mixed sunday

The blog has been quiet for a while. The reason has been that I have been feeling pretty wordless since Monday and, in time, I will share this but it is not right to do so at the moment.

Last Sunday (am I really that far behind!) was a pretty good day. The day started by taking up a great opportunity to preach St. Augustines, a parish church (which happens to be the parish I live in), in which I have known some people for a little while. It was good to catch up with people and I seemed to get positive comments from my sermon, which got some people asking questions – which is always my aim when I preach! I came away thinking this is a great parish church looking at ways in which it can engage well with it’s community.

In the afternoon we had the first gathering of 2012. I guess we are developing a way of working or ‘tradition’; and it seems to be a developing tradition that at the start of the year we do ‘the journey’ which I have blogged a lot about elsewhere.

The journey gives us a safe opportunity to consider where we are with God and where other members of the community are. It reminds us that the Christian life is a journey of good and bad, of joy and sadness, of cruising and battling. It reminds us that all of these stages are valid, all are necessary, and so all are ‘right’ places to be in in their season. Most importantly, it reminds us, and shows the younger members of our community, that Christianity is real and we don’t need to pretend it is easy. It shows that having difficulties and questioning God are not signs of ‘back-sliding’ but are actually signs of discipleship being taken seriously.

Last Sunday – two totally different gatherings, but both rooted in prayer, faith and worship of the Creator God. That inclusiveness and commitment to engaging with a theological diversity is one of the things I love about the Church of England!

1000 fresh expressions …

The latest survey on attendance has, for the first time, researched Fresh Expressions and the news is both exciting and encouraging. This paragraph from the report quoted on the Fresh Expressions website show that the bold step a few years to try something different os starting to make a difference:

The first ever statistical analysis of fresh expressions of church has concluded that there are at least 1,000 CofE fresh expressions or new congregations across the country. Around 30,000 people attend fresh expressions each month who don’t attend traditional regular services, equating to an average of around 40 people per participating parish exploring new forms of church – the statistical equivalent of an additional diocese. Almost all dioceses have reported fresh expressions or new congregations with over half of these initiatives aimed at families with young children.

While that is exciting I read this with just a tad of frustration. I still come across senior church people that tell me ‘fresh expressions is not working‘  or that ‘fresh expressions will not exist in 3 years time‘ alongside Beth Keith’s research which quotes, ‘Many pioneers, while affirming the principle of the mixed economy, did not have positive experiences of working within it. Whilst they were aware of the pressures felt by the wider Church through declining attendance and resources, they were frustrated that the maintenance of existing churches reduced the opportunities and resources for mission and evangelism. For example: pioneers repeatedly reported issues with mixed posts where pioneering aspects were not clearly defined. Maintaining existing churches, fulfilling traditional curacy requirements, or working in church structures remained an ongoing pressure greatly reducing the opportunities for mission‘

I sense across the nation a certain ‘attitude’ within church (not everywhere but in lots of places) that was there towards people involved in full time Christian youth ministry. It was an attitude or belief that these youth ministers were just doing this work for a little while before moving in to real ministry. By real ministry was meant work in church with adults.

Sadly from discussions with others I think that attitude with pioneers up and down the country still exists …. the attitude that says ‘pioneers are doing this for a period and soon they will ‘grow up’ and want to do real ministry.‘ This time the real ministry refers to traditional church ministry.

Personally …. i don’t see my ministry that way … and my hope is that this piece of research will allow us all to acknowledge the real contribution that Fresh Expressions is making.

meal of passion!

The gathering ate together last night at our home. A great experience with a good chance to share where we are at, what we are doing and how things are going.

Between our main course and pudding we thought a bit about our passions and our talents which led into a discussion of how the gathering reflects these and in fact whether, as an expression of church, that it should.

I adapted an exercise that Jonny put me on to last week but for our purposes concentrated on just passions and talents. It was interesting, although not surprising, to see that a lot of our values matched. There was a lot of passions around justice, family, friends and fun. Those values were expressed in various forms across the whole age span of the community from 7 years to 40 something. It was personally exciting to see the children speak of ‘against poverty’ and ‘championing the needs of people’.

Creativity was also a recognised passion and while we think we are a creative community we are painfully aware that we are not a community that is yet involved in doing something to lesson the injustices we see around us.

In our discussion we started to think and explore about how we might address this and also how our location might enable our mission to make a difference where we are. I think we all agree that although the crypt is a special and particularly sacred space, that is is not the correct space for the gathering to use in the way we use it.

We have become a community that spends a lot of time being creative and worship is fun and challenging. But, we never got together to spends lots of time planning great worship; we got together because we wish to explore being church in a way that makes a transformative difference to our community.

So for our next gathering we are looking to meet somewhere new and explore the advent and Christmas theme by asking local organisations ‘how can we help you make a difference?’ or ‘what is needed’ and see if there is any way we can respond.

Last night was a really positive and exciting gathering … not this time because of creative worship, but this time because of a shared passion to make a difference.

Please pray for us as we seek to move forward.

Larger churches and fx

The Church Army’s latest research bulletin has some interesting articles and helps with an ongoing discussion. The bulletin is particularly asking:

Are larger churches a help or a hindrance in our mission to reach the non-churched?
Are they a relic from the past, or a vision of the future?
Do they limit maturity or create the right environment for growth?
If we look closely at the numbers, is the numerical growth we see actually hiding the number of people leaving through the back door?
Are there ways they could better cater for those who are struggling?
Is their theology too rigid for people searching for deeper answers?
How does one decide what maturity looks like for church communities; is it individual or relational?

Steve Hollinghurst kicks the paper off by asking, intriguingly, whether we can learn anything from larger retailers and how they have operated in a  changing world. He ends  by suggesting, rightly in my opinion, that ’a greater diversity of churches is needed, but not a greater commercialisation of them.’

Go have a read here

a day to contemplate

I enjoyed meeting old friends at the ‘Contemplative spirituality and fresh expressions of church: building contemplative ecclesial communities out of contextual mission‘ day. (Fraser noted the title was too long to tweet – hence my cyber silence yesterday!)


As always a particular highlight was catching up with old friends and listening to their stories of how they struggle with ‘this stuff’ in the places they are called to be. It was also exciting to meet new people and hear new stories. I guess my only complaint for the day would be that it was not long enough to enable as much sharing and catching up as I would have liked – but that is not really a criticism as I thought the day was an excellent day and I returned feeling refreshed, challenged, encouraged and reassured.

There was a lot in the day, but some comments i particular that I recorded as I wish to think about them more:

A need to ‘receive from the space that only God can inhabit‘ – David Cherry

‘We do not think ourselves into a new way of living, but rather we live ourselves into a new way of thinking‘ – Ian Mobsby

‘Maybe we need to have the courage to let come what is waiting to come‘ – Ian Adams

I can’t say too much in reflection or response at the moment as I need to think on these, and part of the reason for putting them here is so that I don’t lose them and maybe hear what you think. Podcasts of the talks will soon be posted on the Moot website so that you can hear them for yourself. If you are interested in this and never knew about the day then you might want to sign up at the fresh expressions of the sacramental traditions website.

Thanks Ian, Ian and others, particularly Lou, who worked amazingly throughout the day so it ran so well.

which way?

Today I traveled up to London to meet with Ian, my mentor who is now based at St Mary Aldermary. As ever the time was invaluable to me as Ian reflects on what I say and speaks little words of wisdom into the situations I am reflecting on or struggling with.

In particular today we were thinking about what comes next after two and a half years of training. Till this time my strategy has been pretty much wait  ………………….and then go from there. It has not been that simplistic, but the strategy has been one of observation, listening, reflection, questioning and understanding rather than getting involved in the setting up of loads of projects. In a work such as this there is always a temptation to start to do something too quickly before fully understanding the context and the needs of the setting that you are in.

The last two and a half years have not been totally inactive. In addition to the amazingly humbling and privileged links within the community, there is pub theology and the gathering.  It is these two things in particular that I think it is now time to think more about where these are going – and just this past week people have mentioned ‘sacred coffee’ and ‘holy cocktails’ which were ideas similar to pub theology in a different setting. Is the time right to branch out with new ideas, or is it right to develop what we are doing further?

I cannot pretend to fully understand just yet, but it does seem that now is the time to start to think more about how to move forward, how to develop and how to be available to people that wish to find us. There are a core of people involved in various things and so I will be chatting to thee people as well and gaining their amazing insights to what is happening.

So – it’s probably a bit of a watch this space as I chat and reflect more with people on these things.

one small step

On Sunday the gathering got together to look at the subject of ‘giving birth to a church’ using Acts 2 as our bible passage to look at. We asked the question of ourselves wondering how we can live out our faith in a way that is both attractive to others and meaningful for our lives as they are.

Sometimes it is just too easy to look at a church 2000 years ago and say, ‘ok … we need to do exactly what they did then.; Of course … we don’t! That was 2000 years ago and now is now – the faith is the same, maybe hassles are even the same, but the context is totally different. I guess it was this we were grappling with as a community of around 12 people.

As we reflected on where we have come from, it became clear that not all were aware of the gathering story, and that an issue we need to do something about. It seems we have traveled some way, but we are painfully aware that there is a long way to go. As someone pointed out – giving birth to something is only the beginning. The gathering has been born, but now we need to think about how we nurture and feed that so that we grow into a healthy vibrant Christian community.

I’m a fairly impatient person and I want to know where we are going – and I shared yesterday that for the very first time in anything I have done that I do not know where to go next or what to do. That frustrates me, but it does not worry me. I think that is a healthy position to be in. It means we are treading forward together quite carefully, trying to walk with God and allow him to take the initiative.

To be honest – I always knew being involved in starting something completely new was going to be challenge. the gathering is made up of an amazing group of people, and without them it would be a nightmare rather than just a massive challenge. Starting something new is, though, such hard work!

One thing we have agreed on, which I guess is pretty much the next step (and so, I guess, all we need to know at the moment) is that we need to spend more time together around a meal table simply getting to know each other better. I am quite excited by the thought of doing this – it feels the right thing to do and I think that is all we have to go on at the moment as to what we should be doing next. I think someones suggestion that this should happen in various places, both private and public, and at various times is a good suggestion.

As we meet to eat we will be able to share our stories, our dreams, our visions and our passions … and I wonder, just wonder, what may come from that.

(if you want to check out the gathering you can find us here or on facebook

temples alone but church together

I really enjoyed the gathering today. Lots of people were involved in the creation of what happened and I really love this as it means that i am always made to think differently about something. Unusually for us we took just one verse, 1 Corinthians 6:19, to look at today and particularly asked ourselves what does the text really mean when he says our bodies are temples.

We chatted and shared a lot, but two ideas came out of our discussing that I have been thinking about for the rest of the day. The first came from the idea that tempes were built by people as places for their gods to show off. The building was dedicated to a particular god and everything about the building was an expression of worship to that God. This was a place to show off for the god.

If my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit how do I show that off?

During our time together we set the task of getting ourselves into a living sculture of a temple. This was a creative and funny time but also challenging. It became very clear very quickly that we needed each other to help illustrate everything we thought a temple should display … things such as love, worship of a king, a saviour, a creator, trinity …. and the list could go on.

We are temples alone, but we are the church together and need each other to be able to more fully express the love of God.

I think today marked a change in outlook for the gathering in how we work with each other and express together the love of Christ …. I look forward to where we may be going next!

what do i think of ‘parish’?

A few people have been interested in this book and asked for my comments as I am a pioneer and ‘into  the Fresh Expression thing’ (their quote not mine!)

I have not read it and not likely to in the very near future but there have been some interesting reviews, one from Giles Fraser who I normally agree with (but not on this occasion) and Ben Edson and Ian Mobsby who both respond well.

As I said … I have not read the book and can’t really comment. Like others, I do believe we need to look at ecclesiology and practice, but starting from a premis of stating that Mission Shaped Church is a ‘flawed document’ is not a good premis to thoroughly investigate from.

Anyway … people have asked what I think … clearly not a lot …. but that’s because I don’t really know a lot because I am still spending brain time trying to work out what we are doing and how we are doing it.

our celebration gathering

the gathering gathered again yesterday afternoon in the Crypt. It was an encouraging time as three new people were there and seem to be interested and wanting to become involved in creating something.

Yesterday we considered the theme of celebration and Howard got us thinking on celebration of our diversity while thinking about the world cup and the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. We had a great discussion trying to pull out what this meant … and for the first real time I think we could not all agree which I take as a big positive. A lot of faith, surely, is bigger than our own personal beliefs.

Before and after our worship together there were good conversations happening and it w clear that we are slowly making that transition from group to community … I think the distinguishing element is a genuine interest in other people and what they are about, rather than an attempt to get people to change to fit.

A particular highlight for me was our celebration of communion. We stood around the altar and shared the communion prayer. Our youngest person stood on a chair so she could see over the altar. As we shared bread and wine, I played Paolo Nutini’s track ‘Pencil full of lead’ which I think talks a lot about the celebration of life. I think too often we have a sombre mood in church when sharing communion …. but communion should also be a celebration of what we believe God has done through Christ. 

Nutini is probably a first in the Crypt, and most certainly a first for a Eucharist in the cathedral.  It certainly intrigued tourists walking around. The image though, of people united around God’s altar enjoying the experience, sharing a meal in and of celebration will stay with me for quite a while! I think it was one of those ‘special’moments which comes along when you least expect them.

Sometime’s it is pretty cool to see what God can do with a bunch of people.