To follow on from my last post the first thing I need to say is that I have lots of questions, but I don’t have many answers! I believe the church in this country is moving unto uncharted waters, the maps we have used in the past may still be of some use but that use is limited. Someone recently described the job of church leadership today as being akin to trying to fly a plane whilst building it when the pilot has never had flight lessons! I know how the writer feels!
At the end of my last post I mentioned the new group that has formed around our connections with young families. The roots of this go back a number of years with our St Paul’s Lambs parent & toddler group. In September last year Clare took on the leadership of this group. She led it in a different and initially surprising way, in that she didn’t continue with the more overtly Christian elements of Christian nursery songs and bible stories! Instead the focus was on the opportunity to build friendships and relationships within a relaxed and welcoming setting. The group grew quickly to around 20 families on a regular basis.
Last Autumn, as an experiment, Clare and others organised a Carols and Cupcakes gathering on a Sunday afternoon and despite the snow five families came. This developed into approximately bi-monthly Under 5s Tea Services on Sunday afternoons which now welcom about 15 families each time.
Alongside this in January we ran our annual Alpha Course which was attended by a number of guests. Out of this course a new small group started. One of the things I noticed was that a number of the people in the new group were also supporting the Under 5s group and the Sunday Tea Services. It made sense to make this link clearer and now the mission focus of the small group is our work with young families, and in particular the Sunday afternoon Tea Services.
The lesson I am learning from this is that the heart of the small group, the heart of the Under 5s and Under 2s groups and the heart of the Sunday afternoon Tea Services is relationship. Loving and committed relationships that are expressed in multiple ways. The relationships go beyond services and small groups. What is being formed is not a service or congregation, it is not a small group or fellowship group. It is a Missional Community, a community of disciples who are involved in mission together and are together learning and growing as friends of Jesus.
For the young families that we are reaching their expression of the Christian faith may look very different to the expressions we have grown up with. These families may never attend a ‘service’ as we know it, and the children may never attend Sunday school as we know it. What we need to find is an expression of faith, worship and community that is right for these families and not try to force them into what we know and prefer. I don’t know what that will look like, but I’m looking forward to finding out in the coming months and years.
Next time I’ll look at Alpha and how my thoughts on how we use it may need to change…
Are you saying we should embrace an evolutionary culture within the church? In last weeks sermon the words ” missionary process ” were used and they are very significant as they focus our minds on the fact that change takes you from one state to another. Where as a process suggest that the church most evolve to meet the challenges that it faces with the generations that it has to address. There is a problem that we must all understand in that we all come from different age groups social back grounds and pre-conceived thought s about our church. The message of Jesus is simple love and understanding, so our goals for change or evolutionary process should be simply how to show our community how simple Christianity is and how much they can benefit from understanding our simple message. So can we focus on those things such as the gift of strawberries, the love we can show children in under 5’s, the gift perhaps of simple prayers to our community.
Best Regards
Keith Skinner
Keith,
I take your comments about using the word ‘change’ and know that it is something that many find hard to embrace. We are engaged, as you highlighted from last week’s sermon, in a missionary process. That is a process of change, or evolution, that has mission and living as missionaries at it’s heart. There is a big challenge for us to embrace, the challenge of giving the opportunity for every person in our parish of whatever age to hear and respond to the simple, but profound, message that Jesus loves them. For some that will be through gifts of strawberries, for others through prayer, for others through Under 5s and for others …
Sandy