methodist Archives - Page 4 of 5

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.

Cook@Chapel

A Fresh Expressions vision day inspired teacher Katharine Crowsley to ask a lot of questions about what God wanted her to do in her area. She tells the story of what happened next.

I was interested in fresh expressions of church when I booked for the vision day in Milton Keynes but I had no idea what that would mean in practical terms. That was two years ago; I'm amazed at what has happened since and how things continue to develop.

My church is Hanslope Methodist Chapel in Buckinghamshire; it's very family friendly but I wondered if we were reaching young people – not only our own young people but all those other young people in the wider community? As a secondary school teacher, I feel quite comfortable with that age range and so was happy to consider something specifically for them.

One thing that really stood out for me from that vision day was the story of the 'bread-making church' in Liverpool. For me, it prompted the big questions of, 'What does God want me to do?', 'How is God looking for me to serve my area?'

Somewhere Else was established in a very different geographical and social context to ours with theirs being an inner city church and ours in a very rural area. However, I really liked the idea of praying and worshipping, talking about Jesus when cooking, and then eating a meal together. A lot of teenagers don't want to necessarily sit around and talk to you but many of them will have a conversation while they are doing something else.

As a building, the Hanslope Chapel really lends itself to this initiative. About three years ago, a new kitchen extension was added and the schoolroom totally refurbished. This means we can prepare the food there and eat there too. Perfect!

When I went to the Church Council for their support, they asked me to test it out first. I linked up with a community food worker and we did a six-week trial before I applied for a grant. We drew up different menus and asked if we could do it for those aged 12 (Year 7) to 16. We got the go ahead to run it for the academic year from September to July, and we've just started our second year.

The Methodist Church gave us a fresh expressions grant with our Chapel and local community having to match fund it. The money was found and we got underway. We run Cook@Chapel on Friday evenings for two hours and about 7-9 young people come along, we couldn't accommodate any more than that. Jamie Oliver has fired a lot of interest in cookery among young people but it is our volunteers who have been the experts. I have had to learn a lot myself; it was quite a challenge because I'm not a particularly confident cook! We generally have one main volunteer and a team of two more who will stand in if necessary. The cookery worker has now moved on but is still involved on a consultancy basis.

Young people don't do so much cookery at school now so they tell us what they would like to learn and we do it – things like cheese sauce, chilli con carne, tortillas and lemon drizzle cake. They like all the chopping up and making things, doing things from scratch.

After we've made the food we sit down and eat it together; it's very informal – they really, really like that. They also like to take it in turns to say grace using our grace dice. Conversations around the table and while cooking can be about all sorts of things, a lot depends on who we have got there and also who the volunteers are. Originally I thought I would need young volunteers to link to these young people but I was wrong. The older people have been ideal, they relate to our 'cooks' in a different way and sometimes they can talk to them very much more comfortably about faith issues.

It's fairly equal in terms of male female ratio but there are more boys wanting to join. However they are not allowed to join until Year 7 as we decided that Cook@Chapel should just be for secondary age young people. We don't advertise at all; most of it is word of mouth recommendation.

We did some outreach into the village hall to reach other young people but that didn't work. The only ones who came were those already part of Cook@Chapel so we had to think again about what is right for a particular group of people. Cook@Chapel was building community as a fresh expression of church but we wanted to nurture these young people as they began to explore more of the Christian faith.

The young people who come to Cook@Chapel don't necessarily come to our church, in fact only two to three of them do but questions about faith and spirituality come up quite naturally again and again.

Following up on that I became involved in a youth service called Cross Purposes that takes place every month in nearby town Newport Pagnell, about five miles away. It's a joint Anglican, Methodist, URC and Baptist project at Newport Pagnell United Reformed Church but a lot of its planning and delivery is done by the young people themselves. My vision is to link Cook@Chapel to Cross Purposes – It's not too difficult a leap when it's young people inviting young people to go along and find out more. As we look ahead to 2011 and beyond, we pray that will happen.

The Ruth Project

The Ruth Project, part of the North West Durham Methodist Circuit, has been building community on an estate in South Stanley. Grace Cauldwell became its first project worker in September 2006. She explains how patience is a virtue when it comes to relationship building:

South Stanley is an ex-mining village in County Durham. It has seen some difficult times and I was employed in 2006 to come and live on an estate here. It is a very deprived area with a high rate of unemployment but there is such a very strong sense of community.

I settled in straight away and spent the first 12-18months just getting to know the area, joining in with what was already happening and becoming known in the community centres. My dog Jasper, a black and white labrador pointer cross, was absolutely key at the start of it all because I'd go out for a walk with him and many people would stop to say hello.

As a qualified youth and community worker we did loads of things when I first arrived, most of which were failures! People were asking us to do social things for their families so we started a family evening called Saturday Night Takeaway. After eight months the highest attendance for that was four families. After a while it became clear that when people said they wanted things to do with their kids, what they actually meant was, 'we want things for you to do with the kids so we don't have to'.

After a while, more relationship building, and various other failed 'events' we started something called Friday Fun Factory. At first we got 10 kids, then it was seven, then two, then six. At one point near Christmas we had just one child. When the New Year started, we republicised it – through all the local schools, shops and school assemblies and the children started to come. We visit all the families every week with a fun sheet to tell them what the children were doing as part of the Fun Factory (and with the hope of a prize on it's return!)– and that has been a really good way to get to know people.

We changed venue to another community centre. It was only about 150 yards over the road but that was a major shift in South Stanley because it was like crossing a boundary and some people weren't sure about the kids making that extra journey. We invited the parents to come with them, saying that we'd get the kettle on and give them tea and biscuits.

Since January 2010 we have had six to 12 parents and their friends coming along and they have been getting really involved in what has been going on. It has become a sort of family church with none of the hang-ups they see as being part of traditional church. We worship (without hymns or singing mostly!), have a silly Bible story with a life application, and enjoy a great time together with arty crafty stuff and a lot of games. In the last two or three months the children have started asking to pray. Praying is something we really believe in, but getting them to say prayers out loud in a circle seems very religious- however this has come directly from the children – they do it comfortably and it's something they asked to do! Spirituality in a lot of families has just started to blossom, with people meeting Jesus in very real ways.

Three kids petrified their mum by saying they wanted to be christened to be part of God's family. I offered a service in the community centre and a local minister was happy to come and do it but the mums said no, that the church up the road was 'where you went to be done' and they wanted it done 'properly'. So instead we all went up the hill to the chapel. It was about as informal as church services get, only half an hour, but the families were still a million miles out of their comfort zone. I don't think they will be going to a church building again in a hurry.

My post was originally for five years with promises of continuation funding for 10 but funding is sadly no longer available and I leave this summer. It's incredibly difficult; what's here at the moment is not self-sustaining and it's going to be at the very least another five years before it is. I am hoping we can try and keep something going because a lot of what I do is simply about being here, having a physical presence.

The big plus is that I am not a vicar or a minister, I am just a part of the community and I have never been labelled anything other than Grace. I live in a council house and I get to whinge with everyone else. The most 'religious' description of me in my time here has been, 'This is Grace, she works for the church'.

It's the people I will miss; people like Joe, his wife and daughter. Joe is clearly a man of God but doesn't quite know how to put that into words because he would say a Christian is boring, wears a suit and is rude to people. Raising indigenous leadership is difficult but Joe now volunteers for everything we do. He started coming to us to make our refreshments; he now looks after our registration and acts as 'security man'. Getting him to have the confidence to do that was difficult enough without asking him to take on leadership. You can't expect to raise up a confident and humble leader in a short period of time.

People don't feel empowered to do it. They have always been told, often since they were at school, that they are not clever enough or good enough. The most outspoken people are not usually the best for shepherding a flock, people like Joe are not going to share the Gospel like our local preachers and understand the depth of transition theology but they can share their faith, in a way that makes sense to those around them – but they must be given time to grow and be discipled.

Many people I've come across here do not read often, sometimes they can only read with great difficulty so it's about making discipleship that's right for them. So many resources are too text based, and often speak into a middle class situation, and so providing suitable and relevant teaching and discipleship is not an easy task.

As a minister's daughter I know how to pack my stuff up and move on, I know you just have to let go, but for the people here I am fearful that they will be forgotten. Those of us in the Church need to remember it takes a long time before anything begins to look like a Christian community.

At my last get-together with the kids they didn't know I was leaving. The theme happened to be The Last Supper; we baked bread and then ate it and drank squash together. We talked about Jesus saying goodbye to his friends and the kids were really touched. They were really quiet and had obviously met with God again – something that usually happens when I least expect it.

There were 12 kids there aged 5-11, plus parents and volunteers. I shall miss them but I know that God is bigger than all the ins and outs of church life here, and he will look after them.

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.

Fellowship @ Grannies

A teashop in a former mining town in Nottinghamshire provided the venue for a week night Alpha course. It was so successful that the meetings grew into a brand new church held on Thursday evenings: Fellowship@Grannies.

Members of a local Methodist church in a former mining town just outside Nottingham wanted to repeat their experience of an Alpha course with their non-Christian friends. 'But,' they told their minister, the Revd Andy Fyall, in 2002, 'they won't come to church.' Looking around for an alternative venue, Andy rang the local teashop, Grannies. Owner Louise Beaumont was only too happy to help. A descendant of an Alpha course herself, she had, it turned out, a vision for using her teashop as a place of ministry.

'If you feel led to do something, give it a go,' recommends Andy. 'If God is in it, it will happen.'

The teashop began to open for a new Alpha course on Thursday evenings, a day

originally chosen to fit Fyall’s commitments to his three existing congregations. Adverts were placed in local publications, through doors and in the teashop. Nineteen people came, fourteen of whom stayed for a follow up course, eventually taking part in the support and leadership of successive Alphas.

Out of these has grown Fellowship@Grannies, a new church of 25 people. It meets along the cell group principles of 'welcome, worship, word, witness'. A social time of coffee and cake is followed by modern worship songs and prayer, which is spontaneous and low-key, 'often conversational', says Andy. Bibles are provided so that everyone can follow the reading, page numbers being announced along with chapter and verse. A time of interactive study follows, with a strong emphasis on encouraging members to share their own faith. Outside resources such as Missionary Church, Missionary Journeys by Steven Croft aid this process.

'Tea rooms do not shout faith, but there is something different about them and in the fellowship on Thursdays, there is a welcome and a quiet holiness that is very special,' says Louise.

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.

re:generation

Emma Garrow reports exciting developments at re:generation youth church (2009).

I don't come from a Christian background, I never knew about God… Going to re:generation was a new experience for me. For the first time in a long time I felt accepted… I've recently joined the worship band which has helped me grow in my faith.

I immediately saw that re:generation was different to my previous church. The people here actually wanted to worship God and I was welcomed as if I was a long lost friend.

These are the voices of two teenagers, members of re:generation youth church in Romford, Essex, a church that provides a spiritual home to around 50 young people aged 13 to 21, both churched and unchurched, and with a wide range of cultural styles. At re:generation, young people from diverse backgrounds get along very well.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't happen, but because of their love for Christ these boundaries are crossed over,

says leader, Jamie Poch.

re:generation has grown since its beginnings in 2004 out of a core of 20 young people drawn from a Methodist Circuit of 13 churches. A programme of fun events led to a drama group, a confirmation course, residentials, Bible studies and youth services. Spontaneously, members began to invite their friends and now about a quarter of its members were previously unchurched.

They were excited, because it was meeting their need,

Jamie believes.

So now young people come along and become Christians who've never been to church before. It's quite exciting how it's growing in that way.

Another reason for this growth is the church's key value of friendliness and welcome, and a desire to encourage a sense of belonging to all comers, 'whether Christian or not'.

A welcome team rota, 'Be a Blessing', involves all the members in this ministry. A shortage of adult helpers when Jamie and his wife, Ruth, were setting up the youth church bred a necessity which has proved a blessing in itself. The young people had to get involved in practical ways such as administration, setting up and clearing away, leading small groups.

It made sense,

says Jamie.

Because they're doing it, they're owning it, which is a wonderful thing. They're the ones on the door.

The church meets in a dedicated space in one of the Circuit churches and has several meetings through the week, including a main Sunday evening service. Members are in 'PODS', which encourage friendship and discipleship.

Within the last year, a few adults have started attending, including some parents, something which Jamie views as an opportunity.

It could be rather exciting to see how to deal with the interested parents,

he reflects.

We could have a youth congregation planting an adult congregation.

We're always looking to the future and saying, "Okay, God, now what?" It evolves and we don't necessarily know what it's going to be and that's an adventure.

Sacred

After many years of working in the area, Greenwich United Church (United Reformed and Methodist) has started a fresh expression of church on the Greenwich Peninsula. SACRED explores the sacred in body, mind, heart and spirit. Revd Martyn Coe explains more.

This area is experiencing rapid change and will continue to do so in the run-up to the Olympics in two years' time. There's no doubt that London 2012 will have a major impact on the lives of those who live and work here, and all of the churches are beginning to look at how we might respond to those challenges. SACRED is part of that thinking, though our concern is very much for the here and now as well as what is to come. We want to be seen to be available to those around us and be part of the community today. That has to be better than trying to play catch-up with an expected influx of 20,000 people to the Peninsula over the next decade or so.

We meet in Millennium Primary School on Wednesday nights for about an hour-and-a-half and have a four weekly pattern encompassing worship, reflection, thinking creativity and symbolic action. We look at Heart – looking inside ourselves; Body – worship reflecting on the whole body of Christ throughout the world; Spirit – communion influenced by the Iona Community and Head – using a DVD study course to explore faith.

We believe this monthly cycle gives us a consistency of presence and the chance to expand our horizons and get to know one another. Things are set to change again soon because, despite the economic slowdown, building work is continuing and a new multi-faith centre will go up quite close to the O2 Arena over the next couple of months.

There is undoubtedly pressure on developers to keep to that deadline – otherwise it will still be 3,000 parking spaces by 2012. That wouldn’t look too good with the world's cameras trained on London!

During Lent we are working alongside an Anglican church which meets in the same school on Sundays and we use the Living Questions DVD to explore faith issues. For our theology and ecclesiology, the course works very well as it comes from our more radical liberal background.

We are looking to welcome to people when they move into the area, a sort of drop-in facility. As part of that we are in talks with the local authority and the Scout District about starting Beavers and Cubs to meet immediately before SACRED.

One of our challenges as a fresh expression of church is for us to become sustainable in funds and resources over a period. At the moment, SACRED is part funded by the southern synod of The United Reformed Church and I work alongside Deacon Jane Rice, and Alison Adam who used to be with the Wild Goose community.

Models of church and ways of reaching people have changed dramatically in recent times. In this area, for instance, it's very concierge-driven in that you can't easily do leafleting any more because you can no longer just walk into buildings and put a leaflet through someone's letterbox.

We also need to be aware that in many of these new developments what looks like public space may not be public space at all. I may think I'm on public property because it's an open, green area but I could be asked to leave it because I am actually on private land.

It is helpful that I am part of a multi-faith chaplaincy in the area. We visit businesses and developments, and my 'patch' includes ASDA and a number of restaurants in the O2 Arena. I also have a Health and Safety certificate so I can legally go onto building sites to speak to people.

I'm not sure if we will move SACRED down to the multi-faith centre when it opens. It will be handy to the O2 but not close to where people live. It's more in the commercial district.

We are talking about offering daily prayer there in the middle of the day. Everyone involved is hoping that it will work together but we have been very, very clear that what we are doing is a multi faith activity rather than an inter faith activity. We are people of faith working alongside each other for the common good.

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…

Wolverhampton Pioneer Ministries

Richard Moy, ordained pioneer minister explains how church is forming amongst those who have never been involved before, through Wolverhampton Pioneer Ministries.

When the Methodist and Anglican churches in Wolverhampton realised there were 23,000 people involved in the 'night-time' economy of the city, most of whom had no Christian commitment, they decided to do something about it. Richard Moy was appointed to start to form church with those who often only came into the city to bars and clubs after 10pm. The first thing he did was go to a monastery – to pray hard! Then he visited St Thomas' Crookes Church in Sheffield to find out about their 'Life Shapes' program and that visit was followed by 40 days of prayer and fasting.

A small team of three gathered to pray every week in a local church and then gradually others joined in. After a year they began to gather in a café location in the centre of town and now a pool of about 50 people meets regularly for Sunday evening worship. On any one occasion 30 or so will gather together. Church 18-30 has been born.

Richard is particularly pleased at the mixed nature of this new missional community. The age range is about 16-32 but members come from all sorts of backgrounds. Some are graduates, others come from 'very difficult backgrounds in terms of education'. Some are unemployed and others are destitute.

Early on Richard decided that one size would not fit all. Based on differing learning styles, this fresh expression of church offers deliberately varied learning and worship opportunities. There's a gathering for 'reflectors' which has a real sense of the 'spiritual'. Another event is aimed at 'theorists' and encourages those who attend to think why they believe what they believe. A third gathering has a contemporary worship style and a fourth is based on food and sharing communion together.

But Richard's eyes light up when he mentions 'Man Night'. Every Monday a group of men meet to share a simple form of communion, watch a DVD or get to work on a Playstation! This is church literally out of the box! 10-15 attend regularly and Richard is seeing real discipleship growth amongst the group.

Richard believes the venue is vital. There's a weekly midday meeting in McDonalds – an opportunity to share Bible, burgers and fries! Yates' Wine Lodge provides another meeting place, along with a city centre church café. Recently Wolverhampton Pioneer Ministries has acquired a flat and that is slowly becoming a centre of ministry for the church.

And Richard believes what he is doing really is church. They operate as church – with regular worship, gathering around word and sacrament. People have been baptised as a result of joining Church 18-30 and mission is very much at the heart of things. If you see a couple of people sitting on a sofa in the middle of Wolverhampton, it is likely to be members of the church sharing their faith or offering to pray for passers by. And in a network church, 'some bits of the church will only last for a season and some bits will last forever', says Richard and that's OK.

Wolverhampton Pioneer Ministries grew out of local Christians' concern for those who had no connection with church. It's still growing and Richard Moy is very open to what surprising things God might have in store for the future.

I love going to Church 18-30's Vitalise service because it does what it says on the tin. It really revitalised my relationship with God through John's Gospel and smoothies.

Katie, 18

I went to Church 18-30 because my faith was at a really low point and needed strengthening. Church 18-30 helped me to rediscover my faith and strengthen my relationship with God having fun along the way with the most amazing people!!!

Helen, 22