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Notes  from FEAST group, Peterborough (Fresh Expressions Action and Support Team)

Thursday, 10th January, 2008

Round robin of activities happening in various fresh expressions

Grange Park, Northampton

• Tension between more traditional people who started the whole thing and those who have joined recently. One family and a couple have left. 
• Place of humility and vulnerability.
• God appears to be saying more pruning and anticipation for the year ahead.
• Development in growth of the Tuesday morning Stepping Stones now Breakfast has effectively become a church for mums and kids. 34 coming, breakfast, songs and toys for children and bringing a parable alive.
• Having a celebration party for five years on.
• Developing multi-stream church with Sunday as a stream among several. Some overlap, some messy. Question of what holds it all together? How do people come? Valentine's dinner coming up soon. How do you appeal to all streams? Picture of a lily pond with different lily pods on the pond all linked but under water.
• Still a tension of the old and the people who found the creative stuff threatening and those who come on a Sunday, some sort of discontent. There is an issue here about inter-generational church.

St Giles, Northampton

• Again a working at the inter-generational thing and also feeling a sense of discontent between people who fund the creative stuff and those who come on a Sunday.
• Development of Saturday teatime chat out of the Toddle-in Service which happens on a Tuesday with about 50 adults and toddlers which is now developing into a 5 o'clock Saturday tea. Interesting that they had some pram services before Christmas and some mums from Toddle-in said you have not been telling us this!, so they feel they have got more permission to be up-front about their own Christian faith.
• Greater tie in with scouts which is run by Christians and the development of parade services not on a Sunday.

Rectory Farm

• Difficult year, time of pruning.
• In the four years that Hannah has been there almost a new congregation with some of the old faithful who had the traditional mindset. Those who have come more recently are coming more randomly.
• They have developed café church.
• Question over whether they go more cell structure.
• Reflection that we have become a victim of our own choice and culture, multi-stream church colludes with a consumer model therefore makes people high expectation rather than high commitment. We found the phrase "this will only happen if we all make it happen".
• Reflection that worship is not the place to invite people to church.

Mawsley

• A real sense of pruning.
• Remembrance Day had 150 people who loved the traditional; there was tension over this too!
• Again tension between old and new doing things outside of their comfort zone.
• The challenge of the more conservative evangelical. The more mature want to be some sort of pure clique, but then there are loads on the fringe who want more messy church and ripples do go through the whole church when people leave.
• A picture of a rope bridge – they are providing something but it is fragile.
• Tension between provision over home and formation of discipleship. The problem is the difference between living like Jesus and not knowing about Jesus.
• Question about have we soft peddled discipleship.

Eagles Wings

• Giving people permission to stop doing things, lot of worn out people asking about being.
• Too much activity prevents discipleship. 
• Being versus doing, getting the balance right. 
• Accountability verses discipleship.
• Relationships mentoring spiritual direction.
• Also struggles with the inherited church. Question over whether they should go for Bishops' Missionary Orders.
• Constantly fighting to please others in the inherited mode. How do we share life with people and when do we walk away? How can we be with people, sharing lives, with the gift of time.

For prayer

• We prayed for transition to cell for Alpha church on Thursdays.
• For meeting with St Mary's church wardens.
• For reconnecting vision and ownership, Party Sunday.
• Shared vision for the ministry team.

We then had a long discussion about discipleship and the lack of maturity among many in our churches to cope and handle some of the changes that we are offering. Discussion about some of the St Thomas Crookes' life shape stuff and a discussion about what is the shape of core discipleship.  Three questions: What are you doing for God? What is God doing for you? How can we help?

General reflections and common themes

• Growing pains

  Of the tensions between old and new people

  Of how traditions become firmly established

  Of "pioneers" who come from a particular stable and find themselves not being truly incarnational but seeking to project a certain way and theology of being the church

  Of people leaving a relatively new thing

• Maturity and discipleship

  That many people have not been discipled and have a small and narrow faith which doesn't react well to challenges

  That we may have colluded with this by providing a consumer friendly model

  That we need more of "this will only happen if we all make it happen" – sense of shared responsibility, ie from Tesco the consumer model to John Lewis the partnership model. A model of greater mutual accountability

• Being less diffident

  That people want to hear about the gospel and we are often quite diffident and slow to share

What are learning networks discovering?

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