Email update 1 August 2009
Recent developments
Although this is the first email update to our Associates since May, if you read the June newsletter you will know about several recent developments:
• Team leaders have been appointed and new teams are being formed in Bristol, London, Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent. These should all be up and running by the autumn.
• Urban Expression initiatives are developing in Sweden and North America.
• We now have some mission partners, alongside team members and associates.
• Terry & Ann Jones will be working roughly a day a week on a voluntary basis as ‘facilitators’, visiting teams and associates.
We are planning an induction day for new team leaders in September, and we expect to be interviewing several potential team members for these new teams in September too. If you know anyone else who might be interested in joining a team in one of these cities, please let us know.
Further developments
Since the June newsletter there have been some further developments:
• Daniel & Becky Frank have been appointed by the Glasgow steering group to explore further areas for deploying church planting teams in the city and to recruit new teams. They will be in post from 1 August 2009 to 30 April 2010.
• Alan Pain, recently retired as director of the International Mission Centre, where we run the Crucible course and hold Associates’ Days, has agreed to provide pastoral support for the teams emerging in the West Midlands and to help in other ways.
• We are in conversation with a number of other potential team leaders about initiatives elsewhere – more details in due course, but the pace seems not to be slackening at present.
Associates’ Day 2009
You should already have the date of the next Associates’ Day – 28 November 2009 – at the usual venue, IMC in Birmingham. I’m attaching a programme, so that you can see what is planned. As you will see, we have extended the day to include an evening meal, so that we have a more relaxed schedule. This year we are also offering two streams of workshops, one for those just starting out and the other for those further along the road.
The extended programme and extra meal will mean the day costs a bit more than last year: £17 for adults and £7 for children (up from £15 and £5 last year). But the good news (for some of you) is that this year there will be no charge for children under 5.
But if you want to come and this cost causes difficulty, please let us know as we may be able to help.
Please book in for this day as soon as you are ready. Just drop me an email.
Terry & Ann Jones
As mentioned above and in previous email updates, from September Terry & Ann will be on the road, visiting our teams and hoping to connect with several of our associates. As the associates’ network has grown, we have been unable to keep up and so there are several of you we have never met. We’re hoping that Terry & Ann can remedy this. So you might hear from them by phone or email, asking whether they can come to visit you – to find out more about what you are involved in and to ask if and how Urban Expression can be a resource to you.
Crucible 2009-10
I’m attaching a brochure for the new and expanded Crucible course, starting in October. If this is of interest to you, please book in. Or pass the information on to others who might find it useful.
Overseas visitors
As you may have seen in the June newsletter, our team leaders enjoyed a visit to The Netherlands for their annual day together, linking up this time with our Dutch teams. A fourth Dutch team is starting work in Amersfoort very soon. For your interest, especially if you can understand Dutch (!), the UE Netherlands website is now live: www.urbanexpression.nl
In October we are anticipating some visitors to the UK. Jonas Melin, who is involved in plans to set up Urban Expression in Sweden, will be here for a week, including the first Crucible weekend. We are also expecting in the same period to welcome back Jeff Wright from California, who is spearheading Urban Expression North America, and two colleagues from Pennsylvania, Steve Kriss and Ertell Whigham, who want to start running the Crucible course there.
If any of you would be interested in meeting these visitors, learning more about their contexts and plans, sharing your experience with them, please let me know. It would be good for them to meet a number of people involved in urban ministry while they are here.
Events
Jo Fitzsimmons has sent me details of an event organised by Frontier Youth Trust in Birmingham on 2-3 September: ‘Shalom – a gathering for Christians working with at risk young people’. For further details, see http://fyt.org.uk/showdetails,pdf,120.htm
Another event organised by Frontier Youth Trust (in partnership with YMCA) is in Clevedon, near Bristol, on 8 September. ‘Whoever comes are the right people’ is an informal training day on participation, exploring the use of open space technology, future search, world café, etc. Further details from Nigel Pimlott: nigel@pimlott.org.
Further ahead, information is now available about ‘Planting Life’ on 17-19 November in Bath, a follow up to the Mission 21 conference, which some of us attended in 2006. Described as ‘a gathering for church planters and planners’, further details can be found at www.mission21.info.
Reflection
Alan Bright has sent me a very helpful and poignant reflection after 20 years in urban ministry in East London – well worth pondering:
My wife and celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last summer and we have been here in Beckton in East London for just about all that time. We have been members of the local Anglican church – St Mark’s, http://www.stmarkscofebeckton.org.uk/, for almost 20 years.
Things continue to be challenging here – as I’m sure they are for many associates. We are certainly into cross-cultural mission now. When we moved here in 1984 there were many people like us: white middle-class in our twenties, having moved new to London. As time has gone there are fewer of those people around. People move away when they are able to. Beckton – and East London – is not a place people aspire to live in. One often hears about the vibrant diversity of London – but few people wish to trust their children to the schools that go with such vibrant diversity. It is at the point now when Africans and Eastern Europeans don’t want to use the local schools – even when they are dominated by Africans and Eastern Europeans.
Beckton continues to be a place people new to London move to – and these are now increasingly Africans and Eastern Europeans. Our church is now about 85% West Africans – mostly Nigerian – and most white people on foot in Beckton are not British.
Our vicar is Nigerian and I have certainly appreciated insight I have gained into West African culture – both Christian and otherwise – through both his leadership and other members of the church. But my own family’s life is less chaotic than the lives of some of our members: they have children outside marriage; they are bringing up their grandchildren; they are parents of young children but do not live with them; they work unsocial hours; they go to Nigeria or Ghana for weeks at a time. None of this is to say that White British culture – both working- and middle-class – Is above reproach. But all of this makes our church feel more like a Nigerian or Ghanaian Christian drop-in centre or chaplaincy – i.e., something people come to when they are willing or able – than a church family.
Which has led me to consider more the nature of church. The focus can too often be on the ‘meetings’ – and as one of the less chaotic families, some of the burden of making the meetings happen – e.g., music, children’s work, leading, welcoming – can fall on me and my family. The danger is that it makes us bitter – and I am sure I have fallen into that temptation more than once. But are these meetings necessary? For the past few years I have been leading a small men’s Bible study – first in a Starbucks and now in a pub. I have aimed unashamedly at men – since if you get men sorted out many associated benefits flow into the household. The pub Bible study is great in that it is not resource intensive – no-one has to come and open the building or provide the refreshments. Also – and more so when we were at Starbucks – other customers and staff would ask us what we were doing.
What is my message in this for other associates? Think of new ways of doing church – and of reaching and discipling men. It is not something I can claim any great success in – but it is something that I wish to focus on for the next 25 years of my adult life.
New associates
As well as several new team leaders, we also welcome some new associates since the last email update:
• Linda Wilson: 24 Stanbury Road, Victoria Park, Bristol BS3 4QG (0117 330 6489). Email: linda.wilson@blueyonder.co.uk
Linda is on the leadership team of Bristol Christian Fellowship and is supportive of the new Urban Expression developments in Bristol.
• Mark & Julia Cozens: 15 Magnolia Road, Sleaford, Lincs NG34 7TH (01529 309294). Email: mjlcozens@dsl.pipex.com
We met Mark & Julia on the Crucible course recently and they subsequently asked to become associates.
• Stefan Cherry: 300 Shakespeare Street, Ottawa ON K1L 5M4, Canada (613-749-7188). Email: stefancherry@yahoo.com
Stefan is a Mennonite church planter in Eastern Canada, involved in a church called ‘The Village’.
That’s all for this month. Enjoy the summer! And please continue to send in contributions to these updates.
Stuart