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Hope Whitby Missional Community

Leigh Coates reports on how a new Missional Community has developed in Whitby.

About five years ago, a group of us wanted to start something new in Whitby – where we all live – so we launched a small cell group and began to explore the idea of missional communities.

Whitby is only 18 miles from Scarborough and 30 miles from Middlesbrough but it's a very, very different sort of place; popular with Goths and alternative cultures because of its links with Dracula author Bram Stoker.

We organised a couple of Christian worship events as outreaches; they were called Restore and we did have a couple of people come to faith as a result. That's great of course, but we felt that overall it wasn't a great success. We wanted to do more and that's when we had a vision of being involved in a regular café-style 'thing'.

My wife, Rebecca, and I approached the owner of what we reckon is the best café in Whitby, Sanders Yard, and they said yes to us doing a pilot Hope Hub event involving music – both mainstream and Christian – and short testimony or talk. The café seats around 50 people but the event was packed and about 70 people came along.

That was in May 2012 and we agreed with the café owner to do the Hope Hubs for a couple of months to see how things worked out; they didn't charge us a penny to do that which was amazing. We tried different things, it petered out a bit, we tried something else; it was all trial and error but the number of people who wanted to be at this event started to build.

We then had another conversation with the owner and said that we'd like to do this long term and she said, 'as long as you make £100 behind the bar, you carry on as you are'. Since then, we have never had to pay a penny for the use of the venue.

Hope Hubs now take place there on Friday evenings twice a month and we usually get around 40-60 people, with an age range from 14 to much, much older…! It's not a service; we describe it as 'Raw, Real, Relevant' because we are working through tough questions about Christianity in a way that's accessible to people of faith or of no faith. I hate Christian things that are cheesy or naff so we do our best to avoid that!

It's our sixth year and we have learned lots of things along the way. The crowd we now have coming along are about one third Christian, one third on the fringes or who have been hurt by church in the past but still call themselves Christians, and one third non-Christians. What started off as five people meeting together has now grown to four different cell groups, huddles, Hope Hub, Hope Rocks, a new youth project called Hyp and many other things.

I am the Deacon for Mission at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Scarborough, but I don't promote particular churches to those who want to explore their faith in a more traditional setting. I'm always keen just to promote 'church' – wherever that may be or whatever it looks like.

Again that's changed because when we started, as a core team in Whitby, our aim was to put people into churches. Now we're very keen on discipleship, which is the one thing I think many churches have really missed out on.

Hope Whitby is a Missional Community that aims to show Christianity in a way that can be understood by everyone. Hope Rocks events are one way in which we are reaching out, and from that we have seen three baptisms in the sea in a year.

Ebenezer Baptist Church has been amazing because it commissioned me to go and do what we are doing and I can go there for accountability; the pastor and elders have been great. The Re-Fuel band have also been a blessing, performing at many of our events and supporting us to reach out, showing how good and Christian music can be.

As you can imagine, doing something new and different, all of the Whitby team – including me – have come up against some hard times and Ebenezer have been there to help me grow and guide me through some difficult situations. They challenge me but, because our accountability is so high, they never get involved in the day-to-day stuff. They are happy to leave that to the Whitby core team.

We have a leadership of five, including me and Rebecca, but there's no hierarchy. We work together on everything, particularly to ensure that we are not replicating something that is already being done by other churches here. We have no interest in reinventing the wheel!

Thanks to Ebenezer, I have just started to 'officially' work part-time for Hope Whitby but the church at Scarborough is not looking to put a denominational 'sticker' on the Missional Community here. They have been very gracious and open to seeing what God has in store.

Some people may have been disappointed that the community is not intended to become a Baptist Church in Whitby. Hopes were expressed in some areas that it would happen but I said no, it's not about that. It's also not about me going to college to become a minister. What's the point in a pioneer sitting behind a desk? I also work as a tanker driver and I want to continue in that, because I don't want to lose the 'edge' in what I'm doing.

Some churches may have felt threatened when we first came along but we have made it clear that we're not a Sunday church; this is all about building God's kingdom. Hope Whitby Missional Community operates from Monday to Friday with Saturday as a day of rest. Our core Missional Community is drawn from different churches so, on Sundays, we return to them. We do however have some who do not or won't go to church for different reasons; we just love them and try to meet them where they are. At the moment, it's enough that they are being disciples with the cells and seeing outreach in its natural form at the Hope Hub.

In the future, we are exploring the possibility of doing many new things but we are still in prayer about it. It would be easy to get caught up in lots of plans; that's not the way it should be. It's being sensitive to what's developing around you and listening to what God is saying.

The Stowe

Wichelstowe is a new housing area on the outskirts of Swindon, Wiltshire. Baptist pioneer minister Ali Boulton describes how The Stowe Church has developed there.

On 17 January 2008, in a Baptist ministers' prayer meeting, I was asked to pray for a yet to be built housing estate. As I bent my head to pray, I had one of those overwhelming encounters with God which left me with a sure sense that God was calling me to move to the estate to holistically serve and bless the community and plant a church.

That was the start of the journey which has resulted in the emergence of a new church and positive engagement in a new community.

It is hard to share everything about the last six-and-a-half years in one article so I have picked out some key events and principles. The first one the importance of 'calling' I have already shared.

The next key principles are prayer, partnership and discernment/preparation. The first step in my journey was to join the ecumenical prayer group which was made up of church leaders of the churches surrounding the planned new estateand the town's chaplain. Prayer for the estate started before I joined the group and I feel that prayer has made a huge difference – prayer and listening to God has unpinned the whole process.

Partnership has also been key. My first partnership was with the ecumenical group. We worked together on some foundational elements of the project, if I can call it that, we did not however move forward with a local ecumenical partnership in mind, but rather within a framework of a lead denomination. Personally, I think this has been key in allowing a new missional churches to emerge. Not everyone agrees with me but I hope that other denominations will take the lead in other new housing areas within these light touch partnerships based on relational support and prayer.

As well as specifically Baptist organisations, I also partnered the local housing association and the council. The housing association were keen to work with me as soon as they realisedI was going to move into the area because this demonstrated a level of commitment which interested them. They approached me before I moved in and offered me a grant to be able to deliver some of things I felt God was calling us to do – which was amazing! The relationship with both the housing association and the council has deepened over the years and become a really fruitful partnership. We have partnered many other organisations too – including churches, and charities such as those working with victims of abuse, metal health, and children and families.

This all formed part of the 14-month discernment and preparation leading up to moving into the estate. We also built up a team during this time of three other Christian couples who, alongside my family, were committed to unconditionally loving, blessing and serving the new estate. This included a retired Anglican priest, his wife, and two young couples from different church traditions. We covenanted to one another agreeing to be missional together and not seek to be spiritually fed and also to move onto the estate within two years. Unfortunately this last covenant promise has not been met fully as it has been financially impossible for two couples – however we are all still serving the community alongside each other. During this time of discernment and preparation, I constituted and formed a community group – with the other church leaders as trustees as there were no residents at that point. Also, as Churches Together, we applied for a council grant and planning permission for a portacabin on site, and I worked alongside the West of England Baptist Associationfor some help to buy a house and to apply for a special ministries grant from Baptist Home Mission.

And so in April 2009, my family and I were the first to move on to the estate with a vision to unconditionally holistically bless the community and to seek to join in with the work of God's Spirit. The importance of living on the estate and being there right from the beginning was really significant, as was the call to bless in all areas of life.

It was the time of the credit crunch and so we lived alone on the estate for a month before the next residents moved in. Also because of the credit crunch, all the social houses filled up first. This was high priority social housing, so there were some quite vulnerable people in the first residents.

For the first year, I visited everyone as they moved in and gave them a welcome basket. It got crazy after a while but I would have liked to do it longer. As I met with each new resident I introduced myself as 'I'm Ali, I'm your neighbour. I'm a Baptist minister but I'm here to serve all faiths and none. Let me know if you have ideas about what we can do together.' My visits and the welcome baskets were unconditional – I told them about me but didn't ask for anything in for in return.

I felt that God had said some specific things to us:

first, I felt that God had said not to talk about him. It seemed like a strange missional strategy but more people came and talked to me about faith than ever before in my Christian life, which was amazing! Later, when we had some opposition to the Christian presence in the area, people commented that I had never imposed my faith on anyone. This was important as, by then, people had become Christians and a church for the unchurched had emerged.

secondly, I felt that God had said that he would tell us what to do through the community. This became very significant as time went on. I guess we just set about making friends with people. Some people wanted to exchange numbers, meet for coffee and set up a Facebook group. We organised a community fun day alongside the housing association and in response to our neighbours, organised community games.

After the community day, more people got in touch. Within a few days I was contacted for the first time by someone on the brink of suicide – this has become a key part of my ministry on the estate.

I also had some women come to my door saying, 'We loved the community day; will you organise a Halloween party next?' We struggled with that as none of us believed in celebrating Halloween but God had told us to unconditionally bless the community – all faiths and none – he had also told us that he would tell us what to do through the community. After much prayer, and the verse from Acts 10 telling Peter not to call things unclean which God has made clean, we did the party. One of my teenagers commented, 'Mum thinks she has claimed backed pumpkins for God; he thought he had them already.'

It was at the Halloween party that someone said, 'Do you know what I'd like? Wouldn't it be lovely if you did us a nativity play with all the children?' This ended up as a big outdoor community event. If we had said no to Halloween, I think that would have shut the door. The Halloween party is now an annual event.

We continued to serve the community in response to, and alongside, the people around us. Mostly starting in our house, we set up a toddler group, coffee morning, a toddler lunch club, a youth club, an after school club and amazingly we were asked to start a God club for the kids on a Sunday afternoon. There isn't space to share that whole story!

Our first Easter there, in 2010, was amazing. Some people were chatting about Easter and in response to some comment I made, I was asked if Easter was a 'God thing?' To cut a long story short, we put on some activities on Good Friday morning to explore the Christian story of Easter in the portacabin. We expected a few kids or families but about 50 people with no church background came along. It was a very special time. As a result I invited people to join us on Easter Sunday morning and 35 people joined us.

We thought we would do it again at Pentecost – but God reminded us that he was in control and would tell us what to do through the community. So ten days after Easter, someone said she had enjoyed church on Easter day at our house so much, could she come every week? Of course we didn't have a church but as I tried to think what to say she filled in the blanks! '10.30, your house on Sunday?' 'Sure!' And so the next Sunday, church began. The lady who asked me has never been, but that first Sunday, two families came and we saw our first person become a Christian a couple of weeks later on 24th April. We saw her life transform and she was the first to be baptised. Praise God we have seen others come to faith and be baptized too.

As we continued to work in the community the number of people exploring faith grew and we moved out of my house, first to the new school hall then into the community centre. We became a recognised church called The Stowe and part of the Baptist Union of Great Britain at the start of 2013.

We have continued to seek to unconditionally love and bless the community and we have worked alongside people of all faiths and none to establish a charitable community association and build healthy partnerships between the community and wider bodies such as the council and developers. The line between church and community is very blurred but we believe God is in it all and we have seen him bless this estate. This is very encouraging as the current houses are just the first 875 of 4,500 so we have a long way to go yet.

I'd love to share more with you about how God has worked in the local community – through giving us a word to wash the feet of the community, resulting in regular pamper nights, and another word about an empowerment course. I'd like to tell you more about the people who have come to faith, about healings, and lives that have been changed. I'd love to tell you about our community activities, community trips, church camping weekends, our schools' work and my years as chair of governors in the new school and our new work with children, youth and families. But there isn't space for it all!

One of the greatest blessings is seeing new Christians grasping the vision to love and bless this community, some even taking on leadership.

This is particularly significant now as I've now been appointed the Pioneer Mission Enabler for the Southern Counties Baptist Association (SCBA). I'm supporting communities and projects already taking place in the region,helping people to build on mature church traditions and explore what pioneer mission looks like in their context. I'm working alongside people engaging with existing communities and helping to identifying new housing areas, make connections with other community stakeholders and create partnerships. It's exciting to see opportunities already developing.

It's a half-time role so I'll still be at The Stowe and I see the new job as being very much connected to the practical work on the ground. The words 'teaching hospital' come to mind because when people come to visit to see what we're doing here and join in, God seems to inspire them to go and love and bless their own communities. Also some of the community here are keen to support other churches locally; it's part of them being connected to the wider church.

Of course there are and will continue to be many challenges within the Stowe and SCBA as we seek to pioneer. New churches are fragile – people who explore faith come and go as the parable of the sower tells us. But God has done more than we could have asked or imagined and I look forward to joining in with what he is continuing to do both locally and regionally.

Left Bank Leeds

Youth worker and Baptist minister Simon Hall is involved with the Revive community and Left Bank Leeds. He explains why it's very difficult to know where one ends and the other begins.

Revive has been a bit of everything in the past. It was a youth congregation 20 years ago but, obviously, the people have got older and Revive eventually became a church plant rather than a congregation within a larger church.

We moved into Hyde Park, the 'boho', bedsit land area of Leeds because we knew the people we wanted to reach and where they lived. Revive has had its ups and downs, with many mistakes being made along the way, but in many ways we can now see Left Bank as a perfect fulfilment of Revive's original vision.

Revive saw young, single, people with alternative lifestyles and felt that these people weren't going to connect with traditional churches at all. We wanted to put church in their way and make God more accessible. Well, we haven't seen revival since then but we have seen a few people become Christians and others explore faith more deeply.

In more recent times, members of Revive helped to found a project called Left Bank Leeds, an arts and events venue based in the amazing surroundings of the former St Margaret of Antioch church in Hyde Park.

The building hadn't been in weekly use for some years, although occasional services had taken place there. From the outside, it's not the most attractive of places but inside it's huge; a mock gothic cathedral with a real 'wow' factor. We had funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other funders for major repair work which began in July 2008 and finished in February 2011.

The idea was that it would be a centre for arts and culture, for new thought and new ideas, friendly and full of life – which is why we called it Left Bank, after the artistic district of Paris known as the Rive Gauche.

Half of the people who got behind it were from Revive and the other half from another local church. Left Bank is kind of undergirded by these people, most of whom are still either staff or trustees. There is also a wider community of Christians who ensure that the explicitly Christian part of the vision is maintained – known as the Left Bank God Group, they are involved in the day-to-day God 'stuff' and bits of programming that have a clear faith emphasis. There are about 20 people in the Left Bank God Group and most of them are part of Revive.

The other side of it is that we have got a wider group of people who have been drawn into the community through volunteering, about 200 of them. That's where conversations about faith occur naturally rather than us trying to manufacture opportunities. In the old days, I guess you'd call it an attractional model but it's the building and project which are bringing people together, rather than a service. We don't have to work hard at building community, it's all around us.

A great example of Left Bank programming would be Amazing Graze, our street food and culture festival. We worked in partnership with street food traders and buskers to create a unique weekend event – the vision came in part from the bad experiences of a member of Revive who is a professional busker; we wanted to celebrate the diversity of life on the street and celebrate 'the commons'. In the autumn we'll be working together on a massive Narnia community project – as pioneered by Liverpool's In Another Place. It will involve about 300-400 people, including professional sound engineers, lighting designers and producers wanting to lend a hand. Isn't this what church is supposed to be like with so many people using their gifts – a lot of them Christians, a lot of them not?

For the next six months, we will all be getting involved in the Narnia project but it's difficult to know where the boundaries are. Revive doesn't meet in Left Bank, it's too big! I live with my family in two terraced houses which we knocked into one and I think we have had about 50 people meeting in there at times. We've also got one or two other places that we go to and we have met in church buildings in the past but that just didn't work for us.

Revive was definitely a young people's and then young adults' church. We have been really blessed in that quite a few of those people are still involved but it's quite hard keeping a church of that type going. Every now and then we'd say, 'Shall we just give it up?' and have a meeting to talk about it – but we kept on going because it's definitely like a family; I can only think of one or two people who have really left.

We are still only about 40 adults and 20 kids even when we are all together but we also have a much bigger group of people from all over the world who, in some way, feel they are part of it.

We still do the thing that churches do and meet on a Sunday but we also have a strong focus on vocation and small groups meeting around a common purpose. We have:

book Group which is involved in organising open debates and lectures;

'blokes' Group. Someone in the church bought some woodland and is trying to set up a programme to take kids from the city to learn bushcraft skills (this is sort of shared with another church);

women's Group, a prayer group exclusively for women in the church;

group for people who are musicians or really into music;

group for those who want to get involved in Forest Church;

the Left Bank God Group;

a very informal leadership group made up of anyone who wants to discuss what we should do next.

The small groups work as a sort of free market. They start and, if they gather people, they carry on. There is no central idea or strategy along the lines of, 'Oh we must have a small group based on…'

When Revive started we had some priming money. Over three years, we were given money from the Baptist Union and individuals were able to make up the rest.

I have never worked more than half time for Revive and, technically, I only work a day a week for them. We also have an organised, admin-type, person who does half a day a week. I would have thought our annual budget is in the region of about £10,000 a year. Thankfully, we have a few people involved who earn good money and they also support it financially.

Left Bank Leeds is a quintessential social enterprise. There is a charity that owns the building, with responsibility for the faith and heritage side of it. On top of that, we set up a Community Interest Company – which is the new legal vehicle for social enterprises – and that deals with the community and the arts ventures. We also have a commercial arm, renting the space out for gigs, parties, conferences and – in the summer – lots of weddings!

In terms of the future at LeftBankLeeds, there is a long list of needs to improve its facilities. Long term plans at the moment include:

development of a café bar at the front of the building. People are certainly attracted to the space but, at the moment, it's too big for them to feel able to stop. We want to ensure that there is community there every day;

continuing to curate a gathered space for all the creatives in the city; we want to be the catalyst to make things happen

For God Group, we are working on two things that people could pray for:

permanent exhibits that draw people towards God. There are already plans in the pipeline to have the Chartres labyrinth as part of our new floor;

commissioning other arts that would just give people pause – not as invasions of space but that the space would allow them to consider what life is all about.

We have reached an amazing new stage with Revive. While we have always wanted to reach out the truth is we have always been like a hospital for people with heart conditions – people who have been hurt by church, people who have asked too many questions of their churches and come unstuck – but now they are finding 'real' church again. This has always been the main way that the community has grown and sustained itself.

At the moment we feel less like a hospice and more like a hospital, where people are actually getting well! We have been quite well known in the past for writing quite melancholy songs, but at the moment we are having to write songs of faith, hope and love because as a community we are finding out feet and want to be more positive.

Left Bank has a chequered history. It is a long time since it was full, if it ever was. Changing demographics in the area – first Irish Catholics, then Pakistani Muslims – mean that there was never a large congregation. And it means that the building doesn't have a place in the heart of the community, even though it is the largest building by some way. Most people who visit Left Bank have never been in it when it was a church, which has turned out to be a great help to us as people don't immediately associate it with religion. This new phase in the life of the building is fulfilling the vision of the original church in new ways, as well as the vision of Revive.

Kahaila

Baptist minister Paul Unsworth established a commercial coffee shop, which is also home to a church community, in London's Brick Lane. Kahaila opened in June 2012 and there are now plans for another.

When I began the initiative to set up a coffee shop, with the intention of planting a congregation among the many young adults in the area of Brick Lane, I had no idea how things would develop.

I'd always had a heart for those in their 20s and 30s. I was youth pastor at a church in Hackney for eight years and Youth Coordinator for New Wine (London South-East), but it really came home to me that I wanted to do something more when I came down to Brick Lane one Sunday morning and saw thousands of people visiting the market. I saw tarot card reading, I saw people of other faiths trying to reach out to the crowds but the Christians were all in church. I knew we had to do to be right at the heart of these crowds.

I could never have imagined what has happened since then and I am in awe of all that God has been doing since the café got off the ground. We have had a very good response from local people and businesses and we are generating four times as much business than we originally anticipated! That is particularly good because we are a charity, so any profit that is made goes into supporting local community projects and other causes.

In order to set up a café in Brick Lane, we needed to raise a lot of money which I knew would require a great deal more of my time. As a result, I left the church I was working in and approached the Baptist Union's Home Mission for financial help in setting up Kahaila. They knew it was a high risk project requiring a lot of investment, they also knew there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether it would succeed or not.

In the build-up to all of that, we just prayed that if it was what God wanted, then He would provide for us. Within the first six weeks of me first trying to find the money for this project, we managed to raise £60,000. We also had a significant loan but were able to pay that back within 18 months. The start-up costs were very high, in the end we raised over £100,000 but this was because the property required a lot of renovation and because it is Brick Lane – incredibly close to the city and a very popular area.

Home Mission awarded us a grant in 2011 and others believed in it too, with friends in the Anglican church and many individuals giving cash backing. Kahaila opened its doors to the public in June last year and things have gone so well that the trustees of the project agreed they would not need any Home Mission Support after the end of 2012.

Our goals were:

To build a community that brings life in all its fullness through enabling people to know Jesus Christ.

To reach out to young adults in their 20s and 30s, the declining generation in church.

To reach out to the estimated 20,000 people who visit the area every Sunday.

To run a successful business where profits are reinvested for the purpose of mission.

Our biggest challenge after the fundraising was trying to get a property on Brick Lane. It took about a year and a half and we secured the lease in April last year. Again, we had to invest a lot of money into it; gutting the place, rebuilding the back section of the roof and removing over 20cms of concrete from the floor – but God provided the key people with the key skills so there was a real sense of God's provision throughout.

It took a huge amount of faith on many people's part to get this off the ground – to get the money and to get the building. Then, once it had been transformed into a café, the challenge was, 'How can we make sure it makes money? It's a business and, if the business fails, the mission fails'. So we needed to really invest in the business to begin with.

Since then, people have been blogging about us and complimenting us on how they love Kahaila for its coffee, food, customer service and general atmosphere. We have also had the additional comment, 'O, and these guys are Christians'. I like that because we're being seen as people who are looking to serve rather than control. Other businesses have taken note of what we've been doing as well; we're now seeing many more shops putting cakes in their windows! One of our aims from the beginning was to become one of the best coffee shops in London. I am not saying we have achieved that as yet but we are making good progress. It's all the more special because the very first Baptist church in the UK was planted in Spitalfields in 1612 and exactly 400 years later we planted Kahaila in exactly the same area.

Why the name? We wanted something that created a bit of curiosity and the two words we kept coming back to were 'Life' and 'Community'. In order to come up with a more unique name we looked for these words in different languages, Hebrew being one of them. The Hebrew word 'Kahila' means community and the Hebrew word 'Chaim' – sometimes spelt 'hai' – means living and is associated to the word 'life'; so we took 'hai ' and placed it in the middle of 'Kahila'. This gave us the word 'Kahaila' pronounced Ka-hi-la.This really represents what we believe we are called to do, to bring life to the very centre of the community.

At this stage in the life of Kahaila, we are constantly experimenting as to how we build community and relationship through intellectual, creative and social events. A monthly 'bring and share' supper club involves us inviting regular customers to come and have a meal together. The regular programme of activities includes things like origami, a book club and live music and poetry. Much of it develops because someone enjoys doing a particular art or craft, for example, and they ask if they could do it in the café. We just say, 'Do it and see what happens'.

We have church every Wednesday night where we try different styles of worship and allow time for discussion after the teaching. Diversity in the worship is important because we don't want to be labelled as an evangelical church, a post-evangelical church, a charismatic church – or however people see us. We now have around 40 regular attenders, some of those that come regularly have either never gone to church before or have not been to church for a long time.

We are very much learning as we go along so some things have worked well; other things haven't worked at all. At one point we put out cards with discussion starter-type questions on them but when we got to our discussion time, everyone upped and walked out! We used to close the café on Wednesday nights and then open the place up again for church a short while later but that didn't feel right at all; now we stay open but tell everyone in the coffee shop, 'You are welcome to stay but, just to let you know that church will be happening here at 7.30'.

Kahaila is a 'crossing place' between Christians and non-Christians and, as a model, it demonstrates that the faith community (church) is at the centre of the café and all its activities. As a result, I feel like I have more significant conversations with people in one week than I had in one year working in a church building. What encourages me is that these conversations just happen by being available in the café. There have been so many examples of this, including a Muslim man from a neighbouring shop who came in and asked us to pray for him. So, in the middle of the café, we prayed God's blessing on him in the name of Jesus.

I always say that what we are doing here is exploring how we model a church that engages people; those people who see church as being a bit like a red telephone box – an amazing building that's part of our heritage. They'd never want it removed and they love to see it in the high street but they don't ever use it.

They look at church in the same way. They love the architecture, they love the fact that it's part of our British culture but it's not for them.

Another fantastic thing that we see happening is the effect on those working with us at Kahaila. We have a core team of about 20 and I believe that all of us are called to leadership in one form or another. Encouragement of young leaders is particularly important to me and we have seen many of them go much deeper in their discipleship; in their early 20s they are developing ministries to prostitutes in the area, to ex-offenders, to those in desperate need. My role involves looking at how I can release people into the calling that God has placed on them. They then go on to inspire others to do the same.

If I really empower and release them, I have to get out of the way – otherwise I cause a bottleneck in what God is doing in their lives. It's not that I, as a leader, don't get to live out my calling because the fullness of my calling involves creating a way forward for others.

Availability of Christians also plays a really important part in this. There is so much activity in churches which means that Christians, in many instances, are not available to meet non-Christians at all. On one Sunday a month we say to people, just go and be with your family and friends; be intentional about it. The café stays open but we give an opportunity for many of those involved to go elsewhere and they love that.

I don't see us as being 'radical' in any way I think we're just doing what Christians have always been called to do – which is to go. When the Spirit comes in power it sends us out. So we probably just need to get out of our churches a bit more and start meeting the people where they're at – rather than expecting them to come in to where we are.

As time goes on, the challenge will be that it's easy to try lots of different things when you're relatively small in number but when you get bigger, I think that becomes harder to hold. In a year's time we could be a church of 60-80 people so we'd then need a bigger space but if it means we move out of the café for church, then the danger is that we become a 'normal' church service somewhere.

The temptation is to pull back to what you know. Mission flows out of our Wednesday night gatherings; the aim is not to bring people to a service to be transformed but that significant discipleship can take place through relationship and community.

I do want to see big things for Kahaila but I think that would involve more of what we're doing already in different ways; we're looking at setting up a bakery so we'd then look at how we might do church in a bakery and at Kahaila. We want to plant out again because we believe Kahaila is having an effect; we have baptised people in the café and helped others on the road to faith.

Originally our aim was to reach those in their 20s and 30s but now many families come. How do we do Kahaila for adults and children? At the moment we are looking at the franchise model but remind ourselves that the vision is about reaching people for Christ; it's not about business.

RevCoffee

Methodist VentureFX Pioneer Minister Simon Oliver, whose ministry comes under the banner of 'RevCoffee', explains how new things are happening in Cottenham through community, creativity, Christianity and cappuccinos.

I am employed by the Cambridge Methodist Circuit to work alongside the Cottenham Community Centre (CCC) and Coffee Shop.

The Centre and Coffee Shop came into existence when, after many years of faithful worship and service, Cottenham Methodist Church closed down in November 2007. The day after its final service a public meeting was held to explore the possibilities of how the building might be used as a community resource.

The CCC was formed, much hard work and fund raising was carried out, and in February 2011 the beautiful Coffee Shop was opened. It is no longer a church, but I am privileged to be a part of the Community Centre team. I was appointed as part of the VentureFX scheme to work alongside the CCC with young adults and families in Cottenham, a vibrant village of about 7,000 people just outside Cambridge.

At the heart of my role lies a conviction that being a welcome, accepting, incarnational Christian presence in the community is key to contemporary ministry. So I spend a great deal of time simply hanging out in the coffee shop, sometimes working behind the counter, sometimes tapping away on my laptop, and often just meeting friends old and new.

Out of these relationships, and my connections with other community groups and churches in the village, I try to find fresh ways of exploring issues of life, meaning and faith. People are interested in looking at such issues but often feel alienated, disconnected or simply uninterested in traditional Church, or are just too busy with the chaos and demands of life to find the time and space in their schedules.

We now have quite a few initiatives and projects going on in and around the Community Centre and Coffee Shop; my wife and toddler are very involved in many of these groups. My approach is to be as collaborative as possible, so everything has been set up as a result of prayerfully listening to what people might be interested in, and in partnership with others (sometimes Christians, sometimes those who don't usually have anything to do with traditional church). These initiatives include:

Arts Night: A small group of young-ish poets, musicians, storytellers, comedians, singers, photographers and artists get together on the second Sunday of the month. It is a mostly musical group and we have also had some great poetry from Larkin, Yeats and our own members, short stories and photography. Each month has a theme (eg war and peace, parenthood, love, death, resurrection) and we share original and borrowed material and attempt collaborate in creating new works, as well as putting on quality performances. And we always have some really interesting conversations exploring issues of life and faith from a variety of perspectives.

Film Club: A fun, new group where people of all beliefs and none come together to watch a movie, eat popcorn and then explore the existential and spiritual issues that come out of it.

Dad's Play: We have a large (70-plus on the books) group of dads and male carers/guardians of under-5s who meet informally in the back hall of the Cottenham Community Centre Coffee Shop. The kids get the chance to play together while the men get a chance to eat bacon sandwiches and drink good coffee. We also have regular curry nights – although the children aren't invited to this!

Marriage and Parenting Courses. We have run a number of these courses in the Coffee Shop.

Daily Prayer: This takes place from 8:30 – 8:45 am, Sunday to Friday at the Coffee Shop. It is often just a couple of adults and my two-year-old, but others often pop in, have a natter and occasionally join us or ask for prayer.

Football Plus+: A group young and not-so-young men play football on the first and third Sundays of the month, and a small group of us are exploring the possibility of using of the fourth Sunday to talk football, life and faith over a couple of beers (or lemonades).

the Roost: this is new all-age event which we have been experimenting with over the last few months on Sunday afternoons and which officially 'launches' in September. It is a relaxed group which includes arts, craft, conversation, messy play, videos, the Sunday papers, music, poetry, coffee, flapjack and more to give people the opportunity to have fun together, create community and to explore different issues from a Christian perspective.

All of our activities aim to be open and accessible to all, and to give people the opportunity to develop meaningful community and consider the possibility of faith. All beliefs and viewpoints are valued, and seen as equal conversation partners as we try to make sense of life together. Everything is done in very low key and simple ways and – as I have already said – relationships take precedence over activities.

My ultimate hope is that through one or more of our initiatives people are given the opportunity to have a meaningful encounter with Jesus Christ and to explore what that might mean for them.

I take the Methodist and Fresh Expressions commitment to ecumenism very seriously, and have found it very encouraging to work alongside the Baptist Church, The Salvation Army, All Saints Parish Church and Christians Together in Cottenham as we seek to develop our ministries in collaboration.

It is not always easy, but it is a wonderful role and a rewarding project, and I feel very grateful to God and to the Methodist Church for allowing me to be a part of it!

The Gate Faith Community

Baptist minister James Karran is looking to develop a new monastic community at a Cardiff arts centre. He tells the story so far.

I used to be part of a fresh expression called Solace, a bar church in Cardiff that I started with Church Army officer Wendy Sanderson in 2007. Sadly, Solace came to an end four years later but what didn't come to an end was my vision of incarnational Christian communities that meet in pubs!

The idea of setting up a new monastic community was inspired by a retreat I went on to The Northumbria Community in August 2011 at a time when I was considering where God was leading me next. While there I was thoroughly impressed by the type of community they modelled: namely one defined by openness, acceptance – and, most of all – hospitality. It was this coupled with a long-standing desire of mine to see pubs and bars in Britain 'redeemed' from the bad reputation they currently have that led me to the concept of a new monastic community that was based in a pub or bar.

After the initial inspiration, I began prayerfully pushing doors and this led me to a conversation with the executive director of The Gate Arts Centre in Cardiff, Paul Hocking. Paul, a retired evangelical minister, shared the same vision for authentic, hospitable and incarnational Christian community. The idea of starting a new monastic community at The Gate emerged out of this conversation and the proverbial ball started rolling.

The Gate is perfectly situated to be the soil in which a new monastic community could grow because it has all the key elements – a good reputation, people who regularly come in, existing Christian connections and a bar! There are also amazing opportunities for ministry amongst the groups already connected with the venue.

We had our first community meeting in September 2012 and there were five of us, none of whom really knew each other or had much of an idea of how this would work. All were Christians, but mainly Christians who had been wounded by – or else fallen away from – mainstream church in the past. Since then we have grown to 11 members; some are already followers of Jesus but others have never been to church in their life before. We are currently developing a rhythm of prayer and a 'way of life' for the community to live by, as well as learning in general what it means to be a community of spiritual pilgrims who come from diverse backgrounds.

Our meetings take place on Sunday afternoons at 4.30pm in the Cafe Bar of The Gate and they are always based around a meal. We each contribute an item of food and fit in elements of worship, prayer and reflection around our eating, laughing and chatting together. In this, the meetings resemble something of the Sedar meal of Jewish tradition. The meal element is extremely important and illustrates the emphasis on hospitality that we want to place. Jesus is the ultimate host, inviting us into the great celebration of his resurrection, and we want to incarnate this in the small corner of the world God has placed us in. In this way, the meal also becomes central to our understanding of outreach.

As a community we live by a code of three principles:

learn from Jesus as best we can – become an apprentice;

serve others selflessly – become a host;

never judge anyone for where they are on their own life journeys but to help them discover where God is leading them to next. – become a pilgrim.

This whole venture is non-stipendiary so I have no regular income though I do run a tentmaking enterprise called Solace Ministries – as part of which I conduct religious and civil weddings, blessings and funerals. I am still exploring a vision in the longer term to see a new monastic community that is based in, owns and runs a cafe bar/pub. The 'abbey' or 'Monastery Pub' would be a home, hub and base for the community, providing a centre for meeting, mission and ministry. It would provide a centre to go out from and come home to.

A number of 'new monastic communities' in Britain are geographically dispersed but bound together by a common rule and set of core values. The community I envisage would be of this type. Some members would (by necessity) be geographically located in proximity to the 'abbey', but many others would be elsewhere and find their sense of identity through adopting the community's 'way of life', taking an avid and prayerful interest in the life of the community and 'returning home' to the abbey for family worship celebrations at certain important seasons during the year.

As well as the dispersed community, eventually local communities would be established around the country for localised accountability, prayer support and worship. These smaller communities, known as 'cellae', would be bound together and to the larger community by the way of life, but would also undertake pilgrimages to the abbey at certain times. Establishing these local discipleship communities would be the primary focus for the community's missionary activity.

E1 Community Church (Cable Street)

It began as an Urban Expression church planting team 15 years ago in London's East End but became E1 Community Church (E1CC) after the merger of three Urban Expression church plants (including Cable Street Community Church). Phil Warburton and Alex Alexander are Baptist ministers who lead the church and they explain more.

Things have changed a great deal since the original Cable Street Community Church was featured on expressions: the dvd – 1. E1CC now covers the south west of the Borough of Tower Hamlets and is based in Shadwell and Stepney.

Originally led by Jim and Juliet Kilpin, we were a small team on a steep learning curve made up of a group of people trying to figure out together how to follow Jesus and love our neighbours.

We remain a small church that struggles in many ways with the seeming chaos of life and messiness of church but there is also a lot of joy along the way and much hope for the future. Today E1CC covers the same geographical area and includes Sunday meetings in the homes of two families from the church and Wednesdays at 6pm in the hall of St Mary's Church on Cable Street. Once a month we have celebrations which are all-age, messy church, café-style, with a meal to finish. We have active children's and youth groups too, who bring us much joy and often speak nuggets of truth to us 'grown-ups'! You will rarely hear a sermon here but we hope, pray and trust that people will hear plenty of what God is saying.

Alex Alexander was called to lead the church alongside Phil in July 2009. Along with other churches in Tower Hamlets, we have set up a Mission House initiative to encourage and enable people with a heart for the inner city to live and minister here. Four local churches are part of the Mission House at the moment and each church has a volunteer who joins in with the life of the church and the local community. Rachel Fergusson joined us a year ago as part of this initiative and it is great working with a team of people passionate about the community and church of Shadwell and Stepney.

What are we about? E1 Community Church have five key distinctives. We are a Jesus-centred church; worshipping and following Jesus together in our daily lives. We are a church at the edge, seeking to be a church of people who have too little rather than have too much and of those who often feel marginalized by society and sometimes by the church. We are made up of people who live in the local neighbourhood and our worship, discipleship and decision-making aim to be relevant to the area in which we live. We aim to be multi-voiced in order to discover together what God might be saying to us. We believe passionately in being people of peace and we try to work at this both within church and within our community.

Each year we have a focus on a particular topic and we work on getting funds together for a charity specialising in that particular field. This year we are focusing on the Olympics to highlight issues of justice, inequality, disability and human trafficking. We are using the Baptist Missionary Society's Undefeated resources.

We are also involved with other churches in Tower Hamlets to run a winter Night Shelter and Foodbank based in various locations through Tower Hamlets, as well as youth and children's work both within church and in our neighbourhood. We are really excited about what God is doing in Tower Hamlets and we want to continue to join in with bringing his kingdom here!

city:base

city:base – along with St Thomas' Philadelphia and King's Centre – form Network Church Sheffield. Matt Broughton tells how city:base became a Bishop's Mission Order.

Network Church Sheffield is one church in three different local bases across the city; reflecting its diverse Anglican, Baptist and House Church heritage. It was just over three years ago that city:base got off the ground when Toby Bassford of St Thomas' Philadelphia was given the go-ahead to experiment with new ways of doing mission.

He called a team together and put in place some vision and values for a community passionate about prayer and passionate about mission. In following those two callings, the community was to see where God was on the move, always with a view to be pioneering as possible in our mission – particularly to the urban poor, students and young adults.

For the next 18 months, when there were then about 20 members, city:base met in people's homes. As numbers grew, we then started renting function rooms. Without a permanent home, it was a real defining season for us – a sort of a nomadic time – which served to make clear what we were about. It made us realise that we had to go through the hard times to seek what God was really equipping and calling us for. We experienced quite a lot of growth, not in terms of people being saved, but through a lot of people growing together. We had reached about 60 by then.

In January 2012 we finally moved into our own building – a house in one of the streets immediately behind the cathedral. It is thought of as a mission base; a place for training, discipleship, prayer and mission. We also bring the whole community together once a month in a celebration gathering. These gatherings are important but we see the primary place of church in cluster, household-sized Simple Churches of 10 to 20 people.

For the gatherings we use the Tulip Lounge, a venue just two doors down from us where we have a really good relationship with the staff. It was there that we had a small celebration in June when Bishop Steven Croft signed the Bishop's Mission Order for city:base.

We had a real sense of unity because our gathering place is a stone's throw from Sheffield Cathedral, less than 100m away. We're not just in their parish; we're right on their patch! That's why it was so special to have members of the cathedral team there, just to affirm it. It felt really significant for us as a team to put a marker in the sand and get the institutional backing of a BMO.

We have quite a large team, mainly lay. The two church leaders are Toby who is doing his ordination training at the moment, and Diane who has just been priested. We also have a paid manager who makes sure everything runs smoothly in gatherings though the role has more to do with the life of the mission base rather than a purely administrative function.

There's another 10 to 12 people who devote varying amounts of time to different tasks. I lead our internship scheme and I devote a day a week to it. Others do coaching and mentoring, pastoral care, student work or helping to build a house of prayer.

city:base has a foundation of a volunteer culture, one in which quite a large team of people each has its own area of responsibility or oversight. In essence we want to be involved in one another's lives and the way the base functions is just part of this. We try to act more like an extended family than an institution with staff and volunteers.

We have about 100 people connected with city:base, my guess is that all of them are either young adults or young families between the ages of 18 and 40. We ask everyone to look at what they are doing to encourage the life of City Base and their own Simple Church.

We are aware that we don't want to do something that's insular and exclusive; instead we want to create something that's really reflective of our experience of Jesus and the authenticity of that experience.

I suppose we are quite hard to get to know and connect with because we are only meeting once a month. What is slightly different from the classic fresh expressions approach – namely that fresh expressions are for people who don't normally come to church – is that our gatherings are very churchy in style but we see the primary place of 'belonging' as Simple Church.

In terms of accountability, we are still very much part of our sending church and Paul Maconochie – as a leader of Network Church Sheffield – is still our overall leader here. Also, a good percentage of our leadership team is part of The Order of Mission (a global, dispersed community of pioneering leaders called to lead and influence within whatever context and culture they live and work) so that's another level of accountability.

I think this balance we are trying to strike between the 'centre' and the 'edge' is an interesting one; we have our gathering once a month and Simple Church throughout the week to encourage the life of these simple missional churches to grow the life of our prayer and mission base at the centre.

I'm keen that we don't just become another 'big church with flashing lights', it's the relationship between these two sides of the continuum that move us forward.

Upstart Church

A brief encounter with a coffee shop owner changed the way Greg LeMaster thinks about church.

Greg learned the coffee shop was struggling to make a profit and wanted to help. So he asked if the space might be used for an 'upstart church' on Sunday mornings. Without hesitating, the shop owner offered him a key to the building.

Greg has worshipped at Graceland Baptist Church – just west of Richmond, Virginia – for 20 years; the last five as the church's part-time minister of outreach. With a weekly attendance of 250, churched families who move to the area almost always move their church membership to Graceland as well.

But Greg is now helping the Graceland congregation to see things differently, going outside the walls of their building to the people not reached by any church.

Greg started the process by asking a few people from his congregation to begin meeting in coffee shops. They in turn were to invite friends who would normally meet them for coffee but not for church. The format for the group remained the same:

catch up with one another;

a short reading and reflection from the Scriptures;

a conversation about the Scriptures and how it applies to our daily life;

prayers for the group members and for the people in the place where they are meeting.

Greg has also been delighted by what has become a regular get-together for people from around the world. It started a couple of years ago when Greg and the associate pastor at Graceland arranged an outreach event at a Richmond apartment block. They organised some games and handed out ice lollies to the children while a team of visiting, Spanish-speaking missionaries shared a brief message with the people living there. Not only did they encounter Spanish speakers but they also met people of many different nationalities with some from Latin America, Jamaica, Sudan, Nigeria and the Congo (DRC). To their amazement, 15 of the residents became Christians.

This 'one-off' event has become a weekly gathering. Every Friday afternoon, a small group of people, some of whom first met at the original event, get together for church. They meet on Friday, because they (like 30% of people in the US) work on Sundays.

This has connected Graceland, a predominately Anglo congregation, with Colonial Place Christian Church, a mainly international congregation in neighbouring Henrico County. Greg says,

You know it's a move of the Spirit, when all of these informal partnerships start to spread. A few months ago, we did not know any internationals. Now, we're doing church together.

This group is beginning to function as a church in its own right. They regularly share the Lord's Supper together and collect a weekly offering.

Greg's son Daniel is autistic and while Graceland is a welcoming place for him, he wanted a place where his son could be as expressive as he needs to be. So Greg started a group in his living room using the same the four-step pattern as in the coffee shop and apartment block. Several other families, uncomfortable about bringing their own special needs children to a traditional church, soon joined.

On most Sundays, Greg and his family go to an early service at Graceland and then return home where they are joined by a group of 12 to 14 others for Joy Church. It's a place where parents can share their joys and concerns – and where their kids are free to praise the Lord as they are comfortable. At Joy Church, an outburst is a welcomed part of worship.

Greg comments,

All the groups that we have started are foundationally set to be church. Some people may get confused with what they consider outreach because they have grown-up in traditional church from a very young age. However, the truth is that each is a church and has the DNA (Divine Truth, Nurturing Relationships, and Apostolic Mission).

As far as pressure to bring these into the 'real church' is concerned, I think that it may exist to some degree but the truth is these churches function by themselves. I have no problem that some people elect to get additionally involved in what they may perceive to be 'real church'.

I think this complements the ministry of Graceland Baptist as we together desire to disciple and direct folks towards a deep life in Christ. I feel that people at Graceland are beginning to see that we must engage the culture as we can no longer attract the culture into the church. We simply must take church (us) to them in fresh expressions.

Living Place Project

Revd Chris Lewis tells how Mount Zion Baptist Chapel has turned a piece of its ground into a training garden as part of a Living Place Project. This project is generating 'spin offs' which are helping Chapel members to begin reconnecting with the community.

Mount Zion is still called 'the Mission'. Founded after World War I as a daughter church of a nearby Welsh language chapel, Mount Zion was designed to have a more missionary emphasis in catering for the growing English-speaking population of this part of east Swansea.

Like many chapels it dwindled but about three years ago we had an opportunity to apply for funding from the Welsh Government to improve the overgrown and rubbish-strewn area behind the chapel to make a training garden. This would be used to encourage people in our relatively deprived area to grow their own vegetables and improve their diets.

Working on the garden caught the imagination of a local secondary school head teacher. Soon, parties of young people began to get involved as part of the 'community service element' in their Welsh Baccalaureate programme. Some came in their own time and have since started attending our fairly informal Sunday afternoon services.

The garden has taken three years to create and now further funding from Health Challenge Wales will enable us to run courses linked with it. Local adults who were previously involved with Mount Zion through Girls and Boys Brigade hold it in some affection and the word is gradually getting around that the apparently quiet little chapel is still alive.

There are not many of us – we make double figures on a good day – but we're beginning to be approached about hosting community events. These include a performance of short plays written by the school pupils, a craft evening, a community archive evening and a 'visioning workshop' by the Transition Swansea organisation. We hope we might also become an outlet for the Trussell Trust food bank.

Slowly but steadily our network is re-growing. Our approach is not about preaching but it is about incarnation, befriending and responding. Incarnational ministry is reflected in our immersion in, and solidarity with, the area and its distinctive culture. Our pattern of ministry draws on the values of service represented in the church. One member, for instance, is a long serving councillor while others have had trade union and other community connections.

Our project definitely has a missional purpose but exactly how it will work out is not clear yet. The base is a small and traditional Welsh chapel congregation which may continue in parallel with a new congregation. To some extent, we are legally constrained by our governing document (the Baptist Union model document) but there are clauses within it which encourage the advancement of education and befriending of young people; it's on the basis of these that we're going ahead with this particular aspect of the work. Our underlying strategy is incarnational and is not necessarily therefore aimed at creating an institution but to be, in some sense, transformational in the lives of those associated with it. Transition Swansea recognises our project as one run on Transition principles – and its members, with or without church connections, visit us.

The result might be a classed as a 'para church'. As someone who spent a considerable part of my ministry in what used to be called 'Industrial Mission', I am reminded of the work of Ted Wickham as Industrial Chaplain in the Diocese of Sheffield many years ago. The then-Bishop of Sheffield, Leslie Hunter, had appointed Ted Wickham to further the Bishop's "vision of a revitalised Church and a Church re-established among the industrial working class."

Ted gathered together working people who were alienated from the institutional church. Their meetings were informal and he used to say that the job of the church was not to fish in the dirty waters of the world in order to transfer people to the clean waters of the church but to work to clean up the dirty waters.

That is what we are doing here In Swansea. According to government indices, we are operating in what is recognised as a deprived area. The training garden aims to address some of the resulting issues and later this year we hope to add the food bank. We are also looking to try and find opportunities for our growing number of teenagers to express themselves in arts and performance as they have a lot of interest, quite a bit of talent and a great deal of goodwill!