The Hub !

I am still processing the sessions from the weekend away and I will blog Roger and Lesley's teaching in the next week or so.

I was though struck by a number of other things that came up during the weekend, and I thought I would share one of them here, because I think they offer an insight into some of the opportunities we have as Christians  in the UK; and also because  although there are differences between their situation and ours, there are also similarities.

Altrincham Baptist Church has an old building, built for a bygone age.In common with Claremont they had a rather forbidding, and not very accesible entrance. I cannot believe their gents toilets were as bad as ours!
Not far away from ABC was a community building run by the local council,which was under threat. My understanding is that  the church went to the council and offered to run it for them for an initial period of 2 years.During that time the church renamed the building "The Hub" and  began to turn the centre into a thriving place for everyone in the area.

Facilities include rooms for all kinds of community events and a coffee shop. The church has now extended the lease to 25 years.The council recognise it as one of the best community partnerships in the area and the church have put down deep roots into the local community through which the love of Jesus may flow and the gospel of Jesus may be shared.
This is not traditional church but it is mission!
The Hub's strapline is not "our community our place" but "Your Community Your Place!"
This must have been tough for some church members initially.As Christians it is possible to treat church as our club rather than a community for God and others
Roger told us they made a number of rules when the Hub opened .I cant remember all of them but here are 3

• They gave the building a neutral name in this case "The Hub "
• They said community events took precedence over church events- After all they had another building for church stuff, like leaders meetings and church meetings, and they wanted  the community to feel this really was their building
• They said no services for 6 months .They didn't want to brand the building as a church ,not because they were trying to hide who they are but because they wanted the community to feel they belonged.

As I say some church people must have found these things hard, but great credit to them for being willing to make sacrifices in order to connect with their local community.

The church attendance stats in the UK are not encouraging. However, I honestly think the opportunities have never been greater,  and with the passage of the forthcoming localism bill through parliament ,they could become greater still.

I am certainly not saying we would adopt Altrincham Baptist Churches rules for our new building but they do give us plenty to think about!

The key point is that the church is not a building,it is not an institution it is the people of God and if we are going to share the gospel we need to be where people are sharing Good News with them

Church Weekend Away 2011

I am back from an excellent church weekend away at The Pioneer Centre,Cleobury Mortimer.

Roger and Lesley Sutton from Manchester were outstanding speakers on our theme of discipleship.I will blog more on the content of what they said another time, but for now I want to say a big thank you to them both for not only speaking passionately and thoughtfully but for taking time over coffee,lunch and at all other moments to get to know us.They were constantly available to chat with.This was greatly appreciated by everyone.

There is much more to time away than the talks.
We did archery ,indoor caving,raft building,we had children's parties games a quiz,early morning prayer, and late night chats over coffee.It was a lot of fun but there were of course tears as there always will be when deep friendships and authentic relationships are happening.We rejoiced with those that rejoiced and wept with those that wept.

We worshipped we prayed ,we shared communion we grew closer together.The youngest person who came is a few months old, the oldest in her nineties.Together with them we are building Christian community which hopefully will be attractive to others

There have been sad and even hard times in the past but many of us feel a deep joy in belonging to this Christian community at this hopeful and exciting time

As Roger and Lesley said this truly is a new day for us.

We rejoice and are glad!

Introvert or extrovert?

Found this an interesting read

The building continues!

I spent the morning in various meetings about our new town centre building.To be honest I am not very good at this kind of thing, but I am passionate about it!
Over the years I have enjoyed planning and praying together.It is wonderful to see answered prayers and to look back and trace God's hand through this whole project.It is amazing to see vision by the grace of God begin to become bricks and mortar

By and large however building buildings is not what  excites me,(after all God does not live in buildings made by human hands) but how the building may be used to build The Kingdom.
Doors are slowly opening and we feel we are much closer now to discerning how this new building will be used to glorify God and proclaim Jesus

We did stop on the way to the second meeting to see a big crane had arrived on site and some massive steel girders had been put into place

Things are moving forward. The building is pretty much on schedule. The key for us as a church is to be spiritually prepared when the time comes for the building to open This new building like our existing one will be all about mission!

Rob Bell Love Wins- a few thoughts

I have just finished reading" Love Wins" Rob Bell's latest book that has stirred up huge debate among Christians
Plenty of people have written proper reviews so I won't attempt that but simply give a few impressions

• It is  a small book to have caused such a big fuss.a mere 198 pages,it would have been even less if the type was not so spread out over the page, I guess to make it more visually attractive, and easier to read
• Rob Bell is a very readable writer with a neat turn of phrase He is a good story teller ,not in my view as good as Max Lucado but still very good.
• The book is full of quotations and stories from the Bible.It challenges our neatly worked out theologies and points us back to The Book and makes us consider afresh what some well known verses really mean-.that can only be good.
• Love Wins is also full of questions. .Provocative questions, dozens of them ,forcing us to think, which since we are also to love God with our minds is surely not a bad thing!
• The book contains wonderful and biblical statements about the amazing love of God.It really made me think again about the awesome strength of God's love for human beings. The message that God loves his creation so much that refuses to give up on us, forms the core of Bell’s book. 

Having said all that it appears, to me at least, that Rob has strayed beyond orthodox evangelical statements of faith and, if not into universalism, at least into pluralism,and I part company with his views at that point.

That is no reason not to get and read the book.

Rather than dismissing Rob Bell and "Love Wins" out of hand and in some case without reading the book  and even worse impugning his motives for writing the book as some leading  Christians have done,it is surely more profitable to engage with his arguments and above all wrestle with the Bible

 His critics may not be as good story tellers as Rob Bell but I suspect they would be better than him at disciplined exegesis of the Bible if they put their minds to it.

The church and change Evangelism part 3

The Christian life is a journey.
It is a journey I have been travelling on for a few years
I have changed since that exciting day in 1973 when I became a Christian
I have changed since I first became a pastor in 1983
I have changed since I came back to Shropshire to pastor a church in 2004
It is for others to say whether the changes in me are improvements or not-Its possible some are and some are not. Who knows?
However when it comes to evangelism I am much more content and comfortable with my current position than I was in the past
In the past evangelism seemed to be tagged onto church life We were commanded to do it, we did it, we were not expected to enjoy it and on many occasions we didn't
I can remember the agony of thinking about who to ask to Mission 84 .The prayer the disappointment when my chosen "target " didn't come
As I wrote in my previous posts through the years I have increasingly seen the value of  deep relationships,of putting roots down in the local community I have seen that evangelism is not the task of the evangelist alone but of all the people of God...the whole church

What we have tried to do therefore is to give people the chance to make the easy invite and to get to know people in our community better and at the same time to bless them in Gods Name.We are nor unique in this in any way
To this end we have put on various curry night's Italian evenings,Harvest Brunches,afternoon teas unplugged evenings and Christmas brunches.
When we started these we worried not enough people would come ,now we worry too many will come which is a great problem to have.
What we still need to learn as a church is how to build on those relationships and to train and build confidence in our people so that in a natural ,unforced way they are encouraged to share their faith We need to learn that it is not our task so much to drag people to church but to be the church where we are.We are not called to do the church but to be the the church

My theolgy has been shaped by Alan Hirsch and above all Reggie McNeal who writes""the missional church is the people of God partnering with God in his redemptive mission in the world." The focus is on the world, not a full calendar of church activities that are exhausting, not equipping, God's people. " I do think there is a lot of truth in that!


This kind of evangelism is a natural sharing of Gods work in our lives that sees others not as targets for our next crusade or big event but as people made in Gods image who are loved by Him and who we should therefore love and seek to bless.


 As  John Wesley said



Do all the good you can, 
By all the means you can, 
In all the ways you can, 
In all the places you can, 
At all the times you can, 
To all the people you can, 
As long as ever you can. 





The Son of God became incarnate,he lived among us,he shared His life with us he brought us good news about God .Jesus is a great model for the church to follow!
Now there is nothing new in this
The question we as a church must wrestle prayerfully with is how can we bless the communities in which God has placed us?Of course that includes telling people Good News, but also being Good News for them.
It is a big challenge
I pray that both in the area  of our new  town centre building and in the Monkmoor area we and other Christians, will respond to Gods call and rise to that challenge

The church and change Evangelism 2 -Alpha

A large group of us went to an Alpha training course in Birmingham in 1994..I believe it was one of the first  held outside London.I remember Nicky Gumbel telling the shark joke which is one I have tediously repeated ever since!
Alpha's charismatic emphasis was never hidden and the training was excellent.In fact I found it a very powerful spiritual experience
In view of that it may seem strange that instead of running The Alpha Course we ran a course we had written ourselves called "Just Looking" in a local hotel in Ross on Wye. Less charismatic than the Alpha course  we still attracted good numbers and a number of people came to faith and were baptised.
Subsequently over many years  we have run Alpha courses in both the churches I have pastored and again we have seen people come to faith and be baptised .

In my experience what works about Alpha or indeed" Just Looking" is not the teaching as such but   the ability to talk about faith in a relaxed atmosphere with food ,where people can ask any question they like and know it will be taken seriously,
Above  all  this Alpha gives the opportunity  for relationships to  develop with people and through those relationships the love and message of Jesus can be shared. Alpha creates a space for people to talk about faith ,something that's not always easy to find in secular Britain in 2011
In my experience follow up works best where a group that have done the course together stay together in a small group
There are challenges but we certainly intend to keep using the course in the future
As I have stated above the thing that makes Alpha invaluable is the chance to build relationships with people who are not Christians. It really is all about relationships!I


The great danger for Baptist Churches with a membership structure Is that church becomes about the members rather than the gospel and people talk about the rights of members and the ultimate authority of the church meeting.It is possible for church to become little more than a cosy club rather than the people of God on mission!


The lessons we have learned from Alpha have helped us avoid that danger and have  been applied in recent years to the whole of  our church life. We have tried to share the life of individuals and the life of the local community ,to build relationships ,to put down deep roots locally, to be authentic,to recognise The Lordship of Christ .Alpha was, I  think, an important stepping stone on this road.
Then along came Reggie McNeal and Alan Hirsch who for me  at least demonstrate what missional church could be all about.. More about that next time..