community Archives - Page 2 of 6

Reverb

Dave Saunders tells how his faith journey led him from England's south coast to become a VentureFX pioneer in Scotland.

It all goes back to walking along Eastbourne beach with my church leader, pouring my heart out with frustration at the fact that my schoolmates didn't want anything to do with Church. He then asked, 'What would Church look like for young people?'

After going on to help establish a youth church, which flopped after about six months, I decided to take a year out with Youth for Christ. I had no idea where I might be living following my YFC training but I was looking for the sunniest location, preferably near to Eastbourne. When I heard that YFC was working with the Methodist Church to help plant a youth church, I knew that was where I was to go. I then found out they were doing it in Inverness; I put that down to God's sense of humour!

I was 18 when I came to Inverness for my year out. Nine years later I'm still here. I knew when I first arrived that I loved this city and felt called to the young people who don't 'do' church or want anything to do with Christianity. My heart broke for the young people I met and that we had failed, as church, to communicate the great message of hope to them. In some ways I would say I was angry with the church because of that.

I was placed in a Methodist church. This was completely foreign to what I was used to but I was struck by Peter Howson's deep passion, as minister, to help young people engage with God and life in a way they could understand. He wasn't about getting young people into his service; it was about giving young people a chance to meet their creator.

So Revolution youth church was born and after two years I was asked to be its leader (even though I have had no formal theological training). I had gone from feeling hurt and frustrated by Church to being passionate about what it can be: a force for peace and justice, and a family that truly loves God and the communities around it.

We enjoyed four great years as Revolution and then had a radical rethink. As a result we went from being a programme-led Sunday evening service to being a group of people called to serve all the people of Merkinch and Dalneigh in Inverness. Merkinch is known locally as The Ferry, an area which is in the top 3% of deprived areas of Scotland.

We changed our name from 'Revolution' to 'Reverb' because we want to reverberate the love of God in the community around us.

We are now a group of 8 – with about 25 or so in a larger core group – and between us we have many connections with the community; including all the young people, now in their twenties, who I met while working in the school.

We hold a written 'evolving covenant' which we call the 'invisible bond' with each other to help us to be clear that we only exist to serve God and to share His love and justice with the community around us. Every Sunday we check that this remains our priority before we then try to work out together how we can be better at it. The conversation over dinner is about what opportunities God gave us during that week, what scripture says about it and how we can learn from each other's experience of God in the world. It's where faith and life collide.

We have several local expressions of love:

dig your heart out. Local businesses and churches sponsor garden makeovers for deserving local people and we get involved in this practical expression of love for the community;

wash your heart out. This is based on Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet as a way to get to know people. We're willing to be there to get to know people better by saying, 'If you tell us who you are, we'll wash your car';

sing your heart out. This took place last Christmas when we organised a carol service in the football field.

path people. A phone number that anyone disadvantaged can ring over the winter months to ask us to clear their path of snow and ice.

This is all relationship-driven ministry, not personality-driven. Looking to the future, I would say failure would involve everything depending on me and all falling apart if I moved on. It's important not to follow me but to follow Christ.

'Success' would involve inspiring people to love God and love their neighbour the best they can in small pockets of churches, maybe 10 communities of 10 members.

However it shapes up, the crucial thing is to have small groups engaged in conversation and meeting over a meal. You don't need a large group to achieve huge difference. It's easy to engage in the 'attractional model' of large events, it's an entirely different ball game to create missional disciples.

Reverb's mission is to instigate and cause holy mischief and I pray that will continue and grow as we see what God is doing in this area.

The missional life is not easy! But the challenges and opportunities it throws up reminds me of St Paul's words,

We can rejoice when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. For we know how dearly God loves us.

Romans 5.3-4

Abide

Just over 12 months ago Ben Edson became Vicar and Missioner to a parish in south Manchester. He had been in the city for 10 years, during which time he pioneered Sanctus1, a fresh expression of church and helped set up the Nexus arts café. Ben tells what has happened since his appointment to parish ministry.

My appointment to St James and Emmanuel, Didsbury, in 2011 meant that I was moving into a more settled expression of Church. I found this quite a challenging move as I asked myself questions such as was I selling out to the institution and how was my experience of pioneering innovative Christian communities going to impact on a more settled expression of church? Perhaps this was one of the reasons that I moved into this post, I'm of the firm belief that fresh expressions of church need to be fully integrated into the life of the Parish church community and I sensed an opportunity to do this.

I'm sure that many people will have read Ralph Winter's and George Lings' papers on sodal and modal expressions of church. The sodal and modal framework creates space to innovate within the existing structures and also highlight that innovation has always been part of the character of the church of God.

A few months into my appointment I found myself asking, 'How can we affirm the modal yet at the same time search for something more sodal within it?' So I started to search, I started to listen, I continued to pray.

We're a medium-sized church of four congregations. One of those congregations was struggling for a sense of identity and yet alongside this there was a desire for authentic community and a deeper life of commitment to God and to one another. Over the first few months of my appointment I worked with this congregation to listen to God and to one another and also to dream, to open our eyes, to envision and inspire about what we could become.

An early realisation was that the attractional model that had been operated on for so long would no longer work; it would mean be a slow and painful death. Yet, we also recognised that we wanted to be committed to one another in a common lifestyle, in mission and in prayer. And so we went away together to explore what we could be.

Six months on and 'Abide' is what has come into being. I'm never sure how to describe it, it's a community, it's missional, it has new monastic elements to it but I think that the reality is that it is ordinary people with ordinary lives, exploring and learning how to walk an extraordinary path together. We're not experts, we're certainly not spiritual gurus, we're just normal people trying to work it out.

We've found our sense of identity in three places:

The Five Rhythms of Grace

Gatherings

Mission and Prayer

Five Rhythms of Grace

The Rhythms of Grace have been developed by the community of St Chad in Lichfield Diocese. We found them and liked them and so we've adopted them! We think that they encourage us to live as believers in the real world, not in some kind of holy huddle. The term, Rhythms of Grace, is taken from Eugene Peterson's translation of Matthew 11:28, 'Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace'.

The five rhythms are:

By God's grace, I will seek to be transformed into the likeness of Christ;

By God's grace, I will be open to the presence, guidance and power of the Holy Spirit;

By God's grace, I will set aside time for prayer, worship and spiritual reading;

By God's grace, I will endeavour to be a gracious presence in the world, serving others and working for justice in human relationships and social structures;

By God's grace, I will sensitively share my faith with others: participating in God's mission both locally and globally.

These are not rules that dictate behaviour but a starting point to help us to understand who we are and what we need to do to grow as disciples of Christ. As our community takes shape these rhythms will provide the framework that some of us chose to live by.

Gatherings

As Abide we get together in a more organised capacity twice a month. On the second Tuesday, we have a shared meal in Emmanuel Church, Didsbury, where we encourage and support one another in our desire to become people rooted in God and grow in spiritual maturity.

On the fourth Sunday of each month, at 6.15pm – also at Emmanuel – we host a service which is pretty experimental in nature. It could be contemplative, a jazz mass, alternative worship or Taize but, quite simply, it's a space to experiment and to be.

Mission and Prayer

For us, mission and prayer go hand-in-hand. All we want to do is follow the example of Jesus in his life, death and resurrection; demonstrating and reflecting God's love. It's our aim to enable and encourage people to do this where they live and work.

At midday each day we encourage people who are part of Abide to recite the Lord's Prayer. We're grateful to the 24-7 Prayer movement as this is something that we borrowed from them. The whole idea of praying at 12noon is that it allows God to interrupt our day. Whether you're into a regular time of prayer or not, disciplining yourself to pray slap bang in the middle of the day means your mind turns to God, irrespective of how busy your day is.

So that is Abide. The journey started about a year ago but we've only just gone public. We think that we're in the process of discovering the sodal within the modal, and in this process of discovery we hope and pray that we become a community that helps to bring renewal to the modal.

LINK

A waterfront café in Ipswich has become home to a community of people keen to develop faith and friendship. One of LINK's organisers, Roger Eyre, explains more.

I wasn't around at the beginning – about four years ago – but LINK founders Dan Jolley and Scott Huntly had a vision to do some sort of cafe project. They wanted to reach out into the community and be very relationship and community focused, providing a place where non-Christians would feel very welcome.

I got involved when Heart for Ipswich contacted me. This group aims to link Christians from many different churches to work together more closely to help meet the social and spiritual needs of the people of Ipswich. It is run on a voluntary basis by a small team of lay people. Heart For Ipswich got in touch to tell me about this new café project idea. My vision had been about putting music into cafés and using it as a way of outreach. In spite of living in the same town, I didn't know the other guys at all so it was important to hear from an organisation who had an overview of everything that was happening. We spent three or four months getting to know each other; we became friends and spent a lot of time together after which it became clear that we very much wanted to develop a Christian project based on relationship.

At first we thought it might be a stepping stone for people moving on to church but we quickly realised that the sort of church our community now called LINK would be prepared to go to didn't really exist. For a handful of people I'd say that LINK is their only contact with Christians and they consider it as a place where you can discuss all sorts of things; however they probably wouldn't describe it as church.

We are not trying to do church in a café as such but two people have come to faith through a journey which included LINK. There are others who have definitely made enquiries and are searching. The good thing is that LINK has reached deep into people's lives and relationships have been sustained over three years.

The experience brought by people to the team is very important. There's a wide variety, such as people who have led youth work in churches and a teacher – while I've done a lot of music events and gigging. Some of us have been brought up in church and had a very purposeful vision for what we are doing; namely reaching people who felt they could not walk into a church building and also providing a place for Christians who had been hurt by church in the past. They still had belief but did not want to be part of religion.

We started to form connections with people and things have just grown organically. We usually plan no more than 2-3 meetings ahead and our LINK nights are primarily music-focused with opportunities for discussion. One of the key things that we have is unity across denominations in the team and those that attend. This is also how we draw our governance, from a group of wiser Christians from different church traditions. They are also people who have held a lot of responsibility either in church or in business.

LINK is widely known in Christian circles in the town. We did operate weekly for about two and a half years but there is only so much a small team can do. We now run from 7pm to 9pm on the first Monday of the month, at Coffeelink café on the Ipswich Waterfront. It has been quite a roller coaster ride along the way. People will turn up at any time between 7 and 7.30pm, then we have some light music or it may be a full gig night. Otherwise we might have a talk or some sort of 'interview' with different contributors. We also do practical stuff as well; a local charity might come in and give a talk on their work or a particular challenge they're facing and we will give them some ideas. The networking side of things is important as well. There is always more than one thing going on; we don’t want to just put on music events.

We were also looking at ways of anonymously requesting prayer or asking questions. We'd seen the Post It idea done many times in other organisations when people come up with ideas by sticking the notes all over a wall so we did it at LINK and it was a great way for people to find out more or ask for support without putting themselves in the spotlight.

We have had about 50-60 people, on a few occasions nearly 100 people turn up. Now we have anywhere between 10 and 50 depending on the night; we had a massive peak of initial interest, then things tailed off before climbing back again to reach the plateau where we are now.

Our age range is anywhere between 18 and 60-65 though primarily it's people in their 20s and 30s. It's a blessing to us but we don't pitch it for a particular age group. We don't particularly want under-18s to come because most churches are well equipped with groups for that age.

We are right in town next to the new University Campus Suffolk. We now have pioneer minister Tim Yau working with us, the only ordained person on the team, and we're hoping he will be able to get to know people at the university and develop contacts.

Apart from Tim, we are all lay people with full-time jobs. We have all held, or hold, responsibility within church but not as a pastor or elder. LINK is not led by ordained leadership and we do not affiliate to any one Christian denomination.

I know lots of people who lead but they are not paid pastors; they have full time jobs and they still do church and that's a great model. If someone has worked recently then they are 'real', they understand the current job market and the pain and the politics of work. I think that's a good thing and should be encouraged.

One of the biggest things for the future is for churches to learn to put aside differences and work together. In some cases they have to be prepared to sacrifice their own personal goals for a joint goal. Sadly there are some people who still want to do their own thing; they want to have their church brand on it and not work across churches.

But when you are prepared to take a risk together it can lead to wonderful things. We had a community waterfront festival in Ipswich near the beginning of LINK, three years ago, when we wanted to make LINK known a little more. We thought, 'Why don't we go there and take our lounge out to the people instead of waiting for them to come to us?' So we took our sofas, a lamp, table, and boxes of pizza and cake down to the waterfront. It was great.

The café where we meet is run by a guy who is from a Muslim background who is open-minded about faith and providing a forum for its exploration. He lets us use the venue for free and he only gets coffee money out of it. The important thing is to find people who can broker these sorts of relationships with people in the community; we need these people because they are catalysts for change.

The Valley Network

Levi Santana is a pioneer ordinand at St Mellitus College. He also leads a small missional community in High Wycombe called The Valley Network.

I have been in the area for seven years as youth worker at St Birinus and St John's Church, High Wycombe. When I started thinking about getting involved in a fresh expression, the Diocese of Oxford was very keen to see how a local person could start a local ministry via the mixed mode training and stay locally for curacy.

As a result, since starting The Valley, we have had a lot of support from the Deanery which has made our work possible. They give us lots of freedom and even help pay my salary, showing their commitment to pioneer ministry. When I am ordained in 2013, I will also be able to do my curacy here which secures the next four years in the life of the Network.

When I sensed a feeling that God was calling me into pioneer ministry I had to ask myself,

What is God saying? What is the need? What does High Wycombe need as a fresh expression of church?

We decided to focus on people who live in and around the town centre in what is an Urban Priority Area and also students.

We have almost doubled our numbers since Christmas and at the moment we have around 40 people involved in our network which meets in local coffee shops for discussion groups and Bible study, and in a local Anglican church that lets us use their building for worship events. We also meet in homes, and much of our work is based at the local YMCA and University where I am a chaplain.

There is a mix of people, some were already Christians when they joined us and some are completely unchurched (although a number are dechurched).

They come from all backgrounds and nationalities – including white British, Brazilians, and West Indians. I come from a Brazilian background and one thing that's very much on my heart is the international community, I would love to see more racial interaction. I think people from an ethnic background might have felt more comfortable about coming in to the group because I look 'different' and don't fit the traditional image of a church minister. The average age of those coming along is about 25 but we have some older and younger people in the mix – we also have a few people with small children.

It all started because St Birinus and St John's had been involved in the work of the YMCA locally for a number of years. Suddenly the person that led that work left and I found myself in charge. So we went into the YMCA and offered to continue to run the games evening.

We then decided to do something on a Sunday evening and we invited the guys from the YMCA and young adults within the network of the church. It was a hit so we started welcoming people into the church building. By January 2011, we had 25-30 people coming twice a month.

It was trial and error, we didn't know what to do next but then we started to throw some worship into the mix. In the end, we did it for six months and reflected that we were trying to do too much, we couldn't do worship with non- Christians and couldn't disciple Christians by just doing social activities.

We took time to take stock and to pray and decided that we should concentrate on the unchurched and dechurched rather than Christians wanting to do something a little differently.

We started meeting in a local coffee shop, firstly inviting people from the games night. We don't use any set material but I always make it clear that I'm a Christian though people have to be free to share their opinion – whatever it is. We always start with people talking about the lowlight and the highlight of the past week. One of the girls who comes to the group is going through a sex change process so she came in and said,

The highlight of my week is that I'm going to be a boy.

She had a letter for an appointment in London to see a specialist and what struck me was that she felt confident she could share that letter first with us.

I realised then that this community was effective. We had all sorts of plans for events to reach out to students but what God was calling us to do was simply to respect them and value them and give time. As a result we have seen that group develop into a little family.

Alongside our discussion group we also identified a need for us to gather Christians together in a similar sort of setting in order to go deeper into the Bible and mission. We launched a Bible study that starts 90 minutes before the discussion group. The study is basically for Christian students and some of them stay on for the group, some of them don't.

We had also seen the development of a mums and tots cell group. From October this year we are going to open it up to the public and we hope to run it in one of the churches.

Recently we have decided to link up with Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing who are planting the Latimer Minster church in Beaconsfield; this helps to put our network within a wider group of missional communities. When I knew they were moving into the area, we met up to talk about it all because there's no point in us doing something similar or being five miles apart with no relationship. By linking up with Latimer Minster, The Valley Network will use their charity number and bank accounts and public liability insurance – all of which means that we are very independent but also accountable.

It became quite a big thing to explain over and over again what The Valley Network was all about whereas, at Latimer Minster, the church's DNA is missional and it's easier for us to be understood. They will also release things quickly into the mission aspect of the work and I think it will be a good relationship based on friendship, not structure.

We are also still linked with St Birinus and St John's as they have been very supportive of our work over the years and because we are expected to meet traditional criteria and to obey deanery and parish boundaries though, in practice, we don't function in them.

The Valley has no income from any other source other than its members, but we need more resources to fulfil the vision God has given us. For this reason we are trying to find 100 people who will pledge to raise or donate £100 over a year. This will give us £10,000 that we will use to fund our ministry, run our conferences and events, and pay for our running and administration cost.

We have a high number of musicians and artists in the community so we are exploring different styles of worship and recording some of the songs we are writing. Our first CD/EP will be ready soon and our intention is to sell our music to fund some of the work.

From October our hope is to have two Sundays a month where we meet for fellowship for a meal and Communion because I think that's where we truly become a fresh expression of church. At the moment we are clusters of mission but we haven't shared Communion together many times.

There is a lot going on but everything is done very relationally and we have seen a few young people being released into leadership which has been particularly exciting – two of them will give about 20 hours from September!

This autumn will see us host our first Missional Church Conference when we hope to engage local church leaders in conversation about reaching young adults. Debbie Orriss, Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing and Steven Cockram will talk at the October event about how churches can explore different ways of doing things within their contexts. We want to demystify missional communities and fresh expressions to church leaders and to encourage churches not to feel threatened by us because we are not sheep stealing.

It's all very exciting but there are many questions too. How can we honour the opportunities that the Holy Spirit is giving us without spreading ourselves too thinly? What are the real areas of priority and how can we make the most of them?

Feltwell Chapel

When Matt Finch became co-minister of ten Norfolk Methodist chapels in 2002, he inherited a fortnightly Bible study among the largely elderly congregation of Feltwell Chapel. It was well attended by six members of the church and several others from neighbouring villages.

Matt describes the 15 members of Feltwell as having

a passion to do things differently.

The Bible studies provided helpful fellowship, but while undertaking a CPAS course on evangelism, 'Lost for Words', Matt became aware of a deep dissatisfaction among the chapel members. The course helped highlight the despondency people felt about the state of their church.

They asked, 'What can we do with this?'

he says.

'We can't do a mission course and not change.' There were lots of mumblings about church not being right.

What needs to change? 'We can't do a mission course and not change'

Matt took a big sheet of paper to a Bible study and brainstormed with the chapel members how they would like church to look in the future. He typed up the results, brought them along to the next meeting and presented the chapel members with a clear picture of their 'desire to be connected'.

They were there every Sunday but never connected,

he says.

They wanted to know who sat in church with one another.

At that time a building project was under discussion. Now it was scaled down – bar essential changes such as disabled access – in favour of instituting a new way of being together on Sunday mornings.

Such was the enthusiasm that the new model of church began the very next Sunday with each member offering to take responsibility for certain elements. They each agreed to play their part in arranging coffee before the service, to sit around tables and to have an interactive sermon and shared prayer time. To meet all needs, traditional services happen on occasion, still around the café tables.

'They were saying they had always had baptisms and communion but not community. Now they are sharing each others' lives.'

Because I wasn't there every week it was hard, but a real understanding developed,

Matt says.

They were saying they had always had baptisms and communion but not community. Now they are sharing each others' lives. Some of the members pray together regularly, and they are in pastoral circles in which they each take responsibility for one another.

This recognition of a congregation's responsibility to care for one another without reliance on the minister is especially important in a rural setting where clergy are spread over several locations. A key lay worker has also undertaken a commitment to Feltwell to assist when the ministers are unavailable.

Matt describes the chapel as still

a long way from being truly missional,

but since its changes in 2005 several non-churchgoers have become interested. A baptism family was so 'blown away' by how the chapel had changed that the parents now want to marry at Feltwell and even, if possible, have a café style wedding.

Matt puts down Feltwell's growing success in building community to a new freedom on the part of chapel members to question and disagree with the preacher, and to a new involvement with one another.

They weren't happy with what happened on Sundays, but they still wanted to worship on Sunday mornings,

he says.

Feltwell's worship is culturally specific, but the underlying principle is of something that connected with them and helped them to love one another.

Discovery Days

In 2003, Church of England minister Penny Joyce moved to a growing new housing estate in Witney, Oxfordshire, to start a community project funded by the Diocese of Oxford. She spent the first three months of her new role, which followed a curacy, 'getting to know people', in particular local churches and the school.

At the end of those three months, she sent a newsletter to every house identifying herself as a community worker and inviting residents to a meeting with the local planner. Around 50 people from the 250 houses then established on the estate turned up. This residents' meeting continues to take place once every three months, attracting 50 to 80 people at a time to its community discussions around wine and cheese. It is particularly valued by newcomers to the estate, which has now grown to 960 houses.

The estate is home, Penny says, to 'a huge cross section of people'. Social housing, young families, home-based workers and early retirees all live together on what, in its early years, has been a building site as well as a place in which to build community. Through the community project, Discovery Days, headed by Penny, these different types of people are able to come together in their own groups at different social and Christian-themed events. Events are advertised on a monthly community newsletter written by Penny and delivered by volunteers.

She spent the first three months getting to know people

The need for various activities is exemplified by an encounter Penny had early on in her ministry to the estate. While out and about she bumped into a young mother walking, looking for someone to talk to. Following this, a mother and toddler group was set up which attracts around 40 women each week.

Other regular events run by Discovery Days are a mixture of social activities and those with a Christian flavour. Families meet for Sunday tea and Christian-based activities. Men meet for football. Readers meet in a book group. Home-based workers meet for lunch. Christians on the estate meet in one of two weekly small groups, Discovery 1 and 2, while a second kind of Discovery group happens for seekers. More generally interested residents of the estate may attend Breathe, a social evening with wine, chat, and the possibility of moving through a series of stations provoking reflection on a life issue.

Christians are present at all the different events and activities whether social or Christian-focused. Penny sees evangelism in terms of a line of 10 to 1 (the Engel scale), on which individuals may be at the Christian end or the disinterested end.

I place events along that line so that people can choose,

she says.

If you're journeying at 8 or 9 you won't want to come to straight into a church situation, but you might want to come to something which looks at the basics of Christianity. We journey spiritually with someone and don't expect them to travel from a nine to a one in one leap.

By listening to the needs of the different groups of people within the community, Discovery Days offers a chance for everyone to discover faith and friendship.

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!

3six5

Methodist minister Andrew Pakes began to develop an emerging congregation, called 3six5, in October 2000 – alongside his ministry in a traditional setting. He describes how things have moved on since then.

I became a 'minister without appointment' in September 2004 in order to concentrate on emerging congregation. In 2000, I took a sabbatical to reflect on what the church may look like in the 21st Century.

As I fed back the findings to my congregation, about five people came to me and said they would like to be part of the church I had described. The five then grew to 10 and in a few months we asked our circuit's permission to begin forming the church we imagined.

The small congregation developed through friendship and community involvement. In the beginning we encouraged each other to take an active part in the local community in various ways, such as becoming a school governor, joining the local PTA or attending the local residents' association meetings. If there was a local quiz night, they would enter a team. This helped us to make friends and to get to know and love the community of which we were a part.

As 3six5 we agreed to keep meetings to a minimum and free ourselves to spend time with family, friends and colleagues. Making and building friendships is all important – as is praying that those friendships will go on to see the development of a relationship with Jesus.

There is a real sense of the Spirit of God abroad in the community and we find His Spirit wherever we go. And it isn't just locally; In nearby Kingston-upon-Thames we can see God's creativity all over the place.

Together, 12 years later, we continue to grow in faith and make friends as we meet twice a month. We will firstly get together once a month on a Saturday for food or to take part in an activity together and we frequently share bread and wine. Then the adults also meet for supper at another time during the month at someone's home to share in a discussion about life and faith and important matters of the day.

It has been a difficult journey for me to become a 'minister without appointment' to lead 3six5, but God has been faithful and kept His hand on the work that we are involved in. As a result, 3six5 has become a congregation within the community.

We will never know how many people have become Christians through 3six5, indeed it's not a question we would ask, but – in terms of the number of people with whom we have shared stories, experiences and time – the numbers must run into hundreds.

This is a movement of ordinary people and it's not easy to define or pin down as it is constantly changing. We try to view everyone as being a member of 3six5; it's a matter of opting out rather than opting in!

Church @ Community

Nic Williams, leader of Church@Community, tells of its development in St Ann's, Nottingham. Launched in October 2010, it meets in a local primary school.

Before getting involved with Church@Community, I had been part of a local Methodist church where we were completely reviewing our practices. From that review in 2007 we realised that we were doing loads of work inside the building and lots of people were doing good work in the community as individuals but the two things didn’t really marry up at all.

We worked on a plan and a vision as how to improve that because the church building itself wasn't situated particularly well as a community venue. One of the most deprived estates in the country was on the doorstep, at one point St Ann's was branded the gun capital of Britain, and yet there wasn't a Methodist presence at all. However, I had a good knowledge of the area because of my job as Director of Business and Community at a school there.

Unfortunately, time went by and the church's vision and plan for the area was put to one side. A group of about 12 of us spent a summer considering the way forward in prayer and, from that, we went to the (Nottingham East) Circuit to say we still believed the time was right to do something new for this area. The Circuit agreed and we spent some time refining the plan.

Seeing the needs of local families at first hand, I knew there was a real calling because a very limited amount of community work was going on. There were lots of faith organisations around but they were not necessarily engaging with the community. We knew that we didn't want our project to be about 'signing people up' to come to church; instead its focus was to be part of that community. We wanted to find out how we could be involved in, and support, what was already there.

At the same time there were other churches in Nottingham where God was calling people to move out and be part of the St Ann's community. It was a different vision but the same principles – God was putting all these things in place for us.

One of our key challenges stemmed from the fact that our leadership team had been part of an established leadership of a church but we hadn't got a 'sending' church to support us in what we were doing. We looked to our Superintendent and our Circuit and received their backing – not in financial terms but their support was crucial.

There were also issues around money and membership because we were still members of the original church but we weren't attending it. We realised that this was a faith exercise because other people in the Circuit were saying of the new venture, 'When will they start paying into the Methodist Church?'

In my daily work, I deal with some of the most challenging families in the city so it is very satisfying to see how Church @ Community has gone from being a church-based initiative – with the original team – to it actually reflecting the community. That turnaround has happened as a result of the people who have turned up; I know the background of many of those who are now part of what's happening – and God is clearly in it.

This is great but it can also be very hard work. Easter Sunday morning, for instance, was very challenging. A new family came along with four children, all of whom ran riot. But this is what we are here for, so that a family like that can come and feel they can be as they really are. It may be uncomfortable for the rest of us but that's the way it is when you really begin to deal with people outside the communities we're familiar with.

We meet in the main hall of the school where I work, Blue Bell Hill Primary School, on the second, fourth and fifth Sundays of the month. It all starts from about 10am to 12noon and it's very relaxed. Tea, coffee and cake are served all the time and everyone sits around tables. We have a live worship band which includes a singer, two guitarists and a five-year-old drummer on a full-sized kit!

I lead the worship and we sometimes have a local preacher or it's just led by the team. We usually have 15 minutes of singing which lead into a time where children (and adults) act out a Bible story all based around a theme. Then we have a ten minute break – a sort of 'interval' – and we always have a craft activity to create something to take home. The following week we always ask, 'What have you done with what you made? Have you used it for prayer? If so, how?'

It's not everyone's cup of tea but we range between 50 and 70 in number and at Christmas we reached 95. Our oldest member is 90. We get a community grant so are classified as a community organisation and this can bring about a different attitude to what we do. In our first year the Lord Mayor came to our civic carol service during his Christmas round of events. The community police officers, if they are on the beat that day, will also sit in the school hall with us during our time together, be part of it all and have their surgeries there. The hall is very big so people can just mingle at the back.

We're very clearly identifiable now as Church @ Community because we all wear blue polo shirts; the community call us the Blue Shirt Brigade! At first it was just the leaders wearing the shirts or badges; now I'd say nearly 70% of our regulars have got Church @ Community hoodies or polo shirts. When we started I suggested that every time there was any sort of local event we needed to be there. We spent a long time 'investing' in things and, as a result, the local councillors got to know who we were.

We have been greatly helped by Rob Cotton of the Bible Society who has worked alongside us to ask difficult questions along the way, such as, 'Where are the people at Church @ Community getting their spirituality?' I believe people are getting that spirituality from being part of a community, by being part of a group, because there is a lot of spirituality there. At some stage the time will be right for us to do the small group thing; it will come if people ask for it but we will not set up a group just for the sake of it. That is not going to happen.

There are 11 of us in the leadership team, all non-ministerial. Our support comes from the Superintendent, I meet with him every month for accountability and once a quarter we hold a team leadership meeting; we also have mini meetings.

We recently got to the point of asking, 'How is this going to go forward?' I told the whole church that the vision needs to be everybody's, I am happy to play my part but I can't do it all, I can only do so much. They needed to know that it now needs to be them taking it forward. We are encouraging everyone to contribute to it in some way and we have already seen a men's breakfast being started in a local pub and cake and coffee mornings.

Great things have happened at Church @ Community. We have had a baptism and one of the governors of the school has also asked for her child to be baptised – and will be bringing 80 people along to the occasion. Twice a quarter we have a communion service when the elements are blessed by a minister. Then people come up to collect the bread and wine and share it with their own table.

A key challenge at the moment is the financial implications of all of this. From day one the church has been totally funded by the leadership team but we don't have the finance to keep on bankrolling the church. Not having premises to uphold means we have got the freedom to do things differently; that's great but there are lots of other things to consider.

We have just had quite wide-ranging discussions with our Superintendent about this and agreed that we will explore the possibility of becoming a bona-fide, 'official', church in September. The fear is, 'Are we going to become the same as a traditional church?'

That's why we will go back to the Circuit to discuss things like, 'What will our financial commitment be as we have one of the biggest congregations in the Circuit? This is a fresh expression, how is the Circuit going to support this?' So far it is all looking positive and if God wants it to be this way, all will be well. It is a leap of faith. If people choose to become a member of the Methodist Church with us they can – but they don't have to.

If local preachers start to become involved, they need to be briefed really well. They won't be 'leading' full services as such; they will have a five minute slot to give a short sermon, working alongside the worship team to deliver the rest of the service. For a lot of people that's hard. We have to explain that it's important to be prepared to change everything at the last minute because flexibility is key here.

I think there is an understanding of fresh expressions within Church @ Community but I presently don't put the Methodist stamp on it. I know I'm Methodist but does it really matter? Me putting up a big sign is not going to make people in our community come to us. Methodism was originally all about going out and starting new things and that's what I see with Church@Community. It's also important to remain flexible in approach. We keep on asking what people in the community want, and we have changed as a result.

Does it really matter? We know as an organisation that we are Methodist, that's our background, but we don't need to shout about it. It is important for me to work alongside other denominations in the area.

If we stick to our values of being part of the community and not just keep focusing on Sunday services and work with other organisations, things will happen. Two things stand out for me:

Street Pastors in Nottingham City Centre were looking at where to expand their programme and we were one of the first organisations they came to;

Citizens UK have just come to Nottingham; they approached us to ask if I could go on their community team. That wouldn’t have happened for St Ann's if I wasn't there.

The danger is that people may think of us as just another branch of the social services rather than a church but we couldn’t be clearer about the roots of all we do. Even our Family Funday had a service as part of what was a Pentecost event, I was amazed so many people came to it but it's all part of God's plan.

The Bridge

When Christians in Hinckley decided they needed a viable alternative to traditional church, they decided to try something completely different. Now a school and a local pub are the places where people come to worship and to learn. Tim Lea explains more.

The sort of people who come to The Bridge and are attracted by what we do and the way we do The Bridge, are folks who perhaps don't have any contact with church at all. There's a growing percentage of the population which fit that category.

The Bridge's worship time does take place on a Sunday, between the hours of 5 and 7. People will often come and they are surprised by how traditional it can be. We do make use of worship songs and we make use of what we call performance or presentation songs – it will involve the children right at the very beginning which often can be pretty wacky and pretty lively, they then leave for their own activities and we go into a time where we begin to look at a particular issue and focus on what the bible might be saying about something.

That is only the tip of the iceberg and what goes on underneath, the remaining 90% of the iceberg, is really important.

The Bridge started off by doing some research, some door to door work right at the very beginning, to actually find out what people thought, what they expected. So one of the reasons we meet on a Sunday, in a school, at 5pm, is that people in the local community thought that that would be a better time to meet.

We have been blessed beyond our wildest dreams by the Hinckley Methodist Circuit and its commitment to The Bridge, not only in terms of finances but also in terms of staffing.

We've been involved in running an Alpha course at the local pub and I've always dreamed of standing at the start of an Alpha course with a pint in my hand and saying it's good to see you here, I hope that over the next few weeks we will begin to explore some of the things that we believe about Christianity and what it has to say about the world we live in. So for me it was perfectly natural!

It's not possible for everybody to get to know what they need to know in 40-50 minutes on a Sunday, I think that's just unrealistic and an unhelpful model of what church is. I think it's far more realistic to begin to form a small group and to begin to thrash out some of the ideas, some of the teachings which Christ gave to us.

The danger is that we live with a model of church that means it runs parallel to society and the way society runs, whereas actually I would rather encourage people to be involved in society and be part of society and to live out their Christian faith in society.

People sometimes ask, where does your church meet? When people now ask me that question I will think about the social worker who perhaps will be dealing with a very difficult child on a Wednesday afternoon, the person who is a gardener… there is no divide between what we claim to practice on a Sunday and what we live out during the rest of the week.

For anyone who wanted to set up something like The Bridge in their town, I would say just keep it simple and laid back and eat together, talk together, pray together… I would encourage people to dream because I think that God is a God of adventure and he loves to see people who are Christians, who are followers of him, taking a risk and daring to do something different – because I'm sure that in many ways he's got a smile on his face when he sees us. OK we've made mistakes, we've got dirty, muddy, disillusioned and fed up, but I know that I'd rather stand before God when the final day comes and say 'I tried', than to have sat and been comfortable and to have never tried in the first place.