Be welcoming, be the guest

Pioneering work in new housing developments is a growing edge all over the UK. CMS MA students recently met up with the Rev Sue Steer, pioneer community worker in New Lubbesthorpe and a graduate of CMS Pioneer Mission Training.

We recently went to New Lubbesthorpe for an MA weekend led by a graduate of CMS Pioneer Mission Training, the Rev Sue Steer.

I was delighted that the students really enjoyed the weekend. One told me afterwards:

“It was fascinating to see what church might look like if you start with a blank sheet. Spoiler alert: there’s no building and no denomination.”

Another student told me,

“The MA weekend in Lubbesthorpe was very inspiring. As I first arrived, the new build estate felt very alien compared to my Cornish context. But as Sue led us through the story of building kingdom values at the heart of this new community and we met people who love living on the estate, I was sold!

“It was clear that God had planted a vision in the Churches Together group and through perseverance and following the Spirit this came to fruition. Sue and the team have developed a kingdom culture of community from scratch. It was inspirational!”

So, I thought it would be good to share the weekend, virtually, with all our readers by interviewing Sue, to gain extra insight into the work she is engaged in.

Sue, can you tell us about your background and your study with CMS in the past?

Churches Together in Leicestershire were advertising for a Pioneer Community Worker. The role was first and foremost to help build a healthy community across the whole community and secondly, among Christians when they asked for a Christian Community to be formed.

What that looked like wasn’t defined so it could be a Church or Missional Community or whatever felt appropriate to the people who lived in Lubbesthorpe. 

I wasn’t sure if the job was for me at first as I didn’t know if new housing was my ‘thing’. However, when I did some research, I discovered the developer wanted Lubbesthorpe to be a place where people could “Live, Work and Play” and that grabbed my attention. 

I felt that if that was at the heart of the development, it was something I could join in with.

What are your overriding principles in community building?

My first overriding principle was to make friends with people and have fun with them! I wanted to be part of the community, not just seen as working for them.

Being friends should set you on a level footing rather than being the paid worker who is there to do everything and who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh together!

The three principles of Michael Moynagh’s framework was important too: listening, loving and serving, in my experience, naturally leads to community forming. 

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is really important too which is about using the assets within the community whether they be people, places or organisations. Partnering with others has always been at the core of what I do. 

As we’ve moved along, I’ve also held true to essentials I have found along the way:

Be welcoming, open and interested in people’s stories.

Be the guest, as Christ was. Too often churches have taken the approach of being the host all the time. While it is right to be a great host because it’s generous, there’s a power dynamic in that which can often be unhelpful. I try to remember what it’s like to be the guest even when people are coming into our little Community Hub.

Don’t judge: people live differently and who am I to say my way is the best way? People also expect churches / vicars to behave in a certain way and that has at times been a barrier I have had to break down. I find that doesn’t take too long, as long as we really live a life of love.

Be inclusive of everyone. Just saying you are inclusive isn’t good enough, you have to live it! Going out of our way to get alongside and create groups and spaces with people from different ethnic and faith backgrounds is really important to us. (We are currently at around 40 per cent non-white British residents, we think!)

Making sure our CIC [Community Interest Company] leadership team is diverse in culture, faith and socio-economic and physical ability has been key to ensuring we represent the community we live and work in.  Early on our Christian community (now known as Lubbesthorpe Christians Together) decided to define itself as an ‘inclusive community’ too.

Can you tell me about the Hub and how it is becoming a focus for community?

The Hub is a real asset and has been the main community gathering space for five years.

It’s a posh portacabin basically and was paid for by the developer as part of the 106 legal planning agreement, this was thanks to the very early partnership work of Churches Together in Leicestershire and the local district council.

We could have had a small house and gone the traditional route of moving in and offering hospitality via that. However, early on it became apparent that Leicester isn’t a dinner-party-gathering-round-each-other’s-houses type of area; it’s more, let’s go out together and meet in a neutral space.

The Hub is seen as a neutral community space, while our Community Development CIC – Lubbesthorpe Alive – hosts and runs the space. It is far more neutral than someone’s house. 

It’s currently next to the school and what will be the first shopping area (it moves around the site as it is a temporary building!)

We seek to host many groups to use it alongside what we do. Again, remembering our core principle of ABCD means we want to facilitate people to start their own groups rather than us being seen as the ‘doer of all things’!

Our MA weekend with you was great, fantastic hospitality and a real sense of what is happening in Lubbesthorpe. Are there things you couldn’t show us but would have liked to?   

Oh goodness yes, it felt like we could only show you a glimpse. I’ve been here seven years now, so it’s quite a long story and we have lots of things going on.

It would have been great to show you the monthly market and the cafe we run alongside it, with lots of residents popping in, and to see the pop-up doctors space that happens occasionally. Or maybe Lubbfest, our annual food and music festival which we run on the field behind the Hub.

It was great to sit around the table with some of our interfaith group but it would also have been great for you to be a part of our monthly meet-ups where we talk about how God has been at work in Lubbesthorpe and our friendship groups.

Or perhaps you could have joined our Connexions social group aimed at people who are retired and some who live on their own.   

That all sounds brilliant. Sue, how can we pray for you?   

1. For our Christian Community (Lubbesthorpe Christians Together) which is more of a network than a one-meeting-centric model. Working out how we describe our network is a challenge as it is so different to how a traditional Sunday Centric Community works. Also, embracing the growing number of different ethnic backgrounds across our Christian family is a real joy: ensuring we embrace that difference and learn and grow with it is also very much on our radar at the moment.
2. As a constantly growing place and community (around 10 to 15 new houses a month are moved into and a new shopping area is ‘in build’) Lubbesthorpe Alive, our community development CIC, seeks to represent our diverse multi-cultural and multi-faith community. Pray that we are able keep to our core values which are inherently Christian and that Christians will be drawn to continue to join in with the work of the CIC.     
3. Finally, for me and the team: for continued energy, space to retreat and take notice of what God is doing, space to innovate and grow in what God wants us to be. We are 1,060 houses into 4,250 – there’s a lot of pioneering still to be done!

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