community Archives - Page 4 of 6

Immanuel Church

Graylingwell Chapel, in the centre of an 85-acre former hospital site in Sussex, had been derelict for years when Steve and Sarah Flashman first saw it. Now – as home to Immanuel Church – it's on course to be the spiritual heart of a landmark eco-friendly housing development. Ministers Steve and Sarah discuss the turnaround in fortune.

Immanuel Church was actually born fifteen years ago, long before we were on the scene, when a group of people in Chichester started meeting in someone's home. The church soon grew and people felt that God was calling them to work in partnership with St Paul's Church in the Winterbourne Road area of the city. Meeting at St Michael's Hall, the church outgrew the facilities there and after a long period of consultation and negotiation moved into Graylingwell Chapel. The idea was to create a vibrant new community base open to all.

Immanuel Church at Graylingwell Chapel is not a Parish Church. We are in the parish of St Paul's, Chichester but we are becoming a Bishop's Mission Order and have been given a special brief as a 'network church' and 'missional community' to live out our Christian faith in ways that connect with people in this area. This means we can develop new forms of church whilst respecting Anglican traditions.

Seven hundred homes will be built on this site over the next seven years. Graylingwell Chapel had been disused for eleven years by the time we first saw it; previously this late Victorian building had only been used by staff and patients of the NHS hospital here.

We came to Immanuel Church as ministers four years ago to live on the Winterbourne estate which is a mix of social housing and student lets. We chose to live on the estate because we felt it was really important for us to be incarnational and live with the people we serve, our home is right by what is currently a fence surrounding the Graylingwell site. It is possible to see the Chapel from where we live – though it was a bit difficult to do that initially.

When we first drove up to Graylingwell, the whole area was a mess and you couldn't really access the chapel building at all but we managed to make our way through the foliage to get to it and we could see the vision even then.

As a result we started to establish a relationship with the developers, Linden Homes, and also got in touch with the architects and the site's owner English Partnerships (which became part of the Homes and Communities Agency in December 2008). A public consultation was held before moving forward with the development and some 200 people came to the site's old theatre building.

Plans were outlined for what will be the UK's largest carbon neutral development. All the homes are planned as energy efficient with heating supplied by a central heating and power plant as part of an on-site energy centre. The idea is that it would be a benchmark for future sustainable developments across the country.

The architects put up big sheets of paper and they asked us all to write our own dreams and visions for this site. We wrote that our dream was that Graylingwell Chapel would become the community's spiritual heart.

Later, during the consultation, the development team stood up in front of this packed crowd and said that when first researching their design ideas, they came to Chichester and could see the centre of the city was in the shape of a cross with roads from north, south, east and west meeting at the Market Cross near the cathedral. They had then drawn a line through the centre of a map showing the Graylingwell site and discovered – from aerial photos – that the Chapel building was at the centre of it all. They then said they hoped it would become the spiritual heart of Graylingwell and they drew a heart around the Chapel on their PowerPoint map.

We were astounded that they used the same phrase as we had written down a little while earlier! The image of the heart has since become the church's logo.

The developers and architects also emphasised that they wanted to connect Graylingwell with Winterbourne, saying the communities needed to be interwoven. To illustrate this they drew a line to show where the cycle paths were scheduled to run – one was a direct route through what had been an old orchard from our front door directly to the chapel door. We took it as such an encouragement that this was definitely where God had called us and wanted us to be.

It helped us in developing relationship with all of these key people that we could point to the community work we were already involved in. Our Winterbourne Wonderland event on the streets of the estate involves games for the children, refreshments, food, a live band and a specially built grotto for Father Christmas.

And in the middle of the summer, we bring the seaside to Winterbourne Road with our Summersdale Seaside Special. We bring in sand, a huge Hawaiian backdrop and 'beachside' cocktails. Apart from the street parties, we also run a fellowship group in an elderly care home; have a social outreach clear-up group, and lots of other things.

There is no focus to the community around here. We only have one shop on the estate and it's the place where people meet – and kids loiter outside. At the time of building relationship we knew we couldn't develop a geographic focus but we could create a focus for something good. It was, and still is, important that the community feel they can 'own' what we do. Thankfully there has certainly been proof of that along the way.

When we moved in to the chapel building in Easter 2010, all the church turned up to clean the place and we came across a lady we didn't know doing the hoovering! It turned out that the church had helped her to clear and tidy up her garden and she wanted to give something in return.

We also have a New Community Rock Choir. Fifty eight people signed up for it and only a handful has any link at all with church but this is most definitely 'their' chapel.

The fact is that since moving in here we've had one miracle after another. Linden Homes put in a temporary electricity supply but didn't have permanent lighting. Then a member of our church was driving along when he saw lights being put into a skip. It turned out a school was being refurbished. He asked if he could have them for the church and he drove off again with all the lighting we needed.

A couple of weeks before we were due to move in, it was suggested that we might have to pay £10,000 a year to use the place! Some of our people were not at all sure about continuing with the whole thing but we said, 'This is the vision that God has given us and we will still move in on Easter weekend. If He wants us here, he will provide what we need.' The Monday before moving day one of the directors of the development company contacted us to say, 'We have decided we are not going to charge that figure. For the next two years you can use it for £1 a year.'

We are developing relationship as well as developing trust both with the community and those involved in delivering this scheme. We were able to put together quite detailed business plans for what was then English Partnerships and this really helped them to recognise that we were serious about the whole thing.

The idea of denominations or different streams of church is completely incomprehensible to many. If you mention to a lot of people in this area that we are from the Church of England, many wouldn't really know – or care – what that means. If people do have a view of what Christians were like, it would tend to be a stereotypical one of 'wet fish handshakes' and blue anoraks. There is no expectation of anything different.

It was at the Bishop of Chichester's invitation that we started on the route of becoming a Bishop's Mission Order. There had been difficult times before Immanuel Church was formed, its beginning was born out of pain, but Immanuel wasn't formed as an alternative to another congregation. Its growth was very organic and developed naturally. It had also always remained within the CofE's Canon law so the BMO offered an opportunity to embark on a new stage of Immanuel's journey.

Immanuel Church, in all but its direct governance, is sympathetic to the CofE and the BMO acknowledges that some churches are seeking a form of official recognition that falls into the Order's bracket. It’s all about restoration, reconciliation and healing.

We are very missional with Graylingwell and since we have moved here, the culture of the church has significantly changed. About 120 adults are now part of the church with attendances of roughly 100 on Sunday, plus children. We're now praying for new growth from people coming in as converts and there are good signs for future relationship building. Linden Homes has set up a Community Development Trust and a community development worker is using the Chapel for parties for new residents. Our youth and children's work currently takes place in a double decker bus parked alongside the Chapel. We bought it on eBay and later this year we do hope to go on the road with it.

The building itself will be restored by Linden Homes at an estimated cost of £300,000. They will start to do that when 150 houses have been built – 70 have gone up so far. We will remain in the Chapel while works continue, all of which will be in line with the carbon neutral development around it.

In thinking about the fresh expressions way of being incarnational in a setting rather than being attractional and bringing people back into a church building, it's all about knowing your context. For us here we recognise that one of the things that draws people in is the Chapel itself because they are curious to see what it's like. You can't always work to a formula of getting out and staying out. Many are coming to the church because of its community arts emphasis. You have got to know your own community and recognise where people are at as well as having a real Spirit-inspired vision.

Graylingwell Chapel is the new community venue in Chichester but we can see a time, as the site develops, when additional communities could well become those little churches that are very typical of fresh expressions. This might be seen as 'Chapel Central' to a network of churches.

We still find it amazing that it was the secular community of architects and developers that set Graylingwell Chapel's agenda as the spiritual heart. They want to create something that is very contemporary, very alive. In turn, people have picked up on the welcome, the friendship, the atmosphere of the place. It is easy to become concerned that they will be put off by liturgy, the way we worship, what we say in a sermon or whatever but we shouldn't assume that these things are barriers. Instead, friends and friendship are often the keys to them coming in the first place and then coming back for more. We have got to live community and give people a glimpse as to what that means – that's the heart of the Trinity after all isn't it?

Kairos, Harrogate

Kairos – previously St Mary's Low Harrogate – was launched when the Rt Revd John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, gave his blessing to the latest Bishop's Mission Order church. What does it mean to be a BMO? Pioneer Minister Mark Carey outlines the story so far.

We launched our radical form of network church in October 2010 so obviously everything is still very new. It's a fledgeling community but we are very excited about the opportunities opening up.

In saying that, we are very much in a transition stage with elements of inherited church in the midst of all the other stuff going on – it’s a classic mixed economy encapsulated into one setting!

Formerly Priest in Charge at St Mary's, I have been here for three years with the first being taken up by testing and seeing. Two years further down the line and there have been some really encouraging things along the way, not least the development of Kairos, but now we need to try and embed a new vision and work out how it looks to be in a way that's centralised – yet decentralised. We're in new territory here so things take time – but that's fine.

Some things look familiar, such as our using a hall in Harrogate for Sunday worship once a fortnight and a weekly 9am Communion service but other things are very different. Kairos, while one church, is also a group of smaller network churches, small to mid-size groups of up to 30 people known, officially, as mid-sized/mission-shaped communities (MSCs). Each of these communities is treated as a church in its own right, meeting not in a church building but in all sorts of places like homes, cafes or pubs.

Kairos Church is about becoming a new kind of church which focuses on releasing communities of followers to live out the mission of Jesus. This is being worked out through people who are good news in our workplaces, families and friendships.

In saying that we very much value our place in the Church of England as a fresh expression of church within the Anglican tradition. We are:

influenced by rule of life of the Order of Mission;

involved in the New Wine movement;

focused on prioritising partnership in mission with other churches.

But the history of St Mary's and how things have changed in this area can find echoes in CofE parishes up and down the country. This parish was originally established to serve an area of Harrogate from the centre near the Pump Rooms right up to Harlow Hill at the edge of the town. Two worship centres were built, St Mary's as the main parish church and All Saints – a chapel at the top of Harlow Hill for the surrounding area.

St Mary's was closed in January 2007 due to severe problems with the building. At almost the same time All Saints had to close its doors, again because of concerns about the building, and it was formally shut down in 2009. The church continued to pray and work towards effective discipleship and mission and St Mary's moved into Harrogate Grammar School for Sunday services until Summer 2008.

By then it had started a significant transition from parish church to a fresh expression of church serving the whole deanery of Harrogate. Fully part of the Deanery and the Diocese of Ripon and Leeds, St Mary's became Kairos Church because Kairos is a Greek word of great significance for Christians as it speaks of the appointed time in the purpose of God.

We continue to meet together twice a month in a hall that houses the Kairos Church office and various activities. It is also used by a number of local community organisations.

Our vision is to release communities of followers to live the mission of Jesus, encourage many communities of followers of Jesus released to do what they think Jesus would do – and is doing – see all ages engaged in the joy of being the church on the move people and learning together how to be disciples as they go.

We have got a great bunch of people here with some joining us because they fully support our vision while others have taken the journey from the old St Mary's into the new Kairos. There are those who just take it on board instinctively and others like being part of it but who are struggling to understand it or only understand elements of it. Most get the fact that if we don't function in a number of different ways we are unlikely to be able to engage with the large percentage of people who won't be attracted through the doors traditionally.

There is no hostility but there is a real mixture of uptake on the vision and very different interpretations within the mission shaped congregations themselves. People do have very, very, different understandings of what we're doing and why but I'd expect that at this stage!

Some of our MSCs are developing well. Wanderers are led by an early retired couple with experience and real passion for the Gospel. They also have a deep understanding about what they are doing in that they are going out on the streets and are very purposeful. People coming to that tend to be from mid-30s to early 50s.

They have been developing this community long before Kairos became a BMO but the group is developing with regular attendance up to 18 and another 10 people who consider themselves to be in relationship with them.

We also have Eucharist in a pub by using a family room in Wetherspoons for Curry and Communion. Our MSCs do all sorts of things because they are in the sort of environment where they feel free to fail. Some of our MSC leaders, from a traditional church background, are happy to no longer be drawn into any of the 'performance' that can accompany what it means to be church.

One of my hopes for 2011 is that we will get our first multiplications of MSCs this year. I also pray for fruitfulness from all the sowing of relationships across this area. We are going to start a new MSC at the start of the year which will take us to six and I would like to see another couple of MSCs. Some of them are very small but they have a very real sense of purpose.

Ecumenical relations are very important to us and we welcomed quite a lot of church leaders from the area to our launch in October. Among the denominations there is a great deal of understanding and we get a lot of support as a deanery initiative.

One of the key concepts we have worked with since the earliest days of the transition to a fresh expression of church is that of being a tent community with a tent mentality. We have found ourselves without church buildings, enabling us to develop a mentality that is at heart simple and flexible. Only time will tell how that mentality will translate into the life and work of Kairos.

alive and kicking

alive and kicking is a fresh expression of church for young people of high school age in Kinver, South Staffordshire. Ben Clymo, one of the leadership team, explores how its history is shaping its future.

Kinver is a large rural village of about 6,800 people on the edge of the Black Country surrounded by farms, fields and beautiful greenbelt countryside but only two miles from the edge of the West Midlands urban conurbation.

It is a predominantly middle class, prosperous area though there are poorer pockets within the community. The population is largely middle- to old-age but, having hung on to the full range of schooling in the village, there are also a fair number of younger families.

The story of alive and kicking goes back to 1991 when the Methodist and Anglican churches in Kinver organised a week-long Rob Frost mission. Out of this came a drop-in event at the church hall called 'Hole in the Wall' for the young people who hung around the church premises in the evenings. Shortly after this, another group had to be started as an alternative for the church kids who felt threatened at Hole in the Wall and, in the end, the behaviour of young people at Hole in the Wall became such that it had to be stopped.

The group for the church kids continued. Led by members of both churches, meeting in their front rooms on a Sunday night, it was named 'alive and kicking' from a throwaway comment by one group member about how the church wasn’t…

alive and kicking was a great success as a church youth group – and indeed brought me to faith, baptism, church membership and later, leadership. At the end of the 90s, I and the last of the original members left for university and the original leaders gradually stepped back and handed over to a new team. The group continued to draw in new members, mostly from the churches' work with infant and junior-age groups, and still met in the leaders' homes.

That was to change when numbers got too big to continue in front rooms and the group moved into the church hall. However numbers were very soon low enough to move back into front rooms! So in 2001, we had a look at other possible venues and fixed on the newly-refurbished 'youth hut' – located on the edge of the school premises and run by the County Youth Services. They agreed to gives us free use of the building. We're now part of the management group set up to maintain and run the venue after the Youth Services let it go.

The move to a fixed, accessible venue familiar to the young people was a definite turning point. We make a big thing of meeting every week without fail (unless it's Christmas Day!) so that group members know they can turn up and we'll be there. At the same time we also started printing a termly programme as a reminder of what was on week in, week out.

Our pattern is that we open at 7pm – we'll usually have a ball or Frisbee to throw around though others will just chat with friends. Around 7.15pm we’ll have a whole-group game, preferably something which involves getting to know each other better or working as teams. Around 7.45pm we have a break for drinks and any notices and then 8-8.45pm we have a teaching and discussion time. This can be very varied but the main focus is on exploring a theme, topic or Bible passage in as creative a way as possible, with a strong emphasis on the young people being able to ask questions and explore the material in a way that is relevant to their lives.

We finish with a prayer time. Again, we try and vary the way we do this to give as broad an understanding of prayer as possible and allow people to find the way they can best build a relationship with God. One of the things we're keen to avoid is running a youth group and shoe-horning in a five-minute 'God slot'. Instead we want to try and model Christian community in all that we do; some of our best conversations about what it means to follow Jesus in our whole lives have come on the football pitch or over a drink.

Our young people come by word of mouth and invitation from friends. We do try and have a presence at the high school open evening, our village fair and other community events and we visit the junior school at the end of each school year. There we give out publicity fliers to all the school leavers inviting them to our welcome barbecue at the end of the summer – but one invite from a young person who feels that alive and kicking is 'their' community is worth 100 fliers.

Already in 2001 we were seeing fewer churched young people coming and more young people who were not regular churchgoers. Indeed we're now at the stage where the majority of young people who come don't go to church, a significant number have never been in a church and several have to go back to their grandparents for any church experience. It also became increasing obvious to us that, despite our best invitations, most of the young people who came along on a Sunday night would not make the transition to a Sunday morning church service. The key barriers seem to be didactic teaching with no opportunity to interact or question, not feeling valued or part of the community, the timing of services, and seeing it as irrelevant. As a result we have explored different ways of building elements of church amongst the alive and kicking community.

One of the biggest challenges of working with young people is the pace of change between groups. What is best for one group of 16-year-olds may not be best for a group of 13-year-olds and may not be best for those 13-year-olds when they reach 16 either. So we've evolved an approach of working with groups that emerge to put on something for a while that helps them deepen their faith whilst ensuring that it remains open to others – recognising that it may only be for a time.

We ran a couple of small groups for 17 to 18-year-olds where they could build friendships and explore more adult questions than were appropriate on a Sunday night. We've tried several different sung worship 'praise' events such as 'akpraise' and 'Worship on Wednesday' which were very good for a time. A Sunday morning event called 'eleven' also ran for a couple of years, attempting to bridge the gap between the Sunday morning congregations and the Sunday night alive and kicking. None of these were long-lasting, but all were extremely useful for those that were part of them, all of them helped people grow in discipleship (which couldn't have been done just as part of the Sunday night meeting) and all of them contributed to the ongoing story of building God's community.

Our year is structured around the school terms with summer holidays being given over to games and sports to give us a break from planning content. We run an annual weekend away which has proved critical to discipleship as an opportunity to take young people away and immerse them in fellowship, worship and teaching. An all-night event at Easter sees us share a meal, play games, have a midnight worship event and then walk to the top of the local beauty spot to share in a 6.30am 'son-rise' service with Christians from the two churches in the village and beyond.

One of the tensions around alive and kicking has always been its place in the Christian life of the village. We don't see alive and kicking as a church, but some of the young people who come would consider it their church. The two traditional congregations in Kinver have often struggled to understand how young people meeting off church premises can be part of the Church in the village and wondered why they're not seeing any new 'recruits' to the pews.

In terms of structure, we set up an independent Christian charity called ad33 to oversee the Church's work with young people in the village. It has a board of trustees drawn from the alive and kicking leaders and the two churches, giving the work a clear accountability and support structure which wasn't possible when trying to report to two different church councils at the same time. We have clear vision and values underpinning everything we do and potential new work is measured against that vision and values. A pastoral support and prayer team drawn from the two churches pray for the work and are available to the leadership team for whatever pastoral support is required.

Our current leadership team, nearly all of whom came to faith as young people through the work of alive and kicking, meet together for an evening every week to plan and prepare for the coming week's session and, equally importantly, to share in prayer, fellowship and food! One of the interesting things has been how community has developed amongst those who have been involved in leadership over the years. A couple of house groups now running started from these weekly leadership meetings.

Last year we appointed our first paid youth pastor. This full-time appointment, which took four years to put in place, runs for five years initially. Our volunteer team all have other jobs which meant that doing work in the village high school was very difficult despite a great eagerness on the part of the school for us to be involved in lessons, assemblies and lunchtime activities. We also recognised that we needed somebody who could focus on pastoral care and strengthening discipleship among the young people of the village. Having a full-time paid worker as part of a flat leadership team has brought its own set of challenges, both in terms of fundraising and team dynamics, but it has opened up new areas of work as well as strengthening our existing ones.

We know that alive and kicking will only ever reach some young people. Many just don't want to engage in organised groups for instance, and for them it's never going to scratch where they itch. For others, a games and discussion format doesn't engage them. Our current vision is to start a network of small activity-based groups alongside alive and kicking to broaden the ways young people can encounter God. We've started a photography group and there are plans for a drama group to start soon with several more in the pipeline. The aim of each of these groups is to explore what it means to encounter God through their activity – how, as people who really enjoy photography or drama or sport or cooking, can we relate that to God – and how can we relate God to that activity and our wider lives.

We want to explore how we use the things in our hands to glorify God and to serve him. We hope that young people will come both because they want to explore their existing faith more and enjoy the activity, but also that the activity will be something that brings friends and others along – and that connecting it to back to God will be something that draws people into new relationships with Jesus. We also want to explore doing some detached work amongst young people who congregate at the bus shelter and elsewhere in the village.

One of the dangers of having so many small groups is that they all head off in their own directions and we build a load of small ghettos so we want to connect everything with a new monthly gathering called 'breathing space', which draws together people from all the different small groups, from alive and kicking, from the leadership team, the house groups and the traditional congregations. We plan to meet over food in an informal setting to worship, to build relationships between groups and generations and to have fun. Whilst individual groups may only be for a particular niche, with breathing space we want to build a place were people from the whole diverse body of Christ can meet together.

We don't believe that breathing space will be a church on its own – nor the small groups, nor alive and kicking. But all together they are a fresh expression of church. It's messy, we don't have a strictly defined membership, groups change, people come and go. But (with the traditional churches in the village) we form a community of people – with some at the core, some on the edges – seeking to follow God.

As for the future, we're excited to see how the new small groups and 'breathing space' take off. No doubt some will last, some will change and some will be for a short time only. We also have a dream for a Christian youth drop-in space in the village somewhere – an idea which echoes the original 'Hole in the Wall'. It has not happened yet but the thinking and praying about that space is what shaped our vision and values, led to the pastoral support and prayer team, the establishing of a board of trustees and many other aspects of the work.

Church at The Centre

Church at the Centre (United Reformed), Tonge Children's Centre sees its mission as sharing the love of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the people of Tonge Moor through worship, fellowship and action. Community Minister Pat Oliver explains more.

Tonge Moor United Reformed Church, Bolton, was originally founded as a Congregational Church in 1891 and is now a member of the Vision Pastorate with Rose Hill URC and St Andrew and St George URC. In 2000, the church reviewed its calling of service to the community and major issues were identified as a result:

increasing age and decreasing numbers of members;

burden of upkeep and unsuitability of a building over 100 years old;

call to work more closely with other churches and organisations supporting the Tonge Moor community.

Whilst many members of the fellowship had their roots in the Congregational and United Reformed Churches, many of them actually lived outside the immediate community and so did not share (as residents) the problems and aspirations of local people. It was strongly felt that there was a need for the church to be shaped by local residents into the form of fellowship which best suits the needs of the community.

The church responded by firstly inviting neighbouring churches (Anglican, Methodist and Roman Catholic) to create Churches Together in Tonge Moor. Then after taking advice on the potential uses and limitations of its existing building, the church also approached Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council and East Bolton Regeneration with a view to making the church's land available for the development of a Community Centre, which would include accommodation for the church.

In October 2003, after demonstrating a willingness to work alongside others supporting the community, the church was invited to join in the creation of a new Children's Centre to be built on the church's land and that of the neighbouring Tonge Moor Community Primary School. The fellowship adopted the name Church at The Centre, when the Children's Centre opened in May 2006.

Out of the church's desire to better serve its local community, the church identified the following aims for its Church-in-Community project, Building Bridges:

To counter alienation in young people and fear in older people by building bridges between the two age groups and developing mutual trust and support;

To explore opportunities presented by the Church's partnership with the Children's Centre;

Use this experience to identify and share ways in which other churches could become more engaged in the national Children's Services/Children's Centres initiatives in their areas;

To provide a model for other churches to shake off the constraints imposed by obsolete buildings.

The Tonge Moor project involves Age Concern, Bolton Council Children's Services, other denominations, local Residents' Associations and URC NW Synod (all represented on the Project Management Group). The church has developed financial management systems for its community support work separate from its life as a worshipping fellowship. This was done to facilitate access to, and eligibility for financial support from a variety of bodies.

The Children's Centre's main remit is to help 0 to 5-year-olds, their parents and families, but we work alongside them to provide some supportive extra glue eg. summer holiday activities for the older siblings of families using the statutory services, craft activities or just chatting with lonely young parents in the Centre cafe etc. I basically try to grasp every opportunity I can to support what's going on here. It works as a seven day a week operation, five days a week for children's services with a community café and activities on Saturday and our informal services on Sundays. We try to be open to and willing to take advantage of as many opportunities as we can to demonstrate the love of God in Christ in this place.

In terms of community development, it takes time to build up relationships so as I'm based in the Centre, I'm able to work with the Centre's community outreach leader to organise some events jointly – it is part of their community cohesion remit and it's our reason for being. We are also building a volunteer base, involving people from church and community, which will help us to offer long-term support in this area. I’m not into offering something that comes and goes very quickly because that builds on the low expectation that many people have around here. People are accustomed to things starting up and then disappearing without trace; this contributes to the feeling that 'we don't matter'.

Being based in someone else's building has required adjustments by the church fellowship. Even new members who never knew the old building have preconceptions based on the traditional model where a Church has control of its own building. We've had to learn to share. People now appreciate how hard it is to cross the threshold of someone else's building no matter how warm the invitation! This new Centre is far more welcoming to 'non-church' people and provides 'neutral space' for church folk to meet with others from our local community and this is happening more and more now.

A recent joint venture involved creating a mosaic on the theme of nature. Anyone who came in to the Centre via the café was invited to join in and it took us three months to complete. We had a community artist working with us and the result is wonderful – the folks who aren't used to being creative have something to be very proud of. As far as the theme of it is concerned, for those who have no faith it's nature, for those with faith it's creation. This is the best visual example so far of what we are trying to do together.

I think at the beginning of all of this people said, 'Let's have a church within a Children's Centre' but what that actually means in practice is very different to what some imagined it would be. It can be a challenge for many to realise that church can look very different from the way they might expect. Folk outside of our fellowship find it hard to take on board that we're all about supporting people in living as good a life as they can in their community.

If they ask us about our motivation, then we have an opening to tell them about the whys and wherefores behind it all – the faith that stirs us into this action. If they don't ask, we just get on with it knowing that in God's time our message will be received one way or another.

We have about 30 members and we are growing. Some of the new folk have come from very different sorts of church backgrounds, or from no church background at all but whoever you are, you still have to get through the doors in the first place. As a result, hospitality events are very popular and very rewarding. We work with the other Partners in the Centre on special occasions and we also have a hugely popular candlelight Advent Supper.

Weekend baptisms, weddings and funerals can take place here as in any church but, mid-week – thanks to an arrangement with the Centre Management, the same services are possible. When requested, part of the premises is closed and we use a different entrance, enabling families to have their ceremony on the day and time they choose. Thus far only funerals have taken place mid-week but who knows what the future will bring.

My role is not about me alone or about building church in its narrowest sense; it's about supporting all in the challenge of looking for where God's love is already evident and joining in, it's about all of us carrying God's love to where it's needed, and it's about us together building God's community wherever God calls it to be. Not an easy task… some of the challenge comes from those who say that if people don't become 'official' members of our churches then how will we continue as a denomination? Others ask, 'If you are based in a Children's Centre, do you get children coming to church on Sunday?

Church at The Centre believe that we are taking our worship beyond Sunday mornings and into the week, and sharing the love of God as we meet people in their everyday lives – just as Jesus did. We don't expect people to respond by falling in with past traditional patterns – all must be encouraged to worship in ways that suit them and their journey with God.

As we go forward we know we are totally reliant on faith and the way God works in the community through people who say they have no faith. Christians don't have the monopoly on God after all.

Grafted

Refresh, a fresh expression of church in the Scottish Borders, has grown out of the Church Army's Grafted project. Established in 2003 by Church Army officer Paul Little, Refresh continues to develop new ministries in the region.

I came to the area in 2001 straight out of Church Army college and my first post was as an evangelist in the outdoor centre here which belongs to Barnabas Trust, now known as Rock UK. We are 25 miles north east from Carlisle and 20 miles south of Hawick in the Scottish Borders, the very furthest tip of Edinburgh diocese. There's somewhere around 800 in the traditionally agricultural community though there is a lot of tourism in the summer.

I was placed with another officer and my brief was to be an evangelist on the site to the 9,000 people who visited very year but it soon became clear to me that the future job would be very different. God had called me here but it was to be for another reason and this started to take shape after I ran a 10-week course for six people recognised as most serious offenders in the youth justice system. During that time one did reoffend but otherwise everybody had a clean sheet and the police would ring up asking where they were! Basically it worked because the young people had something to do on a Friday which appealed to their sense of adventure and helped them develop skills at the same time.

They ranged from 12/13 year-olds up to 16 and were basically pre-prison status. It was an experimental last ditch programme and things have developed a lot more since then. Many of the young people I have met along the way are now in their early 20s and those relationships bring lots of opportunities.

Those first few years saw me heavily involved in networking with youth work, social justice projects and drug agencies so that when it came to running the stuff we are now running, there were already strong relationships in place and they were prepared to trust us. It may have appeared to be quite unfruitful at the time but those early links have become vital. Many of the people I first came across are now key decision makers and budget holders in the area but it all takes time and you have to allow that time if things are going to be effective. These days we get a lot of referrals from social workers – even though they know we’re Christian and we're trying to tell the Gospel. The local council also funds us to run the youth work in the village.

Grafted (Giving Hope to those Without Hope) is known locally for its work with people struggling with drug and alcohol dependency. Using outdoor activities such as canoeing, mountain biking and mountaineering, Grafted's Window of Time project helps to develop leadership and self esteem in those with poor basic and social skills, or those with learning disabilities or emotional and behavioural difficulties.

The project runs 5 days a week, including a drop-in on Tuesdays at Hawick Youth Centre. This provides a safe and supportive environment with opportunities to talk to others who have been able to overcome their own addictions and hear their stories. There is also a discussion group for those wanting to talk about issues of faith and the bigger questions of life.

Each Wednesday we encourage people from the drop-in to join us for adventurous outdoor activities which help promote an active lifestyle. These include hill walking, canoeing, kayaking, archery and mountain biking. Throughout the rest of the week, we support people in a variety of ways by attending appointments, accompanying them to court and showing kindness and support where needed.

We have an open access policy and anyone over 18 is welcome to attend.

Referrals and recommendations also come through social workers, health professionals and the Criminal Justice system.

The other strand to all of this is the fact that my wife and I joined the Presbyterian Church when we moved here. In fact I was actually preaching in a Presbyterian Church when I felt a strong calling from God to leave and begin another one. What sprang to mind was, 'Leave the 99 sheep and look for the lost one' from Matthew 18 and Luke 15. It sounds simple but I went through a year without going to church as an 'event' and instead learned about 'being' the church rather than 'doing' it.

Refresh Community Church in Newcastleton was the result of that period. About three quarters of the people who have come over all are non-Christians and we have grown to about 20 in number with some 60 people from the community involved in one way or another. There are also groups that meet under the banner of Refresh, all of which are missional because the people who make up the leadership are locals who have been through Alpha.

It's normal for them to do things that are missional but that is something else that has taken time as well. We had to be strong at one particular point because we found there were a lot of people who were already Christians attracted to Refresh and they wanted things to become more settled and comfortable. It meant we had to be quite firm in saying that we were called to be a mission group in the village. We work well alongside the Presbyterian Church but have always had this vision of Refresh as a lifeboat and we do our best never to become a cruise ship. That doesn't suit everybody but some people just want to cruise and enjoy all the benefits that brings.

When we meet for Refresh, there is usually discussion and some sung worship. We don't have anybody at all who is ordained – we never have had on the leadership team. Children's work didn't really take place in the community when we started Refresh but it is flourishing now.

Stepping Stones is church for two to four-year-olds and their parents and carers. This takes place each Monday and has become an integral part of the week for many.

Other children's activities include Boulder Gang on Thursdays and Rock Solid Crew. The groups are run in six week blocks and there are social events in between, things like games nights, activity sessions, movie nights and adventure walks. Each week we follow a theme based on a Bible story and a memory verse and we include games, worship, and prayer. We have an average of 25 primary school children coming along each week, with 16 of those not attending any other form of church.

In June we took a group of 32 of these young people to a Christian residential weekend called 'Spree'. They all had a great time and are already looking forward to going back next year.

More recently, and as part of Refresh, Deeper was developed for 14 to 19-year-olds in the village. Deeper is a home group for teenagers, which meets each Sunday in a Church Army house we have here. The aim of the group is to disciple the young people who come along and encourage them to grow deeper in their relationship with God. The evening consists of games, a talk and discussion with food. On average 12 young people attend regularly. We see youth work as a priority so we are looking at new ways of developing youth work for 2011.

At the other end of the age range, another group came about when Mary – a member of Refresh – felt called by God to invite the elderly people we visit each week to come to a regular tea party. Mary serves a home-cooked meal with plenty of cakes and scones for afters. Our guests chat to their peers and lifelong friends who they haven’t seen for years and this is sometimes followed by a short time of worship and a speaker talking about some aspect of their Christian faith.

Some of those at Refresh are still involved with their local church and we did come close to meeting on a Sunday because we wanted to reach families but we decided that wasn't the right way forward. We have explored, and continue to explore, a lot of options but the important thing is that we see ourselves as part of the one Church with Jesus at the head of it.

The Order of the Black Sheep (The Gates)

Mark Broomhead, an Ordained Pioneer Minister in Chesterfield, is starting a new fresh expression of church for those who feel like the 'black sheep' of society. He outlines his hopes for the new community and its church, The Gates.

I am in the last year of my training at St John's on the mixed mode course. The first part of my curacy was spent at Clay Cross and Danesmoor where I was involved in planting Sanctum, a community based rock-oriented congregation.

I have been involved in the heavy metal music scene since my teens and have played in several bands so it has been very much part of who I am for many years. That interest has developed in all sorts of ways, one of which has seen me helping to lead the welfare provision at the annual Bloodstock festival.

It's one of the main heavy metal music festivals, probably the more specialist end of the market with Viking metal, satanic metal, pirate metal and all kinds of things. We offer a Christian presence in that sort of arena.

Sanctum offered an alternative way of being church and it continues to develop in its own way. The Bishop of Derby, Alastair Redfern, was very supportive as I moved on to Chesterfield in order to set up a new community called The Order of the Black Sheep. I chose the name, or the name chose me, because a black sheep was for many years seen as the worthless sheep of the flock, the one that couldn't produce any wool that was worth anything.

In medieval times it was even seen by some as a sign of the satanic. I really pray that The Order of the Black Sheep will be a home for the marginalised, for members of the alternative community who feel a little bit like the black sheep in society – and the church. Our motto will be along the lines of 'better a black sheep than a goat'.

The church will be known as The Gates. Gates are mentioned over 100 times in the Bible, including '…I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not overcome it' (Matthew 16.18) and 'Lift up your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in' (Psalm 24.9). We want to build church in what is traditionally seen as the devil's territory and to allow the King of Glory to come in to that community and do what he wants to do.

The 'alternative' subculture is a difficult one to describe but it has grown from the 1950s and 60s Teddy Boys through Mods, Rockers, Hippies and people who generally feel themselves to be on the edge of society and don't fit in with the 'in' crowd. These days there are all kinds of different expressions of it, whether it's Goths, bikers, skaters – all sorts of things.

Our challenge is taking the Gospel to these groups; sharing Jesus with those who have a sometimes well founded mistrust of the Church and Christian culture. We're not planning to 'dress up' the Gospel for this culture because it is perfect and relevant to all as it is. I want it to be a place where the community can meet, a centre where it can be safe and talk through things, where the Church can be reached, where we can be accessible, where we can allow a space for worship and a space to meet with God in various other ways and for us to be of service to that community.

As a fresh expression we maintain that this project will be Church rather than a gateway to 'real' Church but we are keen for members to explore and take their place at the table of the wider church family as part of their discipleship.

The Welcome

After 15 years in the making, The Welcome has become the 'newest' church in Methodism. Its minister, Rev Ben Clowes tells how the project developed in the Alderley Edge and Knutsford Methodist Circuit.

Cheshire is known to be one of the richest and most exclusive areas of the country but it’s a place of extreme contrasts. Around Knutsford we have the Bentley Garage for Manchester, Premier League footballers in £2m homes, charity shops selling Prada and Gucci – and one of the most deprived wards in the Cheshire East.

In the past, the community at Over Ward, Longridge and Shaw Heath missed out on a lot of support and possible grant aid because many charities only look at postcodes when considering applications. As soon as they saw Knutsford, that was the end of it for them.

It is interesting because The Welcome very much started as one thing and became another. Reaching out to the community has always been important at Knutsford Methodist Church and across the Circuit generally but the story of The Welcome really got going when Sue Jackson arrived as the project's first deacon.

Initially she walked around the estate, talking to people, getting to know them, finding out what was needed. The call was for second hand clothing so Sue started to provide facilities – usually the boot of her car – for people to bring and buy clothes. Moving on from that, we then got a lease on what was originally a doctor’s surgery and that became a Christian place to sell clothing and serve coffee. At that time it was called the Over Ward Project (Longridge and Shaw Heath).

By the time our second deacon, Margaret Fleming, came along, the church began to develop. There had always been a Christian ethos of meeting people where they were but increasingly the people themselves began to ask why the church was doing this.

As the church grew, the community named the place. They were very clear they wanted it to be called The Welcome.

Cris Acher was appointed Presbyter and he was here for three years before he moved on to Nexus in Manchester. The church still continued to develop and took on a lay manager who started to make further inroads. In time, less clothing was being sold and more coffee was being served and we started to see the growth of an educational project.

The next stage began with the next Presbyter, Richard Byass, who saw the acquisition of the next door lease so we had a cafe space and sessional space for the community. Last year we had a big funding hole but realised that we were giving out such mixed messages when applying for funding, we were café, business, education – and church. We did get a couple of grants to keep us going but then we got to work with Manchester CiC (Community in Communities) and they set us off on a new way of doing things.

By that stage the church had been meeting for 8 to 10 yrs and the questions were starting to be asked by the community as to why we were not being officially recognised as a church. What was the problem? We should be recognised formally, etc.

It was suggested that the best thing to do was to separate the two elements of the centre – the business side of it and the church. A new not-for-profit company called The Welcome CIC (Community Interest Company) will run the now refurbished community centre and the café (probably as the trading arm of a charity) while The Welcome Church itself was formally recognised as the newest church in Methodism at a special dedication service in September.

It was a great month because we had already celebrated confirmation of two members. We have now got 16 members and the two most recent additions are dual members – one from Knutsford Methodist Church and the other is our new business manager who is an Anglican.

Rev Dr Keith Davis, chair of the Manchester and Stockport Methodist District, conducted the dedication service held jointly at The Welcome and a local community centre. It was interesting when we were putting the service together. The Welcome style is very hands-on and experiential and the worship is quite distinct but in the end it was actually a very traditional service because people said, 'just because we normally do it differently doesn't mean we can't do it the standard way. We are not fixed to one style like some churches are.'

So we started to look at liturgies and it seemed to be a contradiction in terms that we were about to celebrate this non-traditional church in a very traditional way but the community message was clear, 'How dare you assume we can't do it another way?!' As a result, Faith and Order now want copies of the liturgy. What we have done changes further develops Methodist ecclesiology!

The important thing is that this has come up from the community, this is the way they want to do church but they also want to be recognised. They are very much for the moment. At one stage they weren’t ready in any shape or form to become a church but things change – and we have to be ready to react to those changes. Other developments include a youth café and a Travellers' Bible Study (that’s a Bible study for those on a journey with God not a Bible study for travelling people…)

Another recent visitor was our local MP for Tatton, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. He said he was thrilled to see what we were doing, describing The Welcome as 'The Big Society in action.'

Last year was a difficult one in that we had to make our cook and community manager redundant but this is a new stage and we are looking to God for what happens next. The first time we met as a church there were about 25 of us and at the special service we had more than 100. We don't open the doors and expect the people to come in, we go where people are – I don't think anywhere on Longridge or Shaw Heath is as busy or well loved as The Welcome.

Our former kitchen supervisor now works alongside me in pastoral work and hers reflects the story of The Welcome. Five years ago at interview she said, 'I'm very happy to do the job so long as you know I don't do God.' She is now a preacher in training and our Senior Steward! The Welcome has been and continues to be a place where God is at work and where people meet with him daily. Our prayer is that, even now we are a 'fully fledged' church, and have even held our first 'Welcome-style' Church Council, we will continue to listen to God and to follow his lead as we have done for the last fifteen years.

Divine Divas

What do belly dancing, Bollywood, Loose Women and Come Dine with Me have to do with a fresh expression of church in North Yorkshire? Revd Sue Sheriff, vicar of Tadcaster, gives the lowdown on Divine Divas.

It all started when one of our church members won the use of a hot tub for the weekend in a church raffle. She used it for a birthday party and we wondered, 'why is it that we can invite other women to this sort of party but we find that we can't really invite them to church?'

I wasn't sure if it was just me or if the other women felt the same so the first thing we did was have Women Who Lunch and Pray and I asked a small group to come together early last year for lunch to talk about some of the women we cared about and think about the type of leisure activities we could invite them to.

We then invited Christian women across the area to a Pudding and Prayer meeting so that we could discuss it in more detail. As a result of this, we decided to put on an event for women, one that was clearly Christian but not off-putting. Divine Divas was born with DIVA standing for Dynamic Inspirational Vibrant Adventurous women. Our first meeting was an experiment, and we decided to go for belly dancing…

We wanted to be very open and honest about the fact that there was the church element, we didn't want to get people there under false pretences and so we decided the topic and invited a friend of mine – a wonderfully 'DIVA' vicar, Laura McWilliams from Scarborough – to come and tell her story and it was great.

People seemed to go for the whole thing immediately. The venue we use is licensed and I think we set the tone by inviting them to bring whatever they wanted to drink. There are always ethical issues around these questions of course and we don't go so far as to provide the drink but we felt it important that they could bring in a bottle of wine if they wanted to. So far we haven't had any problems with this, people seem to respect what we're doing and only drink in moderation. If it was causing any sort of distress, we would obviously think again.

We didn't want to exclude people by always organising active events so we next organised a Loose Women panel. On the TV, they've discussed prayer and spiritual items several times and we thought it great that we could talk about anything and everything. I chaired it with three very lively Christian women who made themselves very honest, very vulnerable – all with a good experience of life. It was such an open and frank debate and I think an eye opener for many in the audience. Cosmopolitan magazine was taken as our source of information in the first half of the evening so that meant we had Christians talking about things like How to have the Best Sex Ever.

We set our age limit as being old enough to discuss childbirth without cringing and young enough to have a go at belly dancing. It's more of an attitude than an age limit but we tend to get 20 to 40 somethings made up of about 25% churchgoers and 75% non- churchgoers. Attendance has never really dropped below 40.

Bollywood Nights featuring Bollywood style dancing was another one that made the programme. It featured the testimony of a young woman, a Muslim convert to Christianity, who told us some of the complications that decision had brought about in her life. People were really moved when they realised the personal cost of being a Christian; that was the event when people started saying it was 'their'church. There had always been relationship stuff going on but that event was certainly a turning point.

Our next event is Come Dine with the Divine Divas. This is a women-only event so the men will help with the cooking and wait on the tables but once they have served the meal, they have to get out! Three of the fellas from church said they would ask some of their friends and they have now got a group together to do just that. We're calling them the Divine Men. They think this is a fun idea because they are doing something rather than coming to something – it could provide a longer term offshoot for the men.

A core group of seven of us is involved in the planning; there is a big denominational spread as we operate across a joint benefice. There are lots of us who are very conscious of the very worldly things around which we are weaving Christian themes in our events. Divine Divas doesn't seem to be a clear bridge to bringing people into church because, for some of them, Sunday church is not appropriate or convenient for them or they don't really relate to it. At the moment Divine Divas seems to be developing a community in its own right but it's very much at early stages.

The whole thing begs the question about what does church mean? What I hope that will come out of this is that people will develop a relationship with Jesus. I do find that, for instance even now with our friends they will ask us to pray and on occasions even non-churchgoing friends who have no particular claim to faith will text and say 'pray for me, this is happening' – sometimes even to sit and pray with them especially when it's something very emotional to do with family.

Similarly in conversation we'll chat Bible stories and talk about things like the woman at the well who had been married however many times and the man she was with wasn't her husband. So much of it relates to people's experiences today so I'm not sure – if Church were to be taken in its 'tight' term – that we will evolve into having an organised liturgy and singing hymns. However if we're talking about evolving to a place where people are happy to pray and to chatter about the Bible then I think it could easily evolve into that. I guess as we chatter together you could call it a cell group or a Bible study or church but I'm not sure we'd be too keen to try and pin it down too much.

Some of the more mature members of my traditional congregation are now coming along to Divine Divas and thoroughly enjoying it. People have been very supportive and they're just genuinely pleased to see people involved with church in its wider sense.

In future I would like to see Divine Divas growing in numbers. It would also be wonderful to see a change in the little slot where we invite a speaker. Instead of bringing in someone from the outside I would love to be able to say to the group, 'so has Jesus done anything for you? Has God made a difference in your life this week?' and the Divine Divas themselves would just stand up and tell their own stories.

Boring Wells

Boring Wells is a network of fresh expressions of church in and around Belfast. Each has a very different flavour but all share the same vision and core values. Adrian McCartney explains more.

Genesis 26 tells the story of Isaac who pursued the vision passed to him by his father, Abraham of re-opening old wells and digging new wells, sources of life and prosperity for anyone who chose to live close to them.

The collective vision of Boring Wells is to continue the legacy of faith in the Church of Ireland, to re-open old wells in old places of faith and to open new wells where there are signs that a new community could be expressed. The hope is to bring life and the presence of Christ to local communities who may have difficulty connecting with church.

Our ideas of what the church is like are fairly well culturally shaped and even when we apply scripture to them we tend to default back to something like it has always been. Wells is no different mostly. We are trying to be the family of God. If there is any difference it is that we want to be shaped by the mission and by those whom we engage with rather than predetermining the result.

We originally thought that we were to reopen old wells but then we found that we were re-digging wells where the church had gone a bit dead. Since then the main emphasis has been to try and open up new wells.

I am a Church of Ireland minister but I came out of parish ministry in 2003 when the Bishop of Down and Dromore gave me permission to plant a church in a commuter village on the outskirts of Belfast. We quickly discovered that trying to do that among unchurched people just didn't work in that area.

I had taken a year to recruit a group of people. Initially there were 35 of us who started meeting in a pub in Moneyrea. We organised a Sunday service but not one unchurched person ever came to it! We threw everything at that service; we had projectors and sound and lovely coffee and nice things to eat. We also had lots of visitors from other parishes, saying, 'O we'd love to do this' though there was always the underlying thought, 'This just looks like we are moving the existing church around.'

Then we read the Mission-shaped Church report and we began to consider how we do church and it became something that wasn't quite what the bishop or any of us had expected. Questions like 'when are you going to build the buildings?' became irrelevant. We had to say that we weren't going to be doing it that way any longer. Defining ourselves in a way that can be accommodated within a diocese when we cross parochial boundaries, and even diocesan boundaries, has been an ongoing challenge both for us and the diocesan head office.

Our main problem was, and is, that people find it difficult to recognise anything except the parish. We don't have the equivalent of a Bishop's Mission Order in the Church of Ireland so most people see us as something between a parish and a mission agency. The way we have moved forward is to become a company limited by guarantee with a charitable basis. We have a board of directors and have to submit our audited accounts to the Charity Commission. This allows us to have charity number but it doesn't give us any status within the Church of Ireland even though we would very much like to be part of the diocese. Representation at Synod and financial support are ongoing discussions.

Five wells, our attempts at creating mission shaped communities, go to make up the Boring Wells network. We found that people had a sense of call in different sorts of areas – not geographical as such but among certain groups of people. The wells each decide how they express church individually but we have a general sense of how the whole family of Wells expresses their love of God together. The wells are called Tinys, Resound, Shankill, Elk and Networks.

Within a year of us starting, we set up Tinys. It all happened when we were running that service in the pub; one night we simply came across a crowd of teenagers drinking on the windowsills of a row of shops. In time, we rented one of the retail units as a coffee shop for young people; there was no way those youngsters would or could transfer to the Networks church – then known as Moneyrea Wells. We needed to let them do something to express their experience of Christ where they were in their own way. That was quite a learning curve for the first group of people who had thought that what they were originally offering was a fresh expression of church only to discover that something very different was happening with the people who actually lived in the place.

We released some people to go and make Tinys their spiritual home. The original group of people now call themselves Networks. They have a non-local sense of connecting primarily with their natural contacts in work and through friendships. Members of Networks are now praying about the possibility of gathering somewhere closer to the city.

The bishop gave me an opportunity to work in two inner city parishes part-time. These small congregations are very elderly but we have found that the Networks group (about 30 of them) have been very supportive of those congregations who have actually come to like them.

Resound was originally a small outreach in an interface community comprising two working class estates on opposite side of a main road in Dunmurry on the outskirts of Belfast. There are two large secondary schools, one Catholic and one Protestant, and some community facilities that have been made available to Resound for youth activities. In the summer we have a fortnight of non-stop activities; the first week is aimed at primary school children – this year we had 400 children and young people every day with 73 leaders. In the second week we had over 100 teens daily. The regular Resound meetings, comprising a Sunday night session and drop-in stuff during the week, are organised by the late teens/early 20s.

The Shankill well is all about people serving in the area, a place at the heart of sectarian paramilitarianism. The Summer Madness festival started Streetreach to offer an opportunity of service to the community. Every summer for five years we used to take teams of people to do street cleaning and gardening in different parts of the city. Growing out of that was a group of people who had a strong sense of call to go and serve in Shankill itself. One couple have moved to live there.

Shankill well has a meal together every Monday evening. They are trying to be very simple in what they do, developing friendships from around the area and trying to incarnate the gospel in natural ways.

Elk well meets in my local pub in Dundonald, not far from Stormont. Our team get together on Thursdays to join the weekly quiz night. Friendships have grown and relationships have developed in a away that has allowed for many opportunities to share in prayer and care for this growing group of people.

All of our network team leaders are pioneer types and so are now really struggling with what to do when communities do start to grow. Launching out in mission has an excitement about it. Discipleship and pastoral care are the balance. The challenge for this autumn is come up with a better support system for those who make up the mission teams and the new family members who are becoming part of us. We presently organise a monthly gathering for worship and teaching supported by resources for small groups. None of this is easy and everything always feels quite fragile. As St Paul said, 'I am certain that He who began this good work in you will bring it to completion…' I pray that the Lord will help us to keep going.

Scarborough Deanery

Revd Sam Foster is fresh expressions pioneer missioner for the Scarborough Deanery. Numerous projects are now underway, among them a fresh expression of church in Hub Groups. Sam tells us more:

I am a fresh expressions missioner for the whole Deanery instead of a single parish and that has made a huge difference. Although I work for the Church of England, I work ecumenically – mainly through Churches Together – helping churches to step out in faith in building community and supporting Parochial Church Councils and ministers along the way.

I now have an Anglican team of about ten people, including Church Army officer Shena Woolridge. Church Army gave us full funding for five years and Shena works full time on spirituality and the arts. The entire Deanery is represented in the make up of the team, we have got 27 Anglican churches here for instance but five of those churches may be in one benefice so one person will represent that group.

The team overlap a lot; and the beauty of it is that everyone has responsibility for a project or particular area of work. The groups of people helping us to run these projects are ecumenical, everything from Anglo-Catholics to Pentecostal Baptists. If we want things to be sustainable we must equip and encourage lay people to do all sorts of things; I am against the model of a vicar as a Jack of all Trades. I have been ordained for seven years and I don't want to have a breakdown because I’m running around trying to do everything.

We also have a mix of lay and ordained as well as some people who have recently come to faith. Whatever their Christian story so far I look for people who don't speak church 'language' all the time – it's very easy to slip in to that but it ends up meaning nothing to the people you're trying to reach. It's interesting that people who don't know anything about church tend to respond to friendship and support but the de-churched people we meet along the way look for some form of accountability so they know if we are 'safe' or not.

To work across the Deanery means that I can go anywhere and open things up, not only to our own CofE churches but also ecumenically. Part of that work is getting as many churches as possible to support and fund the initiative. Twelve churches of different denominations have done just that though this comes with its own challenges; namely that we have to make sure that everybody is singing from the same hymn sheet by using the same national material from Fresh Expressions. It sounds a bit heavy but in order for this to work it has to be that way.

Our team also meet regularly to share in the vision. That really helps when facing criticism from the various denominations – whether it is not preaching the Gospel enough or preaching it too much!

Healing on the beach for example is a bit controversial among the churches but most people on the streets – faced with things like regular Mind Body Spirit Fairs – are saying, 'It's about time Christians were doing something like this'. The media around here call me 'the vicar without a church' and I'm fine with that. I don't face too much opposition as such – mainly because I'm ordained and the vicars see me as being in the same boat and also that I came into this job because I truly felt that God was telling me to do it; to be a church without walls.

The Hub Groups are part of our fresh expressions faith community, discovering together what it means to be disciples of Christ in the 21st Century. There are three groups now with the first one coming out of an Alpha course we did in a Travelodge. It was New Year and they let us advertise on the railings outside because they were promoting New Year's breaks and we were looking at Resolutions in one way or another. We had a real mix of people there and by the time we got to the end of the course they wanted something more.

Another of the Hub Groups is made up of people not really involved in their own churches but who still want to be disciples and deepen their faith journey. They are our potential leaders.

There's also a 20s/30s group and that's more flexible. That started with a young married couple who said they had no friends. I asked them to stay on for six months, start something, and see if they could build it up. It is now a very social group meeting twice a month in all sorts of places. The others meet weekly in people's homes. We also bring the three Hub Groups together for different occasions.

Our next step is to think about something on a monthly basis; we currently do creative prayer days around the town and it would be good to expand on that possibly. One thing is for sure, we are not at all interested in just starting another church. We share people and share resources but that would possibly change if we were in one distinct building.

This is a real mix of an area; it's a seaside town with a middle class suburbia that attracts visitors all year round but two locations in Scarborough are also nationally recognised areas of deprivation. We also cover many rural villages too and this rural focus makes up quite a lot of the Deanery.

Part of our role is to try to encourage churches to shape a team and take over building community when they feel equipped to do so. At Christmas last year, St Mary's, Cloughton, staged a live nativity on Town Farm in the village. It was the first time the church had ever been involved in anything like that. It has since moved the local post office inside the church to ensure that the community doesn't lose that vital service. They also have a fresh expression café church called Café Refresh which meets in the village hall.

St Thomas', Gristhorpe – part of the Filey group of parishes – is an iron clad shack that came in a flat pack from Harrods 150 yrs ago. In April 2009 the fresh expressions team set up a Community Cinema in the church.

St. Mark's Newby, Wreyfield Drive Methodist, St. Luke's and St. Joseph's RC Churches and some members of the Barrowcliff Residents Association are in the process of looking at how we can best serve and be part of the community of Barrowcliff. We are also following the stages of the fresh expressions mission audit 'Listening to the Community' which involves asking local residents, youth workers, councillors, to tell us what they are already doing. What they share is forming our prayers.

Sacred Space on the beach is very popular with people lighting a candle to give thanks or commemorate something or remember someone. In the pilot project last year 150 candles were lit on South Bay, Scarborough. We are not there to Bible bash or collect money. As a result people stopped and said, 'We don't go to church but can we join in?'

The Deanery actually pay for my post, the Diocese provide the house and pay my expenses. Initially it was for 5 years – now they have said they want to continue with it. At the moment we don't give anything to the parish share.

As a team we meet together monthly and pray together and we dream dreams but I'm also very much a member of the Clergy Chapter and Churches Together. I like to see us as one church.

Needing a Bishop's Mission Order (BMO) to go places and do things clearly works in other places but in this area it would be such a poor witness, this attitude of blessing from God is to work all together for the needs of the people.

The only way we can get through to people is by God's good grace and through relationships. Two years ago I had a blank canvas, now God is filling in that bigger picture.