community Archives - Page 5 of 6

Sanctum

Pioneer Minister and heavy metal aficionado Mark Broomhead used to lead a fresh expression of church called Sanctum at the St Barnabas Centre in Danesmoor. He was recently licensed by the Bishop of Derby, Rt Rev Dr Alastair Redfern, to develop an accessible form of church for Alternative sub cultures in the Chesterfield area. What will he be doing?

Sanctum started in 2006 and, as it is now, is the result of the coming together of two congregations. The idea first came about when I was a member of Christian metal band FireFly and we decided to launch Embryo – a multi-denominational alternative worship event hosted by different churches every two months.

It became clear that this event was the only contact with church that some people were having but it lacked the necessary continuity, teaching, community and pastoral care to nurture that contact. In response to this Sanctum was born, a weekly alternative service based at St Bartholomew's Church, Clay Cross. Meanwhile a small congregation at St Barnabas had faithfully been working towards the vision of replacing the old church and hall with a new multi-purpose building for the whole community. The decision to pool the resources of both congregations led to what became Sanctum.

It is a district church of the North Wingfield Team Parish in Derby Diocese and they continue to meet on Sunday evenings at 5pm in the St Barnabas Centre.

The idea for the new community – called 'the order of the black sheep' – is to go back to the original vision of Sanctum in being something more appropriate for the unchurched. We now plan to take out a very small team and from that plant something new; literally taking a seed for Jesus into the community and see what happens. I'm sure that something of Sanctum's worship style will be replicated in the new community; it is heavily influenced by rock culture and previous activities included putting on gigs, starting a small record label and recording a rocked up Christmas carol album.

One of the connections we have got is the Bloodstock Open Air Metal Festival in Derby where I have led the chaplaincy team for several years. Billed as the UK’s No1 heavy metal event, the festival this year hosted about 80 bands across three stages.

Basically we look after anyone who is not in need of hospitalisation or under threat of arrest. Some people lose their tents for one reason or another, for instance. We’re just there 24 hours a day for whenever people a helping hand or a chat or a safe space to recover from a little over indulgence. Lots of people come back to visit us year on year. There are definitely people from the Chesterfield area who go to the festival so being part of Bloodstock gives us respect; they know who we are. That’s a great start.

I often wear my dog collar while wandering around the site. The collar offers instant identification and people seem to be fine with it. I have not been burned at the stake yet so it must be OK. Bloodstock does tend to focus on the darker side of metal, and there are some openly satanic bands though there is a huge range of music. It is fantastic to be involved.

I have played bass for the past 21 years in Christian Metal/Rock bands like Exoria, FireFly, Detritus and Seventh Angel so it’s a very familiar world to me. Bloodstock organisers want to run a battle of the bands-type event with a prize called Metal for the Masses. We have talked about setting up a venue as a central meeting place and finding a pub, bar or nightclub for that event. As a result we can try to build a community rather than a service.

My link with Bloodstock has been very good; they are even offering to fund some of our Christian work through the year as a thank you for the work we do on the welfare provision.

In some respects heavy metal music was a kind of retaliation against Christianity, more culturally than anything else, because the Church was seen as a nice middle-class society. The more uncomfortable people feel about Church, the more it is seen as a target and the more extreme the opposing views become – strangely this makes it very easy for me to talk about Christianity.

I see myself as very much part of that heavy metal community because it's a community I have grown up with since I was 14. It's like the village I grew up in if you like – something you just jump into and get involved in as much as possible.

A friend invited me to see Saxon, my first gig, at the age of 12. I had a really strong sense of gathered community, of not feeling like the odd one out. I recognised the acceptance, the brotherhood of it all and knew I wanted to be part of it.

I really pray that in this next developmental year for the new community that many others will feel that sense of acceptance and brotherhood through being part of a very different form of church.

I've been working with a community that is centred on music, skateboarding etc. People dress in black and hang around on street corners looking frightening. These people I call my friends. I am promoting a form of church that is natural and welcoming to people who wouldn't be able to walk into a normal church building or service and 'get it' straight away.

Contemplative Fire

Candles, quiet drumming and chanting. Anointing with oil. The breaking of bread and the sharing of wine, food and sacred story. It could be any century, any country, any community of Christ's followers. But this is a Gathering of Contemplative Fire, a fresh expression of church.

We welcome the pre- and post-church generation and spiritual searchers of any path seeking to understand the way of Christ the contemplative.

This is an invitation to a radical transformation of consciousness on the Way of Jesus: the ancient and contemporary path of unknowing and knowing, of being loved and loving, of letting go and taking hold.

Whilst Contemplative Fire attracts those from different Christian (and non-faith) backgrounds, it is accountable to and in creative dialogue with the Church of England. Wherever Contemplative Fire establishes itself as a praying, liturgical community, the blessing and partnership of local and diocesan leaders is sought. Such a context allows for two-way prayer support and the opportunity, with the inherited Church, to share and wrestle with theological, missional and pastoral issues.

Contemplative Fire resources its individual members and its network of local groups through a combination of learning materials, experiential processes, creative worship and the training and equipping of its local and national leadership.

To learn more about the activities of Contemplative Fire in your area, or to explore membership, please visit our website.

Travelling light, dwelling deep with Contemplative Fire:

A personal rhythm:

reflective opportunities for opening to the presence of God;

a deep sharing with others;

a learning journey;

costly giving: an offering of our gifts and ourselves to the wider community.

In small groups:

threes – structured silence, deep listening and personal sharing;

sevens – table liturgy celebrating the festivals, with stillness and response flowing from texts from the bible and spiritual writers;

open circles – stories and pauses, with a chosen book as focus;

prayer at the heart – Ignatian group discernment;

still waters – quiet reflection and body prayers from the Christian tradition.

In larger groups:

living the mystery: the way of Christ the contemplative – series of single days of theological and experiential exploration;

gatherings in different places and spaces, for contemplative eucharist;

pilgrimage to now/here – walking in beauty, building awareness and community;

wisdom on the way: rhythm of life weekends and retreats – the dynamic of prayer, study and action;

land, sea, sky: journeying at the edge – seashore conversations;

member events celebrating our journey together as 'companions on the way': a community of Christ at the edge.

Kairos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tubestation

Emma Garrow reports on the latest from tubestation, a fresh expression for surfers.

A chapel on a Cornish beach is becoming the place to be for both visiting surfers and locals. The Methodist chapel is at the heart of a venture that opened in summer 2007 in Polzeath, 'a bridge between surfing and the gospel', known as tubestation. A church, an internet café, a community centre, tubestation is many things and has a vision to be many more.

Tubestation is run by project directors and keen surfers, Henry Cavender and Kris Lannen. Henry says,

Surfers tend to be searchers. They travel the world looking for the ultimate ride, a tube, where the wave bowls over your head. It's the most coveted surfing experience, and has been described as a religious experience. Everything slows down, sound changes, it's an amazing thing.

While Henry and Kris are familiar with the wonder of surfing, their ambition is to convey to surfers that 'the ultimate ride can only be found in Jesus'. Henry explains,

These are people who are immersed in the wonder of creation. Our job is to point out where they're already experiencing God.

Key moments in tubestation's life so far have touched on that sense of wonder, such as a prayer vigil held in the sea at night. Participants stood up to their chests in the water, holding torches aloft, 'connecting to a different side of God'.

But while tubestation enables occasions of transcendence for surfer seekers, it also plugs into its local community. A key element of the original vision was to provide Polzeath's 600 residents with a sense of ownership. A community consultation as the project was developed revealed the need for 'a warm safe place to enjoy and meet one another', especially in the winter months.

We see it as key to work with and serve the residents, we're here to build long term relationships

says Henry.

The first summer was busy catering for surfers and tourists, but the winter is still seeing visitors to tubestation, locals coming in for coffee, young people using the skate ramp, taking advantage of what tubestation is offering: 'a generous space which reflects God'.

Alongside this community venture is a core congregation of between 40 and 50 people, which meets on a Sunday morning. This includes members of the original congregation which was attending the chapel when the concept of tubestation came into being. The service, Henry explains, is

run by surfers, is very laid back, feels very home made – it’s real.

Plans are in mind to extend the chapel with more community areas and galleries for the encouragement of the creative arts. A project is under discussion to enable underprivileged young people to 'live life to the full' by encountering extreme sports. There is even a hope that the work of tubestation in serving both the local community and the worldwide surfing community, might extend to supporting surf destinations in the developing world.

The future for tubestation looks bold, both in Polzeath and in its connections with the worldwide surfing community.

Mind the Gap

It has been a time of great change for Mind the Gap. What started as a project in the Gateshead and Jarrow Methodist Circuit in 2001 became a church in its own right seven years later. Stephen Murray took over the reins as leader in September 2009; he tells us what happened next.

Mind the Gap had been set up to offer support, discipleship and alternative worship for those who were feeling isolated in established church. It also had a missional aim as a cell church initiative to reach people with the Gospel.

We were based in cells and also got together every month to worship, as well as offering regular faith finding courses and seeker events. The idea wasn't to plant a fresh expression of church as such, we just tried to follow what God was doing at the time and respond to that.

It was fantastic to see people being renewed in their faith, discover it for the first time, or grow in maturity and we were so grateful for the backing from people across the Circuit and others in authority who built us up with their support. So much was going on in those early days and it would have been very easy to lose sight of what it was all about, so you have to keep it at the forefront of your mind and your prayers.

Growing leaders and helping people to achieve their potential was something that underpinned everything. Elaine Lindridge was our leader at that time and she helped us through a major transition in 2008 when many members of the Mind the Gap – who were also involved in their own local churches and doing too much as a result – were released to go back to those fellowships.

A relatively few number of people remained but they saw Mind the Gap as their spiritual home and so Mind the Gap became more formally recognised as a church in 2009. I was Elaine's assistant leader three years ago before going on to co-lead it with her; then I took the lead one year ago and Elaine became my coach. Last September I took on full responsibility for overall leadership, planning strategy, and pastoral care, but I am so grateful for that model of encouraging lay and indigenous people and preparing the ground for a leadership change.

We meet at Sheriff Hill Methodist Church's building at 5pm on Sundays, and have midweek cells in various homes. Our Sunday sessions always start with food because we see that as an integral part of our worship. We now have a rota of people who come along and do a buffet tea, or something like that, for us.

Focusing on the importance of building community with food has made a big impact on the life of the church – in fact it became so much part and parcel of who we are that people have said they feel very strange not to be fed if they go to a service anywhere else!

A worship leader will start up at about 5.30pm and we'll go through to 6.30-7. There are no set rules as to what happens but generally there is a speaker or people sharing what has been happening for about 10minutes. At other times we'll use the NOOMA DVDs by Rob Bell to prompt discussion; on other occasions we use songs and projected words.

When we first started, we ran Alpha in that timeslot and that seemed to work very well for us. Now we're starting to think about how we can engage effectively in all-age worship. We are also looking at employing a youth worker just for a Sunday evening as we are a very small church and it’s a very small group of people who do the work.

Mind the Gap became a variation of what church is on a Sunday, and it's what we do in the week during the cell that makes us different. Discipleship in a cell group has stimulated a kind of shifting mindset about what the Church is and what we do in it.

There have been quite a few who have gone through Mind the Gap but others have made roots here. It's interesting to see that people today tend to be committed to God but not so committed to an individual church.

Our numbers can range between 10 and 25 but we will get a core of people here every week. Up to eight kids from the ages of 9-13 also turn up on a Sunday. In all I'd say we probably have regular contact on a Sunday, at least once a month, with about 40 people.

At the moment we have got two cells rather than three. In what is an interesting experiment one cell has divided during its weekly meeting with one half going into a room to do cell material and the other half (about four people) watching an Alpha Express DVD to see how Alpha works in a cell.

Those who have committed to cell have grown a great deal in confidence and are prepared to do more and more things. One example is when a homeless lady came into Mind the Gap having been to the main church in the morning where she had been given a crisis number to ring if she wanted to find a bed for the night. Instead she came to us, shared our food, and sat through a service after which one of our members said she would help to find this lady a bed. People are doing things like that through the growth in fellowship. It's key because it's about not trying to do things on an inappropriate scale, doing things that are right for our normal figures of 18-22 people rather than something more suitable for a church of 80-100.

It's all about being flexible in responding to change and opportunities. When we were a Circuit-wide one-off monthly event, we'd have a worship band and a lot of people would come along. Now we meet every week and usually have one worship leader but that's much more appropriate to the surroundings.

Some of the new opportunities include a family film morning with refreshments on the last Saturday of the month. What we have found is that we don't get as many church people come along to that but we have made contact with about six or seven people we had never met before. The possibility is always there for them to come along on a Sunday as well but we don't force anything, we just want to provide a service in what is a socially deprived area.

It's all relatively small numbers but it feels like it's the right thing to be doing. In 2010 we are also trying to do two to three prayer labyrinths – though in the place of the Good Friday labyrinth this year we decided to do things differently and screen The Miracle Maker animated film. Future plans include hiring the children's pool at the local swimming baths so that the little ones can have fun there. All of these community events are free, we want to be seen to be giving and not taking.

We are also looking forward to our first Mens' Breakfast in July when our speaker will be a man was a local gangster before becoming a Christian and a church leader. The idea is very much to try and engage with men in their 20s and 30s.

In future, I would just like to see the church increase in its vision for the community and get to know more and more people around us. I also pray that those who are already involved in Mind the Gap will be not so much committed to the work of the church for itself but instead be committed to mission and evangelism focusing on friendship.

I'd also like us to grow and take on the cell values, build ourselves up and help others on their journey. The Church has to be missional so we need to set up worship that's different but engaging. Deliberate choices have to be made in what you want to do and that should be to reach people who are not yet Christians. Putting on events for people just like us is not what we're about. One of our values at Mind the Gap is that we don't want to take people from another church fellowship, I sometimes feel a bit sad when I see some congregations growing simply because people are coming from other churches.

In the Church in general, it can seem that your main aim in life is to get money and raise money. What does that mean for us? We lose focus as to what we are all about. At Mind the Gap, we just try to cover costs and trust that God will provide. Yes it's important to be wise with the resources that God has given us but it can't be right if the finances push out all thoughts of reaching people for Christ.

Colin Brown

Just over a year ago Colin Brown moved to Cornwall to start a fresh expression of church amongst the artistic community. It's a slow, steady task but one Colin, Church Army and the Diocese of Truro are committed to.

It's not easy starting a fresh expression of church from scratch at the best of times, but when you are trying to engage with a dispersed community of artists on the south coast of Cornwall, it is even more difficult. Colin Brown knows he has his work cut out. "As well as the joys of being in a beautiful place, and doing what I love to do – painting – I find myself with a lot of questions", he said.

And it is quite a list: "How do I follow God's lead in this? Where do I put my energy today? How do I go about meeting people who don't go to church and help them to become aware of God in their lives… in their art? What might church look like for them, and what part do I play in developing that?"

But slowly and surely the way forward for Colin is beginning to emerge. He started with prayer, valuing the importance of listening, silence and space, and then realised God was leading him to meet certain people and opening certain doors. He was asked to help with chaplaincy work at the local art college, given the chance to mount an exhibition in a local pub, found a temporary studio space in a local vicarage and began to meet other artists at a weekly night class.

Colin is at the stage of building community amongst those he meets. It is something which he believes he needs to take slowly and gently, and is grateful that both Church Army and the Diocese of Truro, who support him, agree. "They have given me the freedom and the permission to be here, as an artist amongst fellow artists, to be inculturated in the artistic community, and to be accepted".

He is aware of the risks he is taking too. He has worked for the church for 15 years but his pioneering work in Cornwall seems to be much more fragile. He's realised how important it is to gather those around him who 'get it' but still admits that things may not work out.

"I know that in this particular moment I need to be faithful to my sense of where God is leading me, but it may be that it all just fizzles out. But I know that I have been true to myself and I know God is saying to me 'Colin, enjoy it, enjoy the journey and don't think too much about what is going to happen tomorrow'".

And deep down Colin has a dream – to see lots of artists in and around Falmouth discovering and expressing a deep sense of God coming through their work. "And who knows where that might lead," he wonders.

Taste and See

The Taste and See café church in Kidsgrove appeared in expressions: the dvd – 1: stories of church for a changing culture. How have things moved on since then? Graham Harrison tells how things haven't quite gone 'according to plan'.

We have never managed to grow a congregation; God just doesn't seem to be using us like that. There seems to be a regular community but they are not a worshipping community. It hurts us in a way but Taste and See wasn't actually reaching the people we wanted to reach, so we started to approach things differently.

Times have changed and we've had to change with them in that lots of people are coming to us for help and advice so we have to respond to what the community is asking of us. Of course it does prompt the question, 'Are we still a fresh expression?' Well, we are doing quite a lot of things that would signify 'yes, we are' though a regular act of worship isn't part of the picture at the moment – but if that's what God wants, that's fine by me.

It's true that we are not doing what we aimed to do four-and-a-half years ago because we've had to adapt. As things are changing we have to be careful not to spend too much energy on mourning the past. We have been given a wonderful opportunity to show Christ's love in practical terms, and be a means to pray for – and with – people in the community.

At the moment we find that our most successful thing is simply being there for people. Quite a few community groups use our prayer rooms and lounge at the back of the cafe, a local mental health charity for instance uses the rooms during the day and it's great for them and their clients to have a coffee shop to hand.

We do quite a lot of pastoral listening and being there for customers. If one of the local churches has had a funeral, people have a "magical" way of finding us afterwards. If possible we like to have a 'spare' volunteer on duty at all times so that someone is always free to sit and chat if needs be.

Taste and See is a project within the Methodist Church Chester and Stoke-on-Trent District and we are sponsored by the Kidsgrove Circuit. They have been very supportive, particularly when they saw that the community's needs had changed and how we had adapted to those needs.

In spite of that support, things are financially very tight and we could never be 100% self-sufficient. When the coffee shop started we were on declining grants for five years and the hard truth is that they will come to an end in September. We have a management committee to oversee what we do so there are some tough questions as to whether we can replace that funding.

We are officially open from 10am to 2pm, Monday to Saturday though things can be a little more flexible than that as the café is staffed by volunteers and we're always on the lookout for new people to make tea and butties, wash-up, or just be there with a smile and a chat.

Kidsgrove is a funny old town because it has got no high street chains in it and businesses come and go very quickly. Locals will kind of look at you with suspicion for the first three years because the feeling is 'we don’t know whether we want to get involved because we're not sure you'll still be around in a little while.' When they do finally make it through the doors, they're intrigued as to why Taste and See has got such a peaceful atmosphere.

Recently the challenge has increased with the introduction of a Costa Coffee on a local Tesco site just down the road from us. It will open from 8am to 7pm every day. So why would people come out of Tesco and head to the town instead? We hope because they'll recognise that we offer a lot more than a choice between latte and cappuccino.

We have also got our eye on other things we can do. We'll be organising more regular Saturday night events when people will have the chance to have an evening out for not a lot of money.

Something that caused a little bit of confusion is the relationship between us and a project called The Galley. The first group that really came to faith through Taste and See found that they wanted their own expression of worship on a Sunday. A lot of people simply assumed that we had changed our name but The Galley is completely separate.

They first met in an old disused pub called The Galley, and then they moved but kept the name. They were without a permanent home for a couple of years, first of all going to Kidsgrove town hall and later a Methodist Church building in the middle of Kidsgrove.

These are former mining communities, and each area used to have its own youth and community centre. Staffordshire County Council is now trying to get rid of them. The Galley has saved the Kidsgrove Community Centre building and they now meet there on Sunday afternoons.

We get on well, and I'm delighted that the one thing that Kidsgrove is well served in is Christian denominational places of worship, schools, nurseries and fellowships. Pentecostal, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist, and Salvation Army – they're all here. This may be a time of change for Taste and See but it's good to know that the people of God remain very much in evidence here.

Church for the Night

As a nightclub chaplain in Bournemouth, Michael French has always loved dance music and the club scene. He explains the many strands to his work in one of the UK's most popular clubbing areas.

A main focus of the work is to provide a listening ear and a helping hand to those in the club scene. We also have people going out on the streets to show kindness and love to the clubbers, and anyone else who may need some support.

The chaplaincy itself, part of the Night Outreach Work ecumenical charity set up here 10 years ago, is about helping people to explore faith and responding to needs. As part of that, we organise something every two months called Church for the Night which is an event at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, which runs from late evening to 4am.

The idea is not to 'pounce' on people when they walk through the door but to offer a free café art exhibition, and use projections, smoke machines, light ambient dance music, and a chilled out euphoric, atmosphere to help whoever comes in to find space with God.

Girls will often arrive in their stilettos and hot pants, kneel down at the front and cry, pray, hug their friends and then walk out without saying anything, but they’ve had some sort of encounter with God which is just incredible.

A new website, Spaces, is now offering us a wonderful opportunity to highlight all the Christian work that's going on in Bournemouth. There will also be an online calendar to help in the development of ongoing programmes.

I originally worked in children's services as a youth and community worker, then I spent three months in Ibiza with 24:7 Prayer – meeting up with others who have a similar love for club culture and God meant that everything changed.

I've been into dance music and dj-ing since I was 17, and involved in the club scene for the past 10. Lots of people think of the club scene as being completely bad but I would say there's a huge amount of life there; the music is amazing and the amount of creativity in terms of multimedia, people's expression of dance and the community life is incredible.

What we do in Nightclub Outreach Work is express our life in God in a different way. A lot of us have previously been members of various churches but this work is more about community – we just want to live life together, eat together, pray together, and get involved in social action with Worship, Word, and Witness.

It's going back to the roots of Christianity, having life and sharing life together – there is a lot of fear around about being controlled. That's why most people have rejected traditional church so we try to create environments where people can come together and pray without that sort of pressure. Our values are based on humility, servanthood, and accountability through the concept of D (discipleship) groups – these are three people that we meet with regularly and keep accountable to them.

All of this encourages me but I think it's not without opposition as well – personal struggles and issues are always there. In saying that, it's about actually learning from each other because I often find that my faith is strengthened by meeting with those who have an experience of spirituality in their own way but don't know where to place it.

Some of the things that happen are quite bizarre. A guy working on the door at a club in Boscombe jeered at me that I looked like a famous porn star called Ron Jeremy. All of his mates laughed, I did too (with slight embarrassment). I then got a call and had to head back to my car to collect a ticket for someone. On the way I realised I had a 'Jesus Loves Porn Stars' Bible in my car and recalled there was a story about Ron Jeremy inside.

As I went back into the club, I handed the Bible to the door man with my business card in the page that said 'Jesus Loves Ron Jeremy'. The guy was astounded, saying, 'What are the chances of that?' He told me he would read the Bible and let me in anytime for free. Result!

We are created to create; we are creative beings and looking at those things which give you passion and life are those things which I would encourage people to start. I wouldn't say it was a good idea for people to start club ministry if they're not into clubbing or dance music, for instance.

We don't discourage people from going to traditional churches. If people want to find God there then we'll take them along but the fact is that we view ourselves as church. We love God and, as people meet with us – whether it's in a nightclub, out and about, or in someone's home; God is in the club, God is in the home, God is in the streets, God is everywhere.

People tend to have a certain image of clubbers but I encounter all sorts of people on the club scene, from those in their late teens to their 50s.

We go to a dance class with teenagers and we are also linked with Christian DJs from Clean Time Sound System who work with a bunch of recovering drug and alcohol addicts. That's what I love about this job: you come across different classes, different races, different ages, different everything – it’s brilliant.

Sanctus1

Ben Edson shares the story of always-incomplete community building with Sanctus 1 in Manchester.

I recently gave a presentation to some Australian visitors about Sanctus1. When it came to the time for questions one of them asked: 'How do you manage so much change?' I hadn’t realised that we had been through so much change, but now as I look back on seven years of Sanctus1 I realise that change is part of our narrative.

We have moved from a Cathedral to a parish church and now moved again to an arts café. We have seen the community grow from four to fifty; then from fifty to twenty and currently from twenty back to fifty. We have experimented with mid-week groups, small groups, groups on Sundays and no groups. We have been involved in running club nights, in mind body spirit fayres, in art exhibitions and a night café. Change is part of our story.

And perhaps, it is this sense of change that sustains us. Sanctus1 has been established for longer than many fresh expressions of church and it seems that as soon as the change stops we being to go stale. Fluidity is kinetic and change involves movement. If a fresh expression is to remain fresh it must keep moving, keep changing, keep evolving.

Each new person that comes to Sanctus1 changes the community; their unique presence brings a new dynamic, a new set of experiences and new areas of wisdom. This 'openness to the wisdom of the new' means that the old is permanently being refreshed.

As I have continued to reflect on the question posed by our Antipodean visitors I have realised that Sanctus1 is always provisional and will always be journeying towards being church. This is particularly emphasised by our geographic location in the City centre of Manchester, and the demographic of this people group, but it is also an ecclesiological stance that says we will never fully arrive. It seems when we think that we have arrived we discover that we are further away than we thought and that we have simply taken one step on our journey.

This context of provisionality raises many questions regarding future vision and planning. How can you have a plan for the future if the present is always provisional? Provisionality can be an empowering place to be, it means that present certainty does not define future dreams, but that future dreams define an uncertain present. An uncertain present creates space for creative thinking and action as we realise that the dreams for the future are, in fact, the dreams of today.

However, within this positive stance to provisionality how do we ensure that the story of Sanctus1 is carried into the future? One way that we think this has been achieved has been through the defining of our values.

The values need to remain provisional so that each person who comes to Sanctus1 feels that they can influence them so that they reflect the current community. Further evidence of our desire to carry the story of Sanctus1 forward is our desire to be structurally recognised through a Bishop's Mission Order, (BMO). A BMO has provisionality built into it – initially a BMO is for five years with the maximum time being ten years – structured provisionality. A certain short-term future and a positive stance to provisionality means that the present becomes an opportunity for missional engagement and connectivity with Christ.

Within this culture of provisionality the story-tellers and the story-carriers become very important as people who carry the narrative of Sanctus1 with them so that when the future is planned it remains consistent with the story of the past. It is often the case that the leader of a community becomes the central story-teller, however a less dependent and mores sustainable way is for the community to become a story-telling community.

When a community shares and lives the story they then they will go on to write the story, to start a new sentence and dream the next chapter. This has happened within Sanctus1 by the leadership being shared between a team of up to five people, with that team being a mix of clergy and laity; male and female. This team aims to be fluid enabling people to commit to it for an appropriate time-period rather than indefinitely. The story-tellers of Sanctus1 are then not only the leadership team but everyone involved in living the story of the community and serving the city centre of Manchester. To carry the story means to carry the centrality of word and sacrament, the affirmative yet critical approach to contemporary culture and mission as being central to our existence. There is of course a provisionality to this all, knowing that we are still journeying, still incomplete, still trying, still becoming church…

Food for Thought

How do you set up a fresh expression of church in an affluent 'commuter' village? Klynn and Susan Alibocus have been helping to lead Food for Thought in Winterslow near Salisbury for the past three years. They're still on a steep learning curve, as they explain.

Changing work commitments saw us move from suburban Kent to a large south Wiltshire village, and that was quite a shock at first. It really was a very different world but we chose Winterslow for many reasons, mainly its busy community life and the fact that it was home to four active churches of different denominations.

At the time, before the term 'fresh expression of church' was commonly known, Winterslow did benefit from having a number of outreach activities going on in the area. Despite that, we still felt there was a gap in bringing the message of Christ to the unchurched and dechurched community in a new and fresh way.

Some years previously we had been involved in setting up The Carpenter's Arms, Sandwich, working with a team experienced in instigating one of the earliest Anglican church plants in Deal and we had a heart to carry this work on.

As an affluent 'commuter' rural village, Winterslow's needs aren't as obvious as those of other places. Setting up a fresh expression of church to make the message of Christ relevant to such a community was therefore somewhat more challenging.

A few of us who went to the parish church of All Saints, Winterslow, started to look at the possibility of creating a more accessible, non-traditional and complementary fresh expression of church in the village.

We came up with some specific ideas after a workshop exercise in which we looked at How To Make The Worst Church Service Ever! In it, we listed all the things that we normally do as part of church that may put someone off if they haven't been to church before. Then we tried to understand those barriers and come up with ways to remove them.

We decided that the new-look church service should involve Welcome, Word, Worship and Witness. Much prayer and planning went into the original proposal. Thankfully our vicar, Revd Nils Bersweden, and the PCC, gave us their blessing and we got the go-ahead to begin a monthly meeting in the village hall.

Food for Thought emphasises good food, short services, plenty for children to do and an informal atmosphere. Many people have found that it's right for them, and we continue to welcome in newcomers who want to find out more about us and more about God.

Many commuters miss out on daily village life. Food for Thought connects people, particularly families, to hear the message of Christ, have fun, eat together and bring back that sense of community.

Using our rural environment to our advantage we regularly go on picnics, nature walks, and so on; often networking with other village organisations such as the Scouts, Brownies, conservation groups and local charities to see how we can support each other. On one occasion we were granted private access to Salisbury Cathedral for a treasure hunt followed by fish and chips in the cloisters. About 60 people came to that.

The Ven Alan Jeans, Archdeacon of Sarum, really helped us to look at where we were going with Food for Thought and why. We looked at questions like: 'Are you really a fresh expression or have you just moved "church" into the village hall?' We also considered: 'How will Food for Thought nurture people into the wider Church?'

We think it very important to keep it truly fresh so we're encouraging leadership potential with different people taking on responsibility for organising services. For the first six months we were pretty much running the whole thing but we didn't want to be seen as the husband and wife double act who do it all. That doesn't help us, or encourage discipleship and the building of community.

We also regularly change the layout of the hall; it sounds quite a small thing to do but it's very effective in staving off complacency about the way a place 'should' look. Varying the activities or location or timings or leaders is all useful in keeping the momentum going.

A survey told us, yes, people like it and we must continue, but we feel there's still so much to do. To say it's been easy and a record of successes would be far from the truth. On the contrary, there have been highs and lows and that learning curve can be very steep. However, we marked our 3rd birthday on 24th January with a Scottish ceilidh – plenty of food, dancing and live music from a piper. There's plenty to celebrate. The Revd Cynthia Buttimer, a team curate at All Saints is tremendously supportive and she joins in as one of the many wonderful Food for Thought volunteers who make it all happen.

Looking back, it's clear to see that when you're willing to take that leap of faith, God will be with you every step of the way. At times it's exciting, frustrating or just plain old hard work, but there's nowhere else we'd rather be.