity zone. Naively we thought that all the children and parents who flocked to Kidzone would also flock to church the following week. That didn't happen but what we did notice was that groups of parents would be chatting together while waiting for their children and the conversations would be along the lines of 'Where do you live?', 'O I'm just round the corner from there, come and have a coffee.' We had stumbled upon community building as a means of being good news to Grange Park!

Kidzone has continued and grown as an annual event and we usually get 400 to 500 children over three days in the last week of the summer holidays. As our aim is to be good news in the community, Kidzone is something that has worked very well in letting people know there is a church, that it is good to have it and begin to build relationships.

The other area in which we have seen very encouraging results is through the work of health care professionals. We got to know one of the health visitors and she said that all of the doctors' surgeries were over-run with depressed new mums. We suggested she use our home for appointments with the mums and so Talking Point got up and running on Thursday mornings. My wife Charlotte has been very instrumental in helping to develop something that has become phenomenally successful.

Visitors are offered tea, coffee, cake and a warm welcome. They just meet and chat in our lounge, comparing birth experiences and sleep patterns. The Health Visitors love it because they can see eight or more at a time; the mums love it because they make friends and realise they are not alone. There aren't many babies born in Grange Park that haven't been through our house!

The good news is that the Health Visitors believe Talking Point has significantly improved the mental health of struggling mums as it is a network which picks up different people. We now have various Talking Point groups in and around Grange Park. We use cell principles and organise a social night for the parents without their kids; it welds them together as a cohesive group.

Midwives in the area have also picked up on Talking Point, telling mums-to-be about it as a place to go after the birth. Things shifted again when one of the people coming along to the sessions asked about getting their baby baptised; another wanted to do an Alpha course.

The upshot of that is a group called Stepping Stones which we now run fortnightly on Tuesday mornings in the Community Centre. We make it clear that it is run by the church but it is all very informal; we offer a breakfast of croissants and orange juice for carers, mums and children, hear stories told from the Bible in creative ways, and provide a craft activity. We say it's an opportunity to take a stepping stone towards God. I would say Stepping Stones is a fresh expression of church; it has been going for nearly four years and we regularly get about 50 mums and their children.

That in turn has developed because several mums said they wanted to find out more; their children were asking questions they didn't know the answer to and the parents also thought of the Bible stories as being a 'good thing' to teach the little ones.

To meet that need, we offer a five-week introduction to Christianity course through a DVD series called Journeys. As a result, a number of people have come to faith, some continue in that faith and others disappear.

The Kairos Centre now offers further possibilities in our life together in this community. I believe God wants us to be blessed through it and in turn bless Grange Park and beyond.

Heyford Chapel

A church community on a former US air base turned housing estate has separate age-related congregations.

We are a growing, worshipping community and are thinking about the way and how we meet together,

says Ian Biscoe, Church Army officer and leader of Heyford Chapel since its foundation in 2002.

Each of the four congregations has its own leadership team.

Kidz Church, for any child up to the age of 11, meets on Sunday afternoons in the former military chapel used for much of Heyford Chapel's activities. Worship and prayer are mixed with games.

HeyU for younger teenagers meets in the chapel on early Wednesday evenings, while Revival, for older teens, meets in the chapel later on Wednesday evenings, with a half-hour gap between the two.

Unity church for adults meets in two cells on Tuesday and for worship and small groups on Thursday evenings, beginning with refreshments and chat. A social evening, Fusion, happens on Fridays.

This growing worshipping community of between 100 and 120 members is working out ways to meet the differing needs of its members whilst maintaining a sense of being part of a whole.

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.

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.

re:generation

Emma Garrow reports exciting developments at re:generation youth church (2009).

I don't come from a Christian background, I never knew about God… Going to re:generation was a new experience for me. For the first time in a long time I felt accepted… I've recently joined the worship band which has helped me grow in my faith.

I immediately saw that re:generation was different to my previous church. The people here actually wanted to worship God and I was welcomed as if I was a long lost friend.

These are the voices of two teenagers, members of re:generation youth church in Romford, Essex, a church that provides a spiritual home to around 50 young people aged 13 to 21, both churched and unchurched, and with a wide range of cultural styles. At re:generation, young people from diverse backgrounds get along very well.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't happen, but because of their love for Christ these boundaries are crossed over,

says leader, Jamie Poch.

re:generation has grown since its beginnings in 2004 out of a core of 20 young people drawn from a Methodist Circuit of 13 churches. A programme of fun events led to a drama group, a confirmation course, residentials, Bible studies and youth services. Spontaneously, members began to invite their friends and now about a quarter of its members were previously unchurched.

They were excited, because it was meeting their need,

Jamie believes.

So now young people come along and become Christians who've never been to church before. It's quite exciting how it's growing in that way.

Another reason for this growth is the church's key value of friendliness and welcome, and a desire to encourage a sense of belonging to all comers, 'whether Christian or not'.

A welcome team rota, 'Be a Blessing', involves all the members in this ministry. A shortage of adult helpers when Jamie and his wife, Ruth, were setting up the youth church bred a necessity which has proved a blessing in itself. The young people had to get involved in practical ways such as administration, setting up and clearing away, leading small groups.

It made sense,

says Jamie.

Because they're doing it, they're owning it, which is a wonderful thing. They're the ones on the door.

The church meets in a dedicated space in one of the Circuit churches and has several meetings through the week, including a main Sunday evening service. Members are in 'PODS', which encourage friendship and discipleship.

Within the last year, a few adults have started attending, including some parents, something which Jamie views as an opportunity.

It could be rather exciting to see how to deal with the interested parents,

he reflects.

We could have a youth congregation planting an adult congregation.

We're always looking to the future and saying, "Okay, God, now what?" It evolves and we don't necessarily know what it's going to be and that's an adventure.

The ARK

The ARK is a place where children and their families can learn about Jesus and explore their faith. Established in 2007 in Newmains, The ARK has since grown significantly and is aiming to make a real difference to the people of the area. Shona Stirling explains more.

We currently have 80 kids on our register and also run something called Oasis for adults, and a youth cell group for those in the first three years of secondary school. Plans are also in the pipeline for a new community project focussed on out of school support.

Oasis runs alongside The ARK in a cafe church style to give everyone the opportunity to learn about God's love, have fellowship and meet new friends over a cuppa.

Our support churches are Coltness Memorial Church and Bonkle Church; they are linked churches in that they have one minister but two of everything else. There has always been a real history of kids' work here but, over the last 10 years or so that work had started to decline. There were all sorts of reasons – changes in family life, different pressures on families, regulars getting older and a decline in the number of young families attending.

I was trying to make things more family friendly but was banging my head against a brick wall. Why did the numbers drop? Basically because we didn't have any influence at all with the kids in the village. As a result we decided to run a holiday club and see what happened, on the back of that we ran a kids' Alpha in the church at the same time as the adult course.

From that we established a core congregation of kids who were really interested, or who had come to faith from Alpha. We launched The ARK as a Tuesday night congregation, but from the beginning we made it clear that this was not an outreach from those meeting on a Sunday morning.

Sundays were definitely not the best time for something new as we've got a lot of single parent families in the area, and kids are either with the other parent at the weekend or the parent wanted to take them somewhere else. As everywhere now, there are also a lot of football clubs and sports clubs so there were lots of tired parents about. They were running around six days a week and, quite understandably, didn’t want to get up early on a Sunday.

It wasn't long before the Tuesday night sessions at Coltness Memorial Hall also had some of the parents coming along as well. They were using The ARK to dip their toe in the water, with the result that we had increasing numbers of adults there.

After another tranche of Alpha on a Tuesday, several parents formed a group to meet on a Tuesday night. For the children, we started off as being for five to 12-year-olds; then it became five to 13, and now it’s five to 14. We have grown up with them!

A particular challenge is trying to bridge the gap for kids between singing and worship. Traditionally we are very strong on sung worship in church but not everyone likes to sing. I do teach sung worship to kids and I do expect that we should sing but I also recognise that there are lots of people who express themselves differently.

We went on to introduce flags because some of our boys who hate singing really love flags. We are not getting it 100% right all the time by any means but we do talk about worship as a response to Jesus, and emphasise that worship can be done in a variety of ways. We say that if we want to respond by singing quietly, that’s fine, but there are all sorts of other expressions too. Some of our boys breakdance and some choose to just sit quietly or to use sign language instead of singing.

At least once a term we also have an all age get-together when we ask the children to invite anyone who lives in their house. The format there is a bit like Messy Church where there is some kind of teaching as well as craft activity.

We use the whole building at Coltness Memorial Church. For a while we did meet in a local café and developed great links with the Muslim owner and his family. Sadly his business faced real difficulties and we couldn’t use the café any more but our friendship with him goes on.

In the next stage we aim to have premises of our own. The church is currently on the periphery of the parish, which has about 3,500 people. Our vision is to move The ARK lock, stock and barrel into the middle of the village from where we could run a community venture, and provide other groups for children’s activities – both spiritual and otherwise. ARK is also working closely with Newmains Primary School and Morningside Primary School to offer a number of clubs for children and their parents.

We have a building in mind so we've been working on a feasibility study and business plan. Both churches are very closely involved in the future plans, and it’s exciting to see!

Fresh expressions of church have always been there but in our traditional congregations we have often become so comfortable with what we're doing that we forget there is any other valid way to 'do' church. As far as we're concerned, the whole fresh expressions thing is about blessing the community, not trying to do the hard sell and convince them that we know what’s best but simply to demonstrate the love of Jesus to those currently outside traditional church circles.

Street Church

Street Church in Northampton welcomes up to 90 vulnerable and homeless people at its weekly get-togethers. David Bird describes how Christians from various denominations work together in developing the work and ministry of this growing fresh expression of church.

Our early experience of homeless people here at St Giles involved them coming along to Alpha courses for the free food before disappearing pretty quickly. They'd also turn up on the doorstep of the vicarage and I would have a chat with them. At one point, a guy came along with a spiritual understanding of God who asked me to pray for him; at that point I knew that I had to do more than offer him a cup of tea and a sandwich.

A member of the congregation is involved with the Hope Centre, a project that serves what is quite a large homeless community in the Northampton area. When one of the community died, it was a social services funeral and none of the rest of the people who knew him from the streets had any idea when it was or what had happened.

They wanted to have some sort of memorial service and the Hope Centre volunteer asked if I would go in and do something for them. About 50 people turned up to that. It wasn't a recognisable service as such, but we played his favourite music, talked about what he was like as a person, and they lit candles to remember him.

A lot of homeless people find Sunday the most difficult day of the week because there is nothing open specifically for them so we got together with other churches to arrange a weekly Street Church drop-in service from 1.30pm to about 3pm. It takes place at the Salvation Army Northampton Central Corps community hall, and the majority of helpers are from St Giles but there are also people from Kingdom Life New Frontiers International Church, the Salvation Army, the Roman Catholic Church, and another Anglican Church. Each takes it in turn to provide the all-important catering.

We use multi-media material from The Work of the People, an American organisation which highlights Christian issues – usually through visual images rather than words. There is very little 'preaching' as such, it's more a case of sharing testimonies and stories but a lot of it is one-to-one relational stuff. We also invite guests to come along and sing to us as performance worship. Some of the homeless have got musical gifts too so they're also getting more involved in that now.

Every six weeks or so we offer pampering when people get their nails and hair cut. Some prostitutes also come in and we do their nails too, just to serve them and show that we care.

Street Church began in Easter 2008, and some of the people later started coming to our traditional church service in the evening as well. One man who did that now wants to be baptised. I have been quite precious about it in some ways because it feels like something that is both the work of God and a tender plant. The direction we want to take it in is to help these vulnerable people get a lot more stability in their lives, and set up mentoring for a number of individuals.

As ever, money plays a key role because the project is being run entirely by volunteers at the moment though we have recently applied for a grant for a part-time worker. It is nothing like church as many would think of church. You can't ask our regulars to give by Direct Debit for example, and that means it will never be self-supporting. Instead we see it as part of our mission to Northampton, our church supports it and other churches support it in that way.

It is tough work but worth it because there is a huge mix of people at Street Church. Some of those are kids thrown out of their own homes by their families; they can be into drink or drugs so that can be quite difficult. There is a guy called Dancing Joe who always turns up smartly dressed though a bit 'crinkled' round the edges, and there are quite a few Eastern Europeans who have had jobs in the past but are now sleeping rough.

One of our volunteers is an ex-Army guy, and he deals with a number of men who have come out of the forces and – for one reason or another – just can't cope.

I often say that many of the homeless we deal with are no different than anyone else; it's just that their sin and their weakness are much more obvious than other people's. Those who come to faith at Street Church and begin to sort their lives out often say they no longer want to be part of the community because they are keen to move on. That's understandable but some have remained and carried on helping as volunteers and that's a very powerful message to those who come. It says, 'just because I live on the streets doesn't mean I will always live on the streets. Just because I haven't got my life sorted out now doesn't mean that it will always be that way.' It gives them hope.

RE:NEW

Pioneering Baptist minister, Simon Goddard, explains how RE:NEW grew in rural Cambridgeshire.

Lode is situated about eight miles north east of Cambridge and the Baptist Chapel serves five villages in East Cambridgeshire. The membership of Lode Chapel has been declining, but is currently stable at just over twenty members. The majority of these are professional couples with families, although around a third of the members are retired.

I was called to part-time ministry at Lode Chapel in September 2005, with a particular focus on pioneering. Lode Chapel held a summer holiday club which was a well attended feature of the church’s outreach. Despite positive contact with a large number of local families, there had been very little follow-up to the club. This became an issue we discussed with the local Anglican vicar and we ended up talking about the possibility of a monthly 'Kids Club'.

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.

Initially resourced only by the Baptists (who cancelled their Chapel service on that Sunday), sustainability was an issue. Fortunately, however, the vicar had been approached about having a curate, and had asked me to meet him. Jonathan, and his wife Emma, were excited about what was happening with 'Sunday Club'. They were keen to get involved, and from September 2007 they joined me in planning and leading the events. Graciously, on those Sundays, the vicar allowed them to be free from responsibilities in his five parishes to be able co-lead.

We recognised the weakness of our individual churches in sustaining mission and the need for us to work together. As Jonathan shared with the parish churches news of what was happening in Bottisham, one of his other churches, in Swaffham Bulbeck, asked whether it could start something similar. I was invited to be part of discussions about this possibility right from the start, and when, in May 2008, this new event started, it was scheduled for the second Sunday of each month partly so that the 'Sunday Club' families would have the opportunity of attending something twice a month.

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.

The first few Swaffham Bulbeck events attracted a good number of new people, mainly families from that village. Although it was also based in a primary school hall, the feel of this event was quite different. Tables were set out in a café-style (rather than the 'Sunday Club' rows) and there was deliberately a less churchy feel (for example, no singing) to make it more accessible for those with very little, if any, church experience. The hope was that it would be a relaxing and enjoyable place for families to spend some time together doing something fun as well as thought-provoking. The parish church congregation didn’t cancel its morning service but came afterwards to the school (which is next to the church) for shared refreshments at the start of RE:NEW. This was a particularly busy but rewarding time; we were making positive contacts with a number of families who were coming to the school events, and slowly but surely our churches were become more engaged in mission.

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.

The three of us, along with the rest of the leadership team, see the need for us to be building this fledgling community as well as supporting those who are coming to faith through Alpha and the other small groups that are developing. Recognising the mission opportunity, the Baptist Union is providing a grant that has enabled me to be in full-time ministry since 2008, but nonetheless there is still uncertainty in terms of the future of the congregation and the personnel involved. We are therefore also exploring the possibility of a Bishop's Mission Order, and our prayer is that resources will be found which enable someone to be appointed specifically to oversee the future of RE:NEW.