church of england Archives - Page 5 of 11

TANGO

The TANGO community project at St Mark's, Haydock, has been running for 12 years. The project's chair, Avril Chisnall, and co-ordinator Christine Kay explain how a fresh expression of church has become part and parcel of the ministry there.

When we first started TANGO it was quite a difficult thing to know how we were going to bring God into it – especially when volunteers joined us from the community. We didn't want to impose something which involved us standing there quietly to pray so instead we always treated it as an invitation to come and reflect on why we were there as part of the project. And then we always finished with a prayer. Then people began to trust us more and started to join in different ways.

We now do have a cell in TANGO and cell is important to our church but that's OK for those people who genuinely want to go forward with God and enquire and learn more. That's the right environment for them but we've got lots of people in our teams who are sort of 'iffy' about God. We know he's in their lives but they've not acknowledged it themselves so how do we get them to move on?

We've introduced what we call the 'Three Ps' as a way of opening up some of these issues. Chris and her team regularly meet with all the other teams once a fortnight to look at Purpose, Problems and Presence of God. We also have breakfasts when staff and volunteers, which we consider to be our church, get involved with a God slot.

I think people now realise that church isn't doing it to them but church is here as part of the community – and church is not a stuffy old place, a building they have to go to; instead people actually make the church, us and them together.

I've been a member of the Anglican Church for many years and love it but I feel very frustrated that the church is stuck in the way it sees how church should be done and they're still expecting that church can carry on as it is. Many churches are seeing their numbers dwindle but are still not prepared to change their ways of doing things. They might introduce some new songs and various creative ways of doing things but it's still very much traditional church and won't reach the people we live among.

I appreciate that it's scary for church people and leaders to support a fresh expression because it's risky but Kingdom values are the important things. All those years ago, God asked me to do something different with a team of people and the result is that it is 'not the same church as I'm used to'. It's forced me out of a way of viewing church into seeing people differently and trying to communicate his way with them.

I get really wound up when people try to measure what church is. We certainly believe that what we have with our volunteers and community members is very much a church. The frustration kicks in when people come along, ask you to fill in a form, tick boxes, and say, 'How many people have you had in your church this week?' Most of the time I simply do not know the answer to that but we know that what we do here is very much a one-to-one with people. Thanks to God, we change people's lives by meeting them, praying for them or talking about God to them. We can't measure those sorts of things and that's really difficult.

It is often not measurable in an 'official' way but I'm looking at what happens here in Kingdom terms. As such, it doesn't matter that I'm a lay person; I will keep on doing this stuff because God has asked me to do it and pass it on to other people to do as well. We also know that's what we need to do and investment in other people with God's values is vital.

If TANGO goes on for another 12 years that'll be down to God and the investment we've put into the people's lives for them to want to carry on doing Kingdom business in an ordinary way. Lay people are so important to this type of fresh expression it's important to risk letting those who are not ordained take the lead and do what God's asked them to do.

I'd say, 'go out there and have a go and really listen to what God's saying to you.' We've passed the idea of TANGO on to three other parishes but it's not the same TANGO that we've got. They're doing the same sort of things but they are different people in different sorts of community. That's why it's very important to find God's heartbeat for the community in which you live but – for goodness sake – get out of your church and go and do it.

Coordinator Christine Kay adds:

God is the heartbeat of everything that we do; without him it would just be impossible. Every morning, before we open at 9.45am, we have what we call Quarter to TANGO when as many of us as are free come together. It is not a formal prayer time by any means but we give out notices and things that are coming up in the week but there’s also a time to share.

In the past we've done lots of things which we've been brave to do but we've been even braver to stop them when they've not been working. Now we're looking to do something called TANGO on a Sunday. Lots of people find Sunday a very long and lonely day so we've decided to give it a go, it will be in our café – a chat over a cuppa about some question brought up in a very informal way. We're not really sure how it's going to pan out but I feel that God is asking us to do this and we're just watching this space at the moment.

You are not going to get people into your churches in this day and age; they just want you to go out to them. They don't even want that, they don't know that they want that, the only way to be with them is to be where they're at; not threatened by anything that's churchy. That's why we try not to use churchy words at all. We are just ordinary people; they respect that and respond to it as well because they see we're not holier-than-thou. Hopefully they just feel comfortable and safe in the kind of environment we encourage here. God is opening this up for each of us to be part of other people's lives and for them to be part of our lives as well.

Garage Praise

The splitting of a house group that had grown in size was the opportunity for new life to develop in a Church of England parish in Shropshire.

While one half of the house group wanted to concentrate on Bible study, the other half, including Sarah and John Wildblood, preferred to explore outreach. The Wildbloods and their group were particularly keen to make contact with local families, many of whom had dropped away from church during an interregnum.

After discussion with the new rector, and prayer, they began to look for practical ways to serve.

A reunion of the two house group halves for a social held in John Wildblood's business premises, a garage on an industrial estate, provided inspiration. The bring-and-share party 'was very successful', says Sarah. 'We wondered whether this was the way to bring families back.'

They began to look for practical ways to serve

She and her ten fellow house group members now hold occasional Friday evening meetings at 7.30pm in John's garage. This involves worship, a bring-and-share supper and a mix of a talk, musical performance and video. 'Garage Praise' is popular with about 80-90 people of all ages from the local churches and surrounding area, but particularly teenagers, who are about to be given their own slot in leading the evening session.

We thought we would be for families, but the youth are more keen,

says Sarah.

We are trying to go with it and see what people want. A lot of local youth hang out in their cars near the garage. We always invite them and hope that they will join in with us sometime.

A desire to reach out started with people the church had lost, but ended up attracting young people and others with an interest in more contemporary worship, without the formality of a traditional Church of England service.

Sunday 4:6

A year into Mandy Wright's job as Deanery Evangelist with a group of 21 rural Anglican churches in Devon, it occurred to her that if anyone wanted to attend church as a result of her evangelism, a Sunday service would likely put them off.

I thought, I've got to do something to appeal to people right outside church,

she says.

She hired the village hall for a new monthly meeting advertised as a friendly, non-judgmental space in which to bring questions and enjoy food and drink.

The first meeting, held at 6pm on a fourth Sunday in a month in 2004, attracted 33 people, more than four times the usual attendance of any local church service. Quite a few of those were churchgoers, but a good few were others known to Mandy through her work among the largely elderly community.

That first evening was spent getting to know each other, finding out where we were on our spiritual journeys,

she recalls.

Although numbers fell by half on the second meeting of Sunday 4:6, over the next half year more and more unchurched people began to realise that this was a place where their questions and thoughts could find a safe hearing.

'Fresh expressions are not clear-cut; they are pretty messy'

Another half year later and local churchgoers were catching on.

Starving Christians began to come gradually,

Mandy says.

They were wanting more worship and slowly the seekers were leaving by the back door. Now the numbers are up, but they are all churchgoers.

At the beginning of 2006, a vision evening was held, at which the group of 25 defined its first year of existence as one in which community was built, but expressed the desire that the second year focus on worship.

I had promised from the start that Sunday 4:6 would be theirs,

Mandy says.

It is meeting a huge need for Christians to explore their faith more deeply; lifelong churchgoers have discovered faith perhaps for the first time. But it's not my original vision. I want to work with those outside the church.

She is now developing a core team from within Sunday 4:6 to take over its leadership and hopes to find new outlets for her ministry to seekers from the local communities.

Fresh expressions are not clear-cut; they are pretty messy. Even the good news ones have questions,

she says. Following the transformation of what began as a seeker group and developed into a fellowship of Christians, Mandy is now asking which is more important: reaching the unchurched or feeding 'the needy churched'?

River Community Church

Steve Kelly, of River Community Church, is Assistant Rural Dean in Telford Deanery and fresh expressions advisor in the Diocese of Lichfield. He would never have described himself as a pioneer.

My wife Maggie and I have always had a sense of adventure and we like to travel light. That means we've always been willing to 'get up and go' wherever God leads us. After hearing a calling from God in 2003, I left my career in the car industry to train to be a vicar. I have always had a heart for evangelism and outreach and after my training as a curate had been completed in 2008, Bishop Alan Smith approached me with an idea for my first post.

He asked me if he would be interested in drawing on fresh expressions' methodology to explore the possibilities of a church plant in Telford. My main brief was to reach those who weren't connecting with the established church.

My exposure to fresh expressions had been churches doing it on the side. Most of these were expressions of outreach from churches seeking to engage in mission and outreach. The opportunity in Telford was to grow a new church in a new community and it wouldn't be part of any existing church.

I was given a blank sheet of paper to engage with a community of 150 houses that would increase to over 3,500 in the next few years.

In 2008, we moved to Telford and became part of the community. Initially there wasn't a place within the community people could gather – no pubs, no cafes – so we worked with others in the development of a community garden. We slowly began to build relationships with others who also had a heart for community. The garden provided a place for people to meet each other and we ran a series of outdoor family events for those in the neighbourhood.

In Christmas 2008 the neighbours asked if we could organise something called 'carols on the green'. It was an informal outdoor carol service which over 100 people came to. After the popularity of the event, we ran a 'taster event' in the local school and asked people for their views about the timing and style of a community worship event. It was decided that a café-style event at the local primary school would be most welcomed.

A hybrid of café church, Messy Church and charismatic church, we were delighted that people came. It started quite small but that monthly event has remained as an enduring feature of what we do.

Just over a year later, River Community Church was officially launched in June 2010. It is a church community which has a real mixture of people at its heart. The church has drawn some who already have a strong faith, some who have come to faith, some who have returned to their childhood faith and some who have seen what's happened and are thinking about the next step.

Right from the start, the leadership team have been excited by a 'kingdom vision', a vision of the growth, transformation and healing that comes when God's love and power begin to touch people's lives. We have tried to keep the church community focused on incarnational mission. Whilst some aspects of church life are 'attractional' by their very nature, we have continually emphasised the need to be outward-looking, bringing blessing to our neighbours and the local community.

Like Paul, we believe that God is able to do much more than we can dare to ask or imagine. As we have prayed about this, we have been inspired by the vision in Ezekiel chapter 47. In this prophetic vision, the River flows out from the place of worship (the temple) and out into the desert. We read that trees spring up on the banks of the River. These trees remind us of the vision we have of our church – rooted, flourishing and fruitful. We believe that this is also vision of what God can do today – in Telford! The River speaks of the life and power of the Holy Spirit. So we have given our church the name River Community Church. It expresses our desire to be a church OF the River, a community BY the River, a people IN the River… and that's what we're praying for!

Beyond

The cities of Brighton & Hove are in many ways iconic of the changing landscape of British contemporary culture. They are a regional hub for a holistic mix of alternative spiritualities, world religions and twenty-four hour entertainment. It is in this mix that Beyond seeks to explore what it means to be new forms of church and mission in an emerging culture.

In the run up to Christmas, Martin Poole and Beyond, a fresh expression of church in the Diocese of Chichester, sought to explore an 'arts-as-mission' event using the beach huts on the city waterfront. Martin Poole explains the story of the 'Advent Beach Hut Calendar'.

Brighton and Hove annually hosts the largest arts festival in England and is well known as a centre for creativity and culture. Art is in the DNA of the place because it is about experience, and experience is how many people today explore what they feel and think about things. As with other parts of the UK, there is an increased interest in spirituality and a rejection of traditional religion.

So the challenge then for us in Beyond, is to explore how we engage in using art to inspire and stimulate people to think about Christian spirituality. We use art as a media for mission in this way, partly because of the context but also because we are committed to create artistic parables about spirituality to allow people to come to their own conclusions about God, and art is the best way to do that.

Beyond is an opportunity for people to explore spirituality through a variety of creative approaches. We hold events that provide an opportunity for exploration and discovery, and the Advent Beach Hut Calendar is one of these.

The aims of Beyond are:

to help people to a deeper understanding of spirituality through the arts and other creative activities;

to explore non-traditional ways of being Christian;

to be a resource for church people who wish to further explore their relationship with God.

Every day from the 1st to the 24th December 2008 a beach hut will open its doors at 5.30pm for an hour to reveal a festive display in a life-size variation on the traditional calendar used by children to count down the days to Christmas. The beach huts are all built to the same design and could be described simply as reasonablly sized sheds on the beach (which is why popular website www.shedworking.co.uk has kept track of each night on their site throughout December).

The similarity between a beach hut and the cattle shed in which Jesus was born has not gone unnoticed to a few of our hut owners and some have fully exploited this. Eileen at hut 382 saw this potential early on and booked 'Away in a Manger' as her carol and gave us the full stable experience, with a manger, the baby Jesus, Mary and even a donkey peering out from the back of the stable. Sadly Mary, Joseph and Jesus didn't have mince pies and mulled wine to keep them warm as we did, but the wise men and the shepherds did bring them lots of other gifts to celebrate the holy birth.

The response has been unbelievable. I expected ten to twenty people each night and for us to see a lot of familiar faces. The lowest numbers we've had were thirty or so and on some nights we've had over a hundred. Our local television news and local newspapers have also got behind the event, so many people know its happening. Every night I meet new people who have simply heard about it on the radio or read a poster or heard of it through a friend and decided to come down. People have been coming from all over Sussex and beyond to see it and some people have made it a personal pilgrimage to be at each hut every night.

But the true value has been the opportunity to speak to individuals about their spirituality in an open and honest way and begin a dialogue about that. We are really pleased that the beach hut owners and artists have formed a real bond with each other. A community of care is beginning to develop in that group, even in this short time.

Generation Project

Matt Caldicott leads the Generation Project, set up in 2011 by Rugby Deanery to connect with 20 to 30-year-olds in the area. Matt tells of the story so far, including the launch of Park Pastors.

I started in post in July last year and my brief was to connect with young adults. It was very much a blank sheet of paper and I thought about trying to reach this 'missing generation' in pubs and cafes but it was July, and quite sunny, so – on my first day – I went to the park!

I had previously visited Caldecott Park with my own kids but I didn't really know it that well. It underwent a nine month Heritage Lottery Fund restoration project in 2008/09 and it's a beautiful place, a little piece of heaven in the middle of Rugby.

I started to visit it three times a week to prayer walk and meet people. After a week or so, I thought it appropriate to tell Trevor, the park ranger, that I was a Christian hoping to connect with people there. His first reaction was, 'There's a better park down the road for you to do that!' But our friendship has grown over time as our relationship has deepened and now we work together from a position of trust.

My first aim was to meet people of peace and I made contact with many of them during the summer, including:

deanery clergy and other local ministers;

those involved in local specific mission focused ministries so as to try and not 'reinvent the wheel' and repeat something that's already happening;

people with no links to church at present.

An interesting, and positive, challenge in this area is that Rugby churches are connected through the Revive network. This means that church leaders from all denominations meet and work together regularly, renewing vision for the church's mission in the area and the emergence of new projects. As I was coming into such a strong environment of Christians doing all sorts of things across the town, I asked myself, 'How can I start something new with such a lot going on? Where are the gaps?' The park has been such an answer to prayer because it offers a unique base for ministry.

A turning point came when Trevor and I started to chat about the possibilities for the park's Café which had been closed due to the economic downturn. The original idea when the park re-opened in 2009 was that it would become a community hub, but that project had never been realised. We started to dream dreams about, 'What if it reopened as a joint venture; a council-church-run community café that connects with people in various ways? I proposed that we would offer Park Pastors, running along the same lines as Street Pastors, as a spiritual thread to that. We would be based at the Café.

During my times of walking the park I had a real sense of it being a place of peace and restoration and I wanted to work on that theme of the peace of the place. We could ask people the question, 'If there are things in your life that are broken, how can we help you to be restored?' Ultimately the idea is to grow missional community out of that.

Rugby Borough Council welcomed the idea of opening up the Café again, put in more than £20,000 for catering staff wages, and even provided us with Park Pastor t-shirts and sweatshirts to signify our 'official presence' within the park. We will be running a pilot 'year' from April to October and the aim is to work towards establishing it as a charity so we can attract funding. My appointment currently sees me running the project for three days a week with the rest of the time spent in pioneer ministry training with the CMS Pioneer Mission Leadership Training Course.

Thankfully I also have a colleague, Aaron Lincoln, who is working alongside me on this. As a church planter he had been called to the area three years ago but he really felt God calling him to get involved in something new – not the traditional church plant he had done before. We started to meet and it has developed from there.

Park Pastors plan to launch at Easter, when the Café is scheduled to re-open, and I would seek to have a mixed-age team. We will welcome all we come across but we do also hope to focus on young dads. There are lots of places for young mums and their babies to go but we want to put the park on the map as a good place for guys to come too, somewhere they can meet other blokes that understand the pressures of family life.

The council has also provided us with a wooded area of the park to install a permanent outdoor labyrinth and we will provide guided meditations for iPods. Hopefully that will be ideal for people working in the centre of town who want to get away from it all for a while at lunchtime.

In another development, I have also become chaplain at Rugby College of Further Education; it is relationship building time at the moment but I can see that in the winter – when we can't be in the park so much – we will be able to base our missional community there.

I have been thinking very much of the theology of the guest: God is here, now, with us and in the conversations we have with people but – in the park – we are on someone else's turf as well. We have been so privileged that the council said yes to us; we are guests in this environment. It turns the tables on what we think about mission and shifts our perception of who holds the power.

If we adopt the attitude of a guest, it takes away some of the barriers as to what is expected of us. It will help us think creatively about how we approach mission and focus us on collaboration, both with the council and the people who visit the park. The very word 'pioneer' can have some very difficult connotations attached to it; I don't like the theology of 'claiming' – it’s too Gung-ho for me and speaks less about Jesus than we might think.

Joining in with what is already happening in a community means that you don't have to try and make people jump through hoops to do things or go somewhere they wouldn't naturally connect with. As Park Pastors, we can offer an added dimension to what is already going on in the life of the park, and hopefully illuminate God's presence through missional community drawing alongside the people we meet.

We have to bring the gospel into new places but when you're invited into someone else's environment, you can't make all the rules, you have to adapt. We need a mixed economy, to be flexible and connect in ways that surprise people.

L’Oasis Christian Fellowship

Based in Provence, L'Oasis Christian Fellowship, Lorgues, serves the predominantly elderly ex-pat community. Peter Massey explains how it started.

In 2OOO, after a badly needed holiday in Provence, we had a real sense that God was calling us to France to provide a place of shelter and rest; a place for people to spiritually charge their batteries. It seemed such a crazy idea but shortly after returning to Ireland where we lived, I was made redundant. As a result we started to explore the possibility that God was saying something to us.

Watch Peter explaining how L'Oasis began.

The dream was that we try and find a house with space for people to come and stay and that our home was to be open to people from all denominations and none and be an oasis of calm in a beautiful and restful part of the South of France. Needless to say there were many difficulties and hurdles on the journey and it was tempting at times to give up, but God always stepped in and opened doors.

Becoming accepted by the local church was difficult at first. There was an understandable wariness of us as 'these people from Ireland who had just parachuted into the area wanting to start a sort of church'. This was complicated by the fact I am an Anglican minister but eventually we were welcomed and now our ministry has been accepted by the Diocese in Europe and that has helped.

We first learnt about fresh expressions in 2006 and this gave us a real sense of belonging, not just to the church, but to something new and exciting that seemed to understand and reflect our own experience and walk with God.

Our Sunday worship is based around Communion but is informal in character and is always followed by a shared meal which, in true Provencal style, may go on till 5 or 6pm as people share fellowship together and catch up on each others lives. We meet twice a month, once in our own home in Arc-en-Provence (or in the garden in the warm summer months) and once in a local chapel which is part of a retirement home where we are made very welcome.

When we came to France, we were unaware of the vast numbers of retired ex-pats who either live or have second homes here. There are many needs within this elderly and vulnerable group of people and a third of our fellowship is widowed. Loneliness, low self-esteem and lack of mobility are all growing problems but God has blessed our fellowship with many gifted people of all ages and our Sunday club for the children is growing as well.

L'Oasis comes under the ARK association – this exists to assist the English-speaking communities of the Var in areas of pastoral care where there may be need of compassionate care or personal support. We work both independently and alongside other agencies who share a similar concern for the welfare and well being of the resident ex-patriot community in this part of France. The ARK is established as a French Association which has a similar status to a UK charity. It is guided by a steering group of professional and dedicated people who live and work in this part of France and share the concerns for the needs of the community. This work is endorsed and encouraged by the British Consulate in Marseilles, the Anglican Diocese in Europe and the British Association.

It is an unusual but rewarding 'mission field' and the potential is enormous for communities such as ours to be fostered throughout the south of France, and that is part of our vision. Our focus is on encouraging fellowship and sharing the gospel through action and pastoral care; to be a place of healing and growth and simply offer ourselves and our home for the Lord to use. We seek to be church without walls, Christ-centred, people-focused and Spirit-led.

GraceSpace

GraceSpace in Bradford is 'a church for people who don't go to church'. Pioneer minister Colin Blake explains how the community has developed and why eating together is so important to them.

GraceSpace started life in 2007 when the then-minister Andy Bowerman was appointed as a Pioneer Minister, by the Bishop of Bradford. Eventually he and his wife Ali set up the Vicars Café in Saltaire as part of the vision to create a community in the Aire Valley.

The Café, which continues to operate today, provides a safe 'third space' where people can enjoy its hospitality and atmosphere while building relationships and sharing God with those who are interested in knowing more.

When Andy and Ali moved to Dorset, the Café became a social enterprise with a board of management and a project manager running it day by day. My wife Katy and I moved here two years ago. I have been in ministry for 27 years and, at 59, I am probably one of the oldest 'pioneer ministers' in CofE history!

It was an interesting start because we arrived having no idea what the project was for or how to take it forward. It was actually very difficult to get hold on it because it meant different things to different people. It was also difficult because there was a four month gap between Andy leaving in July and me arriving in November. The community dissipated to the extent that only about six or seven people turned up at the licensing service to represent GraceSpace.

Many people associated with the community travelled from all over the place in those early years because they related to Andy and Ali very strongly. That was wonderful but it was clear from the time we came on the scene that those people weren't actually relating to each other in the same sort of way. As a result we decided to draw our horns in and not get involved in lots of missional activities initially; instead we wanted to help people to get to know each other.

Mine is a five year appointment and we knew it was vital to get those strong building blocks of community in place right from the start. As a result we moved a lot of events away from Vicars Café and hosted them in our own home. We are fortunate in having a large dining room, kitchen and living room so we began to meet together as a group around meals. Food and drink became the staple of what we were doing and when people eat together, somehow there is a little heaven in the ordinary.

The number has now grown to 25 with many people coming who have either been bruised by church in the past or with no past experience of church at all. They range from families with teenage or adult children through to people in their 50s and 60s. We also have about 10 younger children, aged from two to 12, coming along with their parents. Some came as a result of personal invitation from a friend though many have turned up as a result of the information and publicity we put out through our website.

We believe in operating with a light touch. We don't have an 'official' structure, such as a PCC, but we all meet together every three months for a Summit meeting at which we decide the priorities for the next quarter.

A real turning point came when GraceSpace came up with the idea of having a different meal theme for each Sunday in the month. On the first Sunday we have Breakfast when people turn up at 10am to help us cook breakfast together; we will then organise a spiritual thought or reflection at some stage while we're eating. The whole thing can run for about three hours as people often want to stick around and discuss things.

The second Sunday is Lunch. This starts at 12.30 and people bring different foods around a theme so we might have a Chinese meal or what we call 'Yorkshire food' which means three types of curry! Everyone takes part; we don't offer separate things for different ages. The children particularly like it when there's a fifth Sunday in the month because that's when they choose what the adults have to do on that day and tell us what the spiritual element is going to be.

The third Sunday is Tea or 'Creativitea' at which we bring along cakes and biscuits and make big crafts together from 3pm. I'm a regional co-ordinator for Messy Church but we don't have enough space to run a Messy Church. However, Creativitea is a variation on the theme because we do have a celebration, activity and food as part of the mix. The adults are keen to join and they are happy to join in with cut and paste but generally they want to make things that will last, something with a purpose.

The fourth Sunday is based around supper time at about 6pm. It is called Ikon; this is more reflective and allows people to share what comes out of that time together. Typically they will have bread, soup, pate and cheese at that one.

We also offer Explore sessions during the week on either Tuesday or Wednesday nights. These are cell-church-like in structure but are really about Bible application rather than Bible study, giving the opportunity for a much more interactive approach. Coming from a charismatic, evangelical background myself this has been quite a learning curve for me too because it's all about giving people the freedom to have different opinions. It's no good saying, 'this is the only answer to this passage'. Instead I approach it as, 'I know what I think this passage is about but tell me, what do you think?' It's about trying to step back, not telling people what to think but allowing them to grow.

At the end of November 2011 I was diagnosed with temporal arteritis which meant that all the arteries in my body were inflamed. I have been having treatment for that and hope to be back at work in January but I have been very encouraged to see what has happened at GraceSpace while I've been out of action. The people have been brilliant, offering their homes and their skills to keep things moving along.

This illness has prompted the devolving, training, encouraging and mentoring of new people into leadership. For this fresh expression to develop we want to create another network of community, a second GraceSpace. For that, we need leaders, though we have also taken a long, hard look at our purpose in all of this. It can't just be to build community. How do we look outside and make a difference?

We have started to look at how we might do that by volunteering elsewhere. Perhaps we could give our support to a community or local Christian project rather than start one ourselves? We are just working out how that might be done because we are a fairly eclectic bunch and people travel from all over Bradford to come to us.

I have a line manager who offers me pastoral care while the Archdeacon of Bradford provides practical oversight of the project. I work alongside all the other local churches and I believe that my age has greatly helped me in building links with them; I'm clearly not a whizzkid and people seemed to have responded to that because I don't come over as threatening in any way. I'm also not seen as suggesting that GraceSpace has got it right and they've got it wrong. Far from it. We all need each other. Part of my time is spent as adviser on fresh expressions of church to the Bishop and I am a regular at wider diocesan meetings as well as being very much involved with the local churches in our area. Indeed I lead the marriage preparation course team for the local URC.

It's all part and parcel of trying to serve other churches in what we do here at GraceSpace. If we can let them know of the things that have gone well – and our failures too – we are helping them in their own mission. All we can do is be honest that we are working out our faith in fear and trembling and trust God for the rest.

Unlimited Church

James Grier explains how the Unlimited youth church begins to be seen in a new light as it becomes a BMO.

I was first appointed by the Diocese of Exeter to pioneer a youth church in the city and advise and encourage other expressions of youth church. Unlimited, which looks to reach young people who have no experience of church at all, tends to reach Sixth Form students – predominantly from Exeter College. It has been a far harder and slower task than I ever envisaged but I have been in post for four-and-a-half years now and it finally feels like we've made some headway.

We were clear from the start that we were not looking for any sort of transfer growth from other youth work in the city or even to reach non-Christian youth with existing church connections. The missional focus was, and is, unchurched youth – though ultimately we are also looking to include people of all ages.

Early in 2009 we started going out on the cathedral green where most Sixth Formers seem to spend their time, get into conversation with them and say, 'We are starting a church. What do you think about church and God?' Prayer is a very important component of what we do and our aim is to offer to pray for everyone we talk to. We ask whether we can pray for them and ask God to tell us about them. We estimate that about 9 out of 10 young people allow us to do this. Anything we sense might be from God is offered lightly and tentatively so that we are not putting anything on people unhelpfully or claiming we get infallible revelation! Nearly all whom we pray for are shocked by the accuracy of God's revelation. It means that the young people know what we're about from the outset; it may have limited the speed of growth of the fresh expression but – on the other hand – we build on relationship and that develops a strong foundation.

Two years ago we began renting an office at the back of Mary Arches church in the city centre to use as a café base. That's where we also have a worship service three Sundays a month now. We had decided that we would only start doing worship when we saw someone come to faith; now we have got two people who have been baptised and two further people also become Christians. Our worship time must be the world's most casual and informal because our aim is always to reach young people that don't do church. It's a 60-minute service, half of which involves eating toasted sandwiches! After that we have a video clip, some songs, an activity, prayer and response.

Our mission statement is 'Unlimited Church – young people encountering the God they've never met and living the difference' but ultimately we need to be church of all ages if we are to be genuinely church rather than some sort of monochrome Christian group. The young people need older people in their lives if we are into discipleship and not just conversion.

In everything we do as a church, we aim to be:

unlimited by church culture and tradition – where it is unhelpful, unnecessary or inappropriate;

unlimited in our openness to and love of people – treating them as unique and as God's made them to be;

unlimited in our faith and expectation of God – living by faith not inhibited by past experience or fears.

Soon we hope to have the freedom of being a Bishop's Mission Order with the continued aim of converting the young people to Christian culture, not church culture. Lots of churches say they want a youth church but what they really mean is a youth congregation. The BMO evolved when our new converts wanted to be baptised. I asked the Bishop, 'How does that work ecclesiastically?' He suggested becoming a BMO which was wonderful – other churches in the area had initially been rather suspicious of our motives; many were also fearful that we would whisk their young people away. They didn't know if we'd parachute in and then disappear without trace as some sort of parachurch organisation or an outreach. The BMO changes that because it establishes the formal structures needed for right leadership and accountability.

Up until now I have been serving as half time team vicar in five parishes as well as spearheading Unlimited. However, from the middle of December I will be going full time in this pioneering role. My prayer is that Unlimited becomes a viable church of people of all ages which exists to reach and disciple youth who've never really had anything to do with church before.

The main challenge has been to develop a team; some started out with us but have moved away or got stuck into established churches. Thankfully others are now coming through. In future, I'd love to see more radical conversions. We have prayed for 400 young people on the streets since we started but we don't see the fruit of that all the time. I don't want to become possessive but it would be great to see more of them. We'd love to see a turning of the tide as more and more young people in Exeter discover God for themselves and are changed by him and the city changed as a result!

Springfield Church

Will Cookson is minister of a 'church that was a fresh expression before the term was invented'. He tells how important it is for fresh expressions of church to keep on reinventing themselves.

Watch Will Cookson and Sue Bosley discuss multiplication not duplication (transcript available on the update Oct12 link to the right).

Springfield Church was originally set up by Holy Trinity Wallington in 1992 to reach out to the community. In 2002 it became what is known as an Extra-Parochial Place (EPP) in Southwark Diocese which meant we had no 'official' parish and no church building. Our two key objectives were, and are, mission and worship and we now have about 400 people of whom about 40% are under the age of 18.

Springfield's two congregations meet in different places in Wallington on Sundays at 10.30am. The larger one gets together at Wallington High School for Girls while our second is the Springfield@Roundshaw cafe church which meets at St Paul's church on the Roundshaw estate.

The thing about a fresh expression is that over time it can become regularised in the way it does things so it has to re-discover itself. To an extent, when I came here almost 10 years ago that was what had happened to Springfield; it had got set in its ways. The thing that cried out to me was to go to a cell church model because everything has to be relational if it's going to 'speak' to people outside inherited church.

We are doing this through a whole series of different things, such as a Christian club at a local school (Xplore), Messy Church in the same venue (Footsteps), parent and toddler group transformed into Messy Church format, as well as cell groups and various ministries – such as an English conversation class – planted in the community. When we were asked by the vicar at Roundshaw estate to plant a new congregation in that area, we sent out 25 people and now average about 40 at the café church. Most of those who have joined come from the estate itself.

We have a huge focus on relationships and building events and ministries that reinforce and complement each other. To my mind, too many Messy Churches have focused on trying to get the numbers in and getting the event done efficiently. We concentrate on the relationships that people can make there and – as a result – have seen friendships growing, families joining us for other events, parents getting involved to help and some becoming part of Sunday congregations, cell groups and taking part in Alpha courses. The social events organised by those different cell groups look to encourage community and it may take one, two or three years for people to get involved to that level – but that's OK, it all takes time.

The common problem for many churches is that they have some great ministries but they are stand-alone and don't benefit from the relational overlap. So, for example, children come to Xplore on Mondays after school with their families invited to our monthly Messy Church. Those in Year Six are given invitations to our youth outreach The Mix, again every month, at a local community centre. The larger-scale events we put on are never officially advertised; we prefer to use word of mouth and ask people and families if they'd like to come along. Feast in the Field attracts about 600 people as a community event with laser quest, assault courses, Scalextric and face painting among other things. We also take up to 600 people to the cinema at Christmas. If we advertised I am sure that we could get larger crowds in but we would lose out on relationship building. We find that the more that we overlap and inter-connect what we do, the more that people are interested and able to take the next step in their faith journey.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will be visiting Springfield Church to help us celebrate our 20th anniversary next year by preaching and presiding at our Sunday morning service on 18 March. It's a wonderful recognition that churches such as ours are now integral parts of the Church of England and no longer an oddity! The Archbishop's visit is a practical sign of his enthusiasm for this mixed economy and a huge encouragement for us.

Springfield has always been a different sort of church. We were a fresh expression before the term was invented! The thing with many fresh expressions is that as their communities mature then it's all too easy for them to revert to 'normal' church mode.

We really emphasise to our leaders that the focus shouldn't be on the task but on the people they're seeking to serve and reach for Christ. This has led to a real depth of community with a very high level of participation; about 80% of our congregation is involved in something.

The important thing for anyone involved in a fresh expression to remember is that we're here to reach the unchurched. The disenchanted Christian and dechurched Christian will also come our way but keeping that outward focus is vital if we're going to continue in our true calling.