pub Archives - Page 2 of 3

Ashburton Methodist Church

Rev Kevin Hooke, of Ashburton Methodist Church, Devon, tells how a District Review and involvement in msm helped to change the church's approach to mission – and its impact on the wider community.

As a part of the whole Christian Church our aim at Ashburton is to respond to the Gospel of God's love in Christ and to live out our discipleship in worship and mission.

We always wanted to share the riches of our faith by working through Teignbridge Circuit in partnership with other local churches and a wide range of organisations in the community.

The church is on a large central site with great potential for development in service of the community but there are practical considerations… it is a listed building within Dartmoor National Park and is in need of repair and modernisation. Work on the exterior has been started and architect's drawings have been done on adaptations to the interior to meet modern-day requirements. Major fundraising will be required before any developments can take place.

We attract a congregation of around 30, about 50% of whom are in a more elderly age group with the rest tending to be people ranging from 45 to 65. We got to a point where we knew the church needed to be doing things differently but as half of our congregation didn't have a huge amount of time because of work commitments, we didn't quite know how that was to be achieved.

We invited the (Plymouth and Exeter) District to come and do a Review with us in 2008. One result of this saw 11 members of the church deciding to go on the Pioneer Disciple Course – the specially tailored mission shaped ministry course for this area – during the following year.

The Pioneer Disciple experience proved to be a great benefit for us in that it emerged as a church leadership course because the thoughts of all our folk taking part were stimulated collectively. It was permission-giving as well in that it was deemed OK to take risks and try things. If they didn't work out it wasn't necessarily a failure.

To develop further work within the town, we also employed Youth and Community Worker Martin Parkes whom we share 50:50 with Ipplepen Methodist Church. One of the things we asked Martin to do was develop opportunities for working ecumenically. During One World Week 2010 he put together a whole programme of activities, including a film night and shared prayer space with the Quakers. A particularly popular evening started off as a social and talk on a topic associated with One World Week in a local pub. This was followed by 'sacred jam' at the church: somebody interested in music asked if they could have a 'sacred jam' session by playing some gentle music in an event at the chapel. They had a group of musicians playing and – at the end – some Celtic prayers were said. Quite a few people came in to that. We are now wondering if we might try something similar on a more regular basis.

Many different things came out of the whole mix of the District Review, Pioneer Disciple course and the period of thinking it through, but we didn't know exactly what God was calling us to do. Of course it's a challenge when there is a change in the air – if you ask 30 people as to what they would like to see developing, you will get 30 different ideas! However, it's wonderful to see people having those ideas and wondering about what will work in our context.

One or two people came to join us around that time and lots of ideas were then coming to the fore: film evenings, a puppet ministry, book club. People would say, 'This is my particular area of interest, can I try it?' Each time I just said, 'Have a go. If nothing else it will give you experience and confidence. Nothing ventured, nothing gained – and see where God leads us.'

Regular activities now include daily prayers from 7.45 to 8.30am, a Christian meditation group and a fortnightly Church Community group time for puddings, prayers and discussion. It's wonderful to follow on from the sense of community built up through the course and maintain that momentum by meeting together so regularly to discuss where we go from here.

Visiting preachers sometimes say there is more of a buzz about the church and there's no doubt that people are looking forward now with anticipation. It feels as if we are at a very early stage but it's a good place to be as we seek to use our interests for the glory of God and serve those around us.

Moot

The Moot monastic community (featured on expressions: the dvd – 2) offers hospitality and welcome in the heart of the City of London to 'questers' or 'spiritual seekers'. Vanessa Elston, one of the community's core team responsible for developing mission and evangelism, describes its work.

As a monastic community we are seeking to deepen the ways we encounter God, ourselves and others in community, spiritual formation and mission.

Our worship draws deeply on the sacramental and contemplative traditions, bringing together the ancient-future dimensions of the faith. We aspire to a common rhythm of life that expresses our commitment to living sustainably, holistically and justly. We also explore spiritual practices, postures and virtues as means to the transformation and inner liberation required to live out our Christian vocation.

Hospitality and welcome are part of our rhythm of life; they represent a significant strand in the monastic tradition and have a long biblical and Christian tradition of practice that best describes how we are called to engage with the 'other', our 'neighbour', the 'stranger' – particularly those who may lack resources to support themselves.

Through our presence in the City, we regularly meet those who are increasingly dissatisfied with the assumptions and lifestyle offered by secular modernity. Many are looking for resources to support their quest for meaning, spiritual experience and practice but are not turning to the traditional church to do this. Our society is increasingly post secular and open to exploring the spiritual dimension of life but the Church has been slow to effectively engage with this shift in the culture. As a result we have been experimenting with two forms of welcome and hospitality on offer to those who are looking for more to their lives, but are resistant to traditional forms of church and evangelism.

On Wednesday evenings at St Mary Woolnoth's Church, opposite Bank Tube station and the Bank of England, you will see banners on the railing offering 'Free Meditation' to those who are 'stressed in the city'. Inside the church a group of 15-20 people meets every week to be led through a series of relaxation exercises into a 20 minute silent meditation, following the sacred word approach of the Benedictine Monk John Main. We are encouraged not to worry if our minds seem to leap about like monkeys at first, but to keep drawing ourselves back to our 'anchor word' or 'image'.

This method is to help us still our minds, so that we can begin to get beyond the surface clutter and distraction that prevents us from encountering ourselves at a deeper level and going beyond ourselves to encounter the divine. After the meditation we reflect on how our stress levels have, or have not, been lowered and there is an opportunity to share thoughts, reflections and questions on the process. In this way, those who are spiritual questers experience stillness and transformation. As a result some become regular visitors who are now in a process of opening up to Christian spirituality.

Twice a month on a Wednesday evening, in a large pub near St Mary’s, city workers share a drink or meal while a group of people meet in a back room for what we call a ‘Serum discussion’ based on one of the bigger questions around life, God and spirituality. The group starts with an icebreaker in which everyone introduces themselves and then there is a short 3 to 5 minute thought-provoking discussion starter which ends with a question.

We then split up into smaller groups where the conversation is facilitated so that everyone participates on the same level, feels listened to and respected. The ground rules of Serum are explained so that the goal is not 'to win the argument', or 'get the right answer to the question' but is about mutual learning. If you listened in to one of these groups you would become aware how this approach can take the discussion beyond an intellectual debate about ideas into something far more personal involving heartfelt searching and consideration. It is amazing how honest and open people can be with others they have never met before.

You would also notice how this approach works best when the Christian presence and voice is in the minority and how people find it much easier to listen when they no longer feel threatened by an atmosphere of dominance or control. A trainee ordinand described Serum as ‘unique in his experience’ in that the church was hosting an event where it was not asking people to move towards it but providing a genuine space of mutual encounter and dialogue.

In these ways Moot is seeking to engage with those who may be a long way from traditional forms of church but are searching for ultimate reality through spiritual experience and finding safe spaces where beliefs and perceptions can be explored and discussed in a non-threatening and non-argumentative environment. The meditation group has been meeting for over a year while the Serum discussion groups are a newer venture – both are attended by a majority of non-Mooters.

One of the challenges of living in a big city is sustaining and growing community and Moot is no different in this respect. We have big ambitions for a small community and are looking for new participants to help us develop our programme of spiritual and missional events in the heart of the City of London.

Boring Wells

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ Church Brighton

Christ Church Brighton is a fresh expression of church in Brighton, established in 2005 under an initiative from the Bishop of Chichester. Meeting in pubs, cafés and a school every Sunday morning, Christ Church is a community of a dozen nationalities, from 1 to 85 in age, with a wide of backgrounds – very much reflecting the makeup of Brighton.

XY Church

Ben Norton, who appears on the Fresh Expressions DVD, on the edge, traces the history of XY lads' church in Bridlington.

The idea started back in September 2007 when I was thinking about what it meant to be an ordained pioneer minster and how that was going to work out in Bridlington. So I made lots of contacts with people in the town – but most of them seemed to be with blokes my age. So I began looking into how we could begin to reach them with the gospel.

I met with two other guys in my church to think about creating some events. The first event we had was a curry night at the church, which was really well attended. The month later we held a pizza night, again in the church. The atmosphere was laid back and relaxed and the idea was just to get to know the guys better. We continued to run events like, paint-balling and we also had a meat and beer night.

The momentum quickly grew and we had about 20 lads that we got to know really well. We began thinking about how we could develop the relationships and how we could engage with the gospel. We came up with the idea of meeting weekly in a pub and having a discussion based around the Bible.

So I began printing off a flier with some Scripture and some questions. The idea and the structure of the night worked well and we soon got a small group of five or six lads every week. But we began to find that starting the conversation with Scripture put some people off.

So we changed the format to picking an item from the news and basing the discussion around that with some faith-based questions and relevant Scriptures. This has worked really well. And, a few months in, we had a core of about ten lads who came every week, and about 30 who came to our events.

Over the last 18 months we have continued to make contact with more lads and things are going well. 'Where next?' is the huge question that we are looking at and praying about. I would love to see us develop into our own church that has a Eucharistic focus. But how we get there is another question! However, it is a hugely exciting part of the journey.

The most compelling thing about all we are doing is that we are meeting men who are interested in the issues we look at from a faith perspective, and how this changes their world view. One guy who came recently said: 'I don't do religion but this is really good!'.

I believe very strongly that as the church we need to go and meet people exactly where they are at, and allow them to see that we value their thoughts and ideas. We want to live a life that says: 'Have you thought about life the way that Jesus did?'

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

Presence

Beer and a singalong helped to launch Leicester-based Presence as a Bishop's Mission Order. City Centre Pioneer Minister and Presence leader, Revd David Cundill, looks back at a whirlwind year and outlines his hopes and plans for the future.

It all happened very quickly. I started in post at the end of May 2009, discussions took place over the summer to sort out the BMO, and it was signed in December at a Beer&Carols event. We certainly reaped the benefits of the hard work that other BMOs had done before us in Exeter and Thanet.

Bishop Tim Stevens started the ball rolling when he gave me a brief to 'just go and plant a new church in the city centre. I give you permission to fail; you have got to take risks.'

That church was to be in an area of new apartments, waterside redevelopment, and the DeMontfort University campus. The result is Presence… a fresh approach to church. We describe it as a church for people who don't do church or go there, never did, don't anymore, don't think they fit in, doubters, sceptics, seekers and the spiritually curious.

In the middle of the BMO area is The Quay, a canal side pub which was itself part of a regeneration project a few years ago. It is now the base for Presence's midweek meetings, and some of those at Presence have become regulars at the pub’s open mic session on Thursday nights.

My first task is to develop a 24-strong planting team to reach out to the area's diverse communities; including those based around a series of tower blocks in gated developments at Freemens Meadow, Westbridge Wharf and Leicester Square.

These new blocks are in stark contrast to the area's traditional terraced streets. Each tower block looks in on a quadrangle, and you have to get through two gates to get into the heart of it all. There are no community facilities. When you look at the ads for these apartments you'd think that we had so many stockbrokers just about to nip on their bikes to Canary Wharf – and yet the development stands at the edge of the country's biggest Hindu population, but you’d never know that from the marketing image portrayed.

The regeneration of great swathes of the city means that new communities have become cut off from parish churches because the landscape has shifted, but by starting a fresh expression alongside those churches, we can redefine a pastoral boundary. It has just worked brilliantly in that it's possible to run a straight mixed economy which lets the existing parishes do what they do while we look at how we use these places in new and creative ways.

In other areas people may say, 'we are all in this together', but underneath the surface they are worried. In Leicester I believe it has worked – and, with God’s help will continue to work because of the unique circumstances surrounding redevelopment of this city.

This is a minimum 10 year project, and part of the challenge is that the landscape will continue to change dramatically during that time. Large brownfield sites in our area are set aside for new developments but are yet to be built on, so we need to be flexible in our approach and planning.

But some of our plans are very firmly in the pipeline, including the launch of a film club in the Highcross area; the setting up of a Christians Against Poverty (CAP) centre and money management course; and a term time Street Pastors scheme around DeMontfort University.

We also very much hope to be involved at The Quay on St Patrick's Day. There are lots of possibilities but we might look at having a religious 'bit' followed by Open Communion using Naan bread – reflecting the type of area we're in. We want to reclaim these celebrations for God, and show that we're a church of festival and fun.

Sunday Sanctuary

Moving out of a church building into a tower block may not be everyone's idea of progress but The Sunday Sanctuary in Portsmouth is proving to be a hit with newcomers to this fresh expression of church.

Revd Mark Rodel, Portsmouth's city centre pioneer minister and associate priest at St Luke's Somerstown, Southsea, led the way when the 20-strong congregation set up base at Wilmcote House to encourage newcomers. And encourage them they did. In the first month, 24 extra people came to get-togethers at the 11-storey high-rise. Mark is encouraged but aware of the challenges ahead.

This is about taking seriously the call to be where people already are, rather than expecting them to come to us. We often expect people to cross the threshold of our churches and immediately start singing or speaking words that they don't yet believe or understand. Our gathering is much more conversation-based.

We don't always judge our success or failure on the basis of numbers, as the quality of relationships is also important. But I'm very encouraged; we moved locations specifically to encourage local people to join us, and they have. Several of them have been more than once. And the people we're meeting seem to be genuinely open to what it is that we're doing.

In fact, we had thought people might pop in and out for just a few minutes of our morning get-togethers. In fact, many of them have stayed for the entire morning.

We had a trial run at Wilmcote House on four successive Sundays earlier in the year. As a result of that, one family – who live in Wilmcote House – decided to join us. At Christmas we had the Wilmcote House Nativity. All ages were welcome and children had the chance to dress as an angel or shepherd to hear the Christmas story, enjoy a free breakfast and take part in some craft sessions.

Our vision is to be a mission community that plants congregations, and ultimately we'd like to see a network of small, local congregations in this area. In the meantime, this is a massive step and there is excitement and trepidation. We recognise that it's a risk, but we think it's a risk worth taking.

Worship is continuing at St Luke's church building from Monday to Saturday, and the venue is still being used by community groups. There are lots of other things going on in the area too. Across Portsmouth diocese, there are multi-media 'Blessed' Eucharists at St Thomas's Church, Elson, in Gosport; Messy Church at St Wilfrid's Church, Cowplain; meditative alternative worship called 'Ethos' at St Nicholas Church, North End; and a Café Church will launch in Waterlooville's Costa Coffee from January 2010.

I have also started a new thing on Sunday nights when I offer a chance for 'spiritual-but-not-religious' people to meet up at a local pub to talk about faith, spirituality and life over beer.

Weatherspoon's kindly set aside a table for me at the Isambard Kingdom Brunel pub from 8pm-10pm. The evenings are called 'Sanctuary' and are publicised as 'spirited conversation and skinny ritual'.

It isn't a church in a pub. There's no worship or preaching involved. It's just a chance for people who would feel uncomfortable in church to talk and think a bit more deeply about what they do believe. My aim isn't to get them into church, but simply to give them space to explore these issues. So far I've chosen some fairly broad discussion topics, like life after death, or what things we might regret.

Zac’s Place

Alicia Baker visit's Zac's Place for a 'gloves-off bible study' in Swansea, South Wales.

Zac’s Place began in the late 1990's when Sean Stillman moved to South Wales and conducted a couple of funerals for members of motorcycle clubs, who in turn began to ask very deep questions and wanted to know more about God, but couldn’t see how mainstream church was relevant to them.

So Sean booked a function room in a local bar every Sunday night to answer some of these questions and many came including bikers, musicians and those on the fringes of society – the vast majority of which, had very little church connection what so ever. The gatherings aimed to provide opportunity for expression of and enquiry into the Christian faith in a relaxed pub environment. The format consisted of quality live music and other performance art and straight talking in languages and images that relate at street level.

Over the next 7 years, somewhere in the region of 300 events took place, using dozens of musicians, storytellers and artists, and a significant number of people benefited from the community that surrounded them. Some folk were encouraged in their recovery from addictions, working alongside local and national agencies. Others, whose faith had been battered by negative church experience, had their wounds tended. Still more found a level of communication they could relate and respond to, to see their Christian faith develop. Some people have stuck around, for many it was an important staging post, others were travellers passing through.

Zac’s Place now continues to meet in their own venue in The Gospel Hall in George Street, Swansea. As people have grown and matured in their walk following Jesus, this community of faith has emerged into being a church – a church for ragamuffins. The venue is used by different groups throughout the week including offering a daily breakfast for the street homeless, a weekly bible study and an evening soup kitchen.

"It’s just a real mixture of people. Quite a few people are on methodone, but they still get involved, they still get chatting. Being on drugs doesn't stop you having a faith, doesn't stop you believing – it just means that you are caught in a trap", says Martin from the Rhonda.

So how does Sean imagine that Zac’s Place may develop over the next decade?

"I would hope to think that Zac's place would still be here as a community of faith and still on the side of the poor and oppressed. I hope we will have trained people to share some of the burdens and responsibilities. I'm a 'first one over the trenches' kind of person, so I don't think I'm a very good maintainer in the long term. But I'm certainly in it for the long haul with all it's pitfalls and rewards."

"The work going forward at Zac's Place is in every way innovative, courageous and important for the community in general as well as the Christian community. I have been privileged to watch the development of this initiative over several years and would want to pay the most sincere tribute to the dedication and vision of those who have been running it."

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, October 2005

Ordained pioneer ministry in Rochester

Rob Ryan, an Ordained Pioneer Minister, starts out building a fresh expression of church in Rochester.

On September 6th I was ordained in Rochester Cathedral. I have an elaborate job title of 'Pioneer Curate'. I am the curate on the staff of the cathedral and I am being trained in everything that a Church of England curate needs to be trained in – such as learning how to deacon at the Eucharist, process, preaching, funerals, baptisms and so on. For some Anglicans that would be normal stuff, but coming from my 'low church' background of St. Mark's Gillingham alongside around 14 years of working with Youth for Christ it was quite a culture shock. Despite the shock, this part of my role is very well structured and so ticks along quite nicely.

As an ordained pioneer minister my remit is to connect with people in the community in various locations with the hope that within 4 years, which is the maximum possible length of my curacy, we will have developed a new expression of church, a new missional community. Although this is an exciting opportunity, and one I grabbed with both hands eagerly, none of us really knew how to go about doing this as we were looking to start from scratch. A number of fresh expressions seem to start by using a group of Christians to plant something new in a new area. Although I see merit in that approach I felt God was calling me to do something different in order to reach the unchurched of this area and build some form of fresh expression of church.

A dream

I have had a dream for a good few years; a dream of connecting with people who long, maybe are even too scared to dream, of church being a place which really connects with people outside, but also with themselves. People who dream of a church where differences are celebrated, where diversity adds to the community's flavour. They are not worried so much about what people believe, but more concerned about how people believe: how they live out faith, how they are Christ-like. People who don't care so much about worship style, but rather, are interested in something that's authentic and enables them to connect with God where they are emotionally and spiritually.

Such people really do believe Christianity is a journey, and that we can all exist at different points on the road, or even off it, with no fear of condemnation. They long for a community that does not judge a person by how they look, sound or by what they believe. They want to see a community that loves and has people at its heart rather than a programme that must be delivered. They believe a community should be one that meets throughout the week to enjoy relationship with each other and with God, which is not restricted to any one day or meeting. They are willing to pay the cost that comes with developing relationships and want to see this as a place where people belong because they are connected and on the journey, not a place where they can only belong if they turn up at a particular time, day and place. They want to see a community that really believes in mission, that not only welcomes the stranger, but expects and allows the community to change due to what that new person brings with them. They believe church is about participation and engagement of the majority, rather than being consumerist and led by a few specialists. They are tired of being told the same stuff and want to discover together how to live Christian spirituality in their world! They long for their experience of church to inform their experience of the world and vice versa.

Forming a team

I felt strongly that, first, God was calling me to gather a group of people, with the above dream in mind, who wanted to explore their relationship with Jesus Christ and consider how they could authentically live as Christians in a 21st century world. As I prayed I felt God challenging me to put aside all ideas and plans that I had conceived, and to search for interested people where God led. It became clear to me that if I had a blueprint then I would be at risk of merely finding people to fit the gaps in my blueprint. The very thought leaves me feeling uncomfortable as that approach lacks an integrity which is core to building genuine relationships. It seemed right to me that it was more about being open to people that I came into contact with, and listening to their needs, discerning what God might call be to do in response, in loving action. God was calling me to listen and get to know unchurched people, without jumping in too soon with some form of responsive action.

To help with providing some focus, we had already decided that I should concentrate on the Rochester High Street area and on a local leisure centre to spend time on. In the weeks leading up to my ordination I gave this quite a bit of prayerful thought. I believed I was called to be ordained to do this role, to develop something from new from scratch, but was concerned with how this was actually going to work out in practice. My big question was 'what am I going to do all day?' I knew this was going to be an issue for me. My diary with YFC was packed weeks in advance and seeing an empty diary for all the months from September onwards did cause a slight panic.

Prayer, places and presence

Prayer is essential to all of this. Before doing anything I recruited a team of people who were happy to receive my weekly 'diary' via email and pray for whatever I hoped to be doing. Through this email I shared stories, struggles and prayer requests and I am confident that this group of 30 people are regularly praying for me. It's massively encouraging when one of them phones up to ask me how something went or passes on something that they feel God may be saying into a particular situation.

I spent the first four weeks prayerfully walking around the High Street and asking God to make it clear to me where I should 'hang out'. All the time I wore my dog collar on these wanderings. We thought about this a lot and felt that if I was going to build relationships of integrity with people, then the wearing of my 'uniform' helped that. We felt that not to wear my 'uniform' would have been wrong. The collar has certainly given opportunities, as well as attracted antagonism.

I prayed to be led to people and places of peace, to areas where I could interact with people on their terms, conscious that I had no right or purpose to be there, and was in fact a guest in those locations. During these early weeks I visited nearly every shop in the High Street and had a mixed reception. I have got to know some people better than others. After some time I felt strongly that God was saying I should spend time in a local Wetherspoons pub and a local sports centre.

More recently God seems to have pointed me to a newly opened coffee shop as well where I have been welcomed by the owner and can be found during the afternoon. I aim to be a presence in these locations as much as I can and visit them on a near daily basis. On good advice from others, I have also used these locations for any meetings that I have had to have rather than using a room at the cathedral or an office somewhere. This means that I can be a presence in these places in a variety of ways.

I am following the process that is known well to those that have been on Fresh Expression training days. I have started by gaining prayer and support while I look for connections in the community. While making those connections by being present I have been trying to listen to God and follow God's call as he leads me within the community. I am now asking myself 'what does loving service look like here?' As I seek to answer that question and act upon it I believe that we will start to see community developing from which we can start to explore the things of God.

A typical day

So, in short that is what I do with most of my time. A typical day in the life of this pioneer curate starts at 8am with morning prayer in the cathedral. At 8.30 I will venture outside and do a prayer walk around the High Street. This is a good time as people are wandering to work and shops do not really open in Rochester until about 10am. At 9ish I will return to the office to do a variety of things from reading, writing, reflecting and general admin and planning stuff.

Mid morning I will drift back to the cathedral to spend time in prayer before slowly walking along the High Street to Wetherspoons where I am normally seated with a coffee from about 10.45. I sit, I listen and wait to see what happens. After lunch I will then move to the local leisure centre, use the gym, sit in the sauna, which is often a hotbed of discussion, and hang around in the coffee bar area and again wait to see what happens. I then return to the cathedral a couple of times a week to end the day with Choral Evensong. I find topping and tailing my day with the cathedral helps to keep me rooted and feel connected with the wider Christian community.

This connection with the wider Christian community is vital to me. Having a role where I hang out in a pub, a coffee shop and a gym sounds like the ideal job. In many ways for me it is. It is also very lonely and a lot of the time I seriously ask myself and God what I am doing in this place. It's hard to describe what it is like to constantly be returning to the same places over and over again just to 'be' there. A lot of the time I am 'just there'. Days can go by where I do not have a conversation with anyone and sometimes I even wonder if I have become invisible. When everyone else, particularly colleagues at the cathedral, seem to be rushing around you can feel very guilty when your role is to just be in places.

Struggles and doubts

In the earlier days I struggled quite significantly with issues of identity and achievement. To sit day after day in the same place and be on the receiving end of a variety of reactions has been very uncomfortable on occasions. I have had very strong negative reactions along with threats of violence as well as warm welcoming reactions from a variety of people, some who have asked me to pray for situations in their lives. The stress of the day arises from really never knowing what is going to happen and, I guess, fear of missing an opportunity.

Three months into this, my wife asked me 'what have you done today?' A perfectly innocent question asked in many homes at the end of the working day, but one which caused some turmoil for me. I did not know what to answer. I don't know whether this is a man thing – but I needed to feel a sense of achievement at the end of the day. I loved my lists on which I could tick off completed tasks.

I asked the same questions over and over again. What had I done? What was I achieving? What difference was I making? What did I have to show after a day at work? After 3 months of sitting in the same place day after day after day I knew the name of 2 people – and they were both Christians attending church twice a week! That was a time when I seriously wondered whether I had got this all wrong and whether I should have really stayed with YFC.

Because of this feeling of inadequacy and wondering of 'why' there has been a real and strong temptation to try and rush things and force God's hand by setting up stuff, or putting on some event to invite people to. Building community takes time. It is not about planning a worship experience, or putting on some event to invite people to. I'm convinced what is needed is time for people, time to love people, time to serve people. From that time then organic community will develop. It will be very slow, but it will be authentic if we really want to focus on the unchurched.

This waiting and feeling of isolation is really quite key to what God is trying to do through my pioneering ministry. Waiting is a theme that carries through so much of scripture with the wait of Advent, Lent, the 40 years in the desert and, as I write on Ascension day, the wait between Jesus exalted and the church empowered at Pentecost. God works in us in our waiting, and I have needed to learn more about what it is to wait for God. If I was asked to give advice ever I think it would be 'wait… don't succumb to the pressure to produce something too quickly. Wait on God and go with God'.

During my waiting there have been some interesting and exciting moments that I would have missed if I did not take the time to wait.

Encounters

I remember one Tuesday morning in October which I had planned to use to pray in the cathedral rather than go out. I felt God say that I should go to Wetherspoons although it was only 10.00am. I did and met an older married couple who I have been having conversations with on a weekly basis. This was my first real connection with anyone in the community. This encounter had a profound experience on how I managed my day as until then I had been visiting the pub at lunchtime and later. I now go in the mornings and have found this is the time when people like to chat and have the time to as well.

I visit a local sports centre in the afternoon and have been amazed at some of the conversations that I have had with men in the sauna. One guy asked me to pray for a smoothing out of the relationship between himself and his father. He then told me he had been plucking up the courage to speak to me for 3 weeks. He has since asked to be 'kept informed' of any 'new church' that I may be involved in.

While sat in the pub one morning a man was leaving, noticed me and seemed to aggressively walk towards me. As I braced myself for a torrent of abuse he knelt next to me and cried for nearly 10 minutes. When he was ready to talk we spoke about stuff that was going on in his life and I was able to pray with him.

Being a constant presence in these places is allowing some people to trust me with parts of their lives. It seems that my role here is a 3-fold one of pastor, pioneer and prophet. Pastor as I seek to support and love these people, pioneer as I look to engage in new ways and prophet as I seek to imagine what God's kingdom could look like in this place.

Alongside connecting with the 'unchurched', while waiting I have come into contact with a group of 'de-churched' people; it is probably more accurate to say that they have found me. These people are interested in a relationship with Jesus Christ but have been hurt by or rejected inherited church and most have not attended a church in over a year. I have met or come across these people in a variety of ways and we are now starting to gather monthly to investigate faith. The gathering starts with people sharing how their week has gone. The model revolves around discussing something from the bible (we have started by looking at the names of Jesus in John's Gospel), worship (which individuals/families plan and bring to the gathering), prayer and eating together. It is very early days as we have only had two gatherings but it is an exciting progression.

Looking forward

I have no idea where this is going, and neither (I think) do the people that are part of this. We are simply agreeing to journey together and, again, to wait and see what God does with us. How, or whether, this links with people I meet each day in the community I do not know; I hope so – but that really is not up to me or any of us. We will simply have to wait and see what God does. In time, I am sure this will build a community of unchurched and dechurched people through a truly incarnational form of missional church.

Rob Ryan, Ordained Pioneer Minister, Rochester Cathedral.