planting a seed

yesterday afternoon, my boss, one of our team vicars, and i spent an hour and a half with si kirby over at his church in north finchley. the reason for the visit was because there are some similarities between what si is doing and what we're doing with our experiment in developing a new community of faith in the walthamstow high street. si's new outfit is called emmanuel network church (enc) and ours is st luke's. both outfits are going with the idea of starting their new ventures without having a building - church without walls. the idea, using a gardening analogy, is to plant the seed of the gospel in the soil of a local context and see what grows.

enc is aiming at a different niche than st luke's, as they've got a core crew of about 25 people aged in their 20s and 30s. st luke's on the other hand, is starting with between 12 - 20 people aged 40+. and st luke's is also having to suffer the pain of moving out of their home of over 100 years (before it falls in on their heads). so, there's also a degree of difference in motivation between the two. that's not to say there's no vision for adventurous mission at st luke's, as there certainly is, its just acknowledging the realities.

one of the big learning points for us yesterday was how si invests heavily in his team. discipleship is taken very seriously, and much time and effort is given to each member of his team. church folks have been saying for years that its relatively easy to introduce people to jesus, the difficulty is to make lifetime disciples.

18 months ago i took a bunch of our people to hear al hirsch and mike frost speak about mission and radically re-imaging church through the transformation of its dna and the implications of that. al has recently been in the usa, and was speaking to sam metcalf, who has helpfully given a precis of what al said here.

if there are any other fledgling mission communities doing something similar in the north london area, we'd love to hear from you.

Tags: mission, hirsch, kirbs, parish of walthamstow, fresh expressions, emerging church