By Frauke Eicker

Do you remember those 3D images that don’t look like much on the outset, but when you train your eyes to see and relax into them enough a whole new world unfolds before you?  

Well, I found Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) to be rather like that.

I first stumbled across PMC on the CMS website while working as a coach, and I was curious: here was something that sounded different from your standard church course or event. PMC seemed to offer deep challenge as well as the chance to unlock potential within both the church and the community. And all that with attention given to the local context – not one size fits all.

So I offered to volunteer and got to experience first-hand some of the core strengths of PMC:

PMC enables lay leadership

It is fascinating to see: people are coming out of the woodwork even where a church may have struggled to recruit volunteers in the past. Unexpected people suddenly find their place and shine. And they step up and get courageous. Whether that’s the person who served the tea discovering they’re a really good listener and love to talk to people in the community, and weaving God into conversation more easily than they thought possible. Or the family member who tagged along never feeling they fitted in church, but who loves the opportunity to help with food hub deliveries.

God is the invisible motor who releases energy

It is like that moment when your eyes go from straining to see, to relaxing into the 3D image. You can’t force it, but it happens: through PMC people slowly but surely are getting excited about God showing up around them.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but the change through the PMC spiritual practices is tangible. Anna, a PCC member, teacher and mum of three, puts it this way: “You talk about God being with us, and if you really believe that everything changes. Because you’re starting to see him at work everywhere – in your church, outside your church…. It’s a life changing way of thinking.”

And it’s infectious. Like Helen who, with a beaming smile on her face, is able to say “We’re not involved in the area of mission we thought we would be involved with. But this is the mission that God has chosen for us now and we’re happy to walk with him and the people he is choosing for us on a wonderful adventure.”

And that’s the main reason why PMC got me hooked so much that I now do the work for a living!

PMC is transformational – way beyond its finish line

It may sound like a bold claim, but the thing about transformational change is that we don’t even know this way of seeing is possible unless we go there. It shifts the underlying perspective we didn’t even know we had.

PMC has left me changed. I can’t not see the God opportunities in the community around me any more than I can go back to seeing 2D when viewing a 3D stereogram. And I am not alone. Vicar Phil reflects: “I saw formation happening in members of the congregation far more than any sermon I had ever preached or any other course or activity we had undertaken…. These people…would be transformed for the rest of their Christian lives.”

And that, I find, is worth investing in.

If you are curious about PMC, sign up for one of our taster days on 27 or 31 January, 9 or 10 February, or get in touch for a conversation to explore if PMC could offer the perspective change your church needs (subsidies are available).

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The post Time for a fresh perspective? appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Wendy Cranefield was drawn in from the fringe to the centre of church life through the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) journey. Now a key leader of St Wilfrid’s, Wilford, near Nottingham, she explained to Frauke Eicker how the process has changed the way she sees the world…

How did the journey start for you?

I didn’t really get involved with church because we’ve got a son who’s got medical problems. So I felt that I couldn’t. Then I became involved in PMC and it gave me meaning.

Then I got involved with the different aspects of church and became a churchwarden. Which probably wasn’t what I was anticipating, but it was building upon what we had learnt through the process and how we know that God’s gone before us. And that having a child with a disability – which can be an isolating place – doesn’t stop you from doing what God wants you to do. It gave me the freedom to actually realise that the world was still my oyster in regards to God!  

If you were to describe PMC to someone who has never really heard about it, how would you describe it?  

It’s looking at your faith in a different way. It’s like putting on a new pair of glasses and everything is becoming so much clearer and visible. You know, we are called to be disciples. And the image for me of doing mission was to go out and talk God – and know what I’m supposed to be saying!

PMC gave me the freedom of being me. Warts and all. You know, this is who I am. This is what you see.

And those sort of conversations then just happen because you become friends with people. And God has called you to those certain people.

So there’s a lot of freedom in PMC. I thought, I can see who God is calling me to. I can be who I am. The mask has come down. I can go and ‘be God’ in whatever situation, wherever I am.   

Sounds like quite a transformation for you?  

I think it was for all the family actually. We look for the activity of God, we look for where God is calling us to, in every part of our lives.

How would you say has PMC enabled you to notice God at work and adapt during this season?

During Covid it’s been hard at times and we’ve had to really dig deep. But I think you can plot where God has gone before you when you look back.

During Covid, people have become a lot more aware of their own communities. We’ve had someone from the church lead the Covid-help group within Wilford straightaway as we went into lockdown. And she has partnered with someone from the local community group. The conversation was more about “How are we going to continue our connectivity?” not “What can we put on? What can we do?”

I think there is a sense of God is at work in us, even in this vacancy – we currently have no clergy. I think we were very much tuned in already – we felt that it wasn’t a parish that was going to stand still because we know that God doesn’t stand still.

I like to plan Christmas. And without clergy there, Christmas is quite difficult to organise. So, in September I got people together who would be interested in doing a Christingle service, because we hadn’t got a vicar. And it was amazing. We had a team leading the service who were on the fringe of church, who haven’t been regularly involved in church for a long time. And together we worked and we did it and it was brilliant. And these are the people that came to mind when we were looking at what we could do for our children’s work online now. And even extending further, we’re looking at what we’re going to do for Christmas, because we realise that it will be a different Christmas this year and it won’t be in church because we can’t fit many people in.

With the Covid crisis, how you have noticed God at work in your community during this time?

A member of the local community had got in touch with us and said, “What are you doing in this care home? It’s a new care home. My mother’s moved in.” I then partnered with the other church locally and said to the new vicar there, what are we going to do about this?

And then we went into Covid. We wanted them to know that we cared so we sent chocolates and straight away it was on Facebook: “Thank you, Wilford Church. Thank you for caring for us.”

I then got the name of a person at the care home and I connected with her and said, “What can we do as a church to support you?” And she said, “We love letters.” So I emailed the congregation: “Would you be willing to send letters?”

There was a particular person that came back to me and said, “You’ve really struck a chord with what I’ve been thinking. I am retiring in the next year and my passion is care homes, because my father had dementia. I want to be that person that connects with the care homes.”

Members of the congregation had gone and sung a blessing to the local hospital on the last time we were clapping for the NHS. We were having virtual coffee one morning and someone said: “Wouldn’t that be lovely to do that for our local care homes?” So the guy who was the link said, “Well, I actually need to go and talk to them about this. Is it what they want?” So he went back and they said yes – but we’d love to sing lots of songs. And it’s developed from there.

Because of the weather we haven’t been able to do the singing straightaway, because they want the residents to be able to come and sit outside so that they can join in. But his means we will have been able to practise more of a repertoire that they can join in with.

We have a newsletter that goes out weekly now. It’s about sharing those stories to encourage each other and to make people stop and think – where have we seen God working? Where are we announcing the kingdom? So, please pray that continues and that we can really build upon those stories.

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Numerous congregations meet in school buildings, but it is much rarer to find the kind of deep relationship that has blossomed in Thatcham as churches there participated in Partnership for Missional Church.

By Jeremy Woodham

“The school I went into seven years ago might have had an occasional visit from the vicar – now there are real relationships,” says the Rev Pat Jones, former team vicar at St Barnabas’ Thatcham Park, which along with sister church St Mary’s Thatcham, took part in the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) journey between 2015 and 2018.

St Barnabas’ congregation actually meets in Thatcham Park C of E Primary School but had struggled to make connections.

On a PMC awayday, Pat explains, the team – led by lay members of the church – was exploring the idea of looking for “partners of peace” in the community. “We realised we already had people who were parents – they had an inside role at the school, so we empowered them to be the main people.”

“PMC gave us language and permission to change imagining we might do something into actually doing it,” says the Rev Mark Bennet, Thatcham’s team rector.

Noticing what God is doing

One of the themes that emerges from churches engaging in PMC is realising how much they – or God – had already been doing, how much was already in place for the next steps God was calling them into.

The key spiritual practices involved, such as “Dwelling the World” and “Announcing the Kingdom” offer ways of spotting what God is already doing in the community.

Mark Bennet again: “Dwelling in the World opens your eyes to things that are on your doorstep but hadn’t noticed before.”

The seeds of the new relationships had been sown: church members already ran the barbecue at school fetes; Pat Jones had a background in youth and families work; a highly supportive new head teacher, Alison Webster, had arrived in 2014.

With growing confidence in the congregation at St Barnabas’, the church–school relationship started to flourish, as associate priest the Rev Brenda Harland explains.

“One of the main things was we had started to find partners of peace without realising what we were doing – it was a big confidence boost to realise something had already started with the PTA.

“Our culture was changing. Now, more people say ‘Ooh, I think that was God!’ – or there’s a light in their eyes that wasn’t there before!”

The church is not shy

The church has partnered with the PTA and the school pastoral team, which looks out for vulnerable families.

“We found relationships easy to grow somehow because we were noticing what was important to other people not just to ourselves,” says Mark Bennet.

The supportive community around the school is praised in its latest Ofsted report.

“Read the section about ‘personal development, behaviour and welfare’ because that is the biggest area that we work on together for the good of the children,” says Mrs Webster. The rating of “outstanding” speaks for itself.

While Pat has moved on to a new role, a strong network of relationships remains, as part of the PMC journey is about allowing lay people to take a lead.

“It feels now that the church is not shy,” says Leanne Baker, one of several parents at the school who found their own faith journeys revived thanks to the new connectedness of church and school community.

Coming home

“I was brought up in lots of different churches but I rebelled as a teen,” Leanne continues. “As I got older, I always had a faith but never went to church – I thought the Church of England was terribly stuck up and I was never going to venture in one!” Then a fellow mum invited her along.

“It was like coming home,” she says of her first visit to St Barnabas’ two years ago.

The symbiotic relationship of church and school is clear from talking to Leanne.

“I’m co-chair of the PTA – we couldn’t run a fete without them!” But it’s no longer just running the barbecue – church folk run prayer stations at the school fetes and clergy sit and have a cup of tea in the PTA building.

“The parents and children really embrace them – they have become so much part of the school community – that’s been lovely to watch.”

Head teacher Alison Webster agrees: “There is not a school community, there’s not a home community, not a parish community. We are one community. And when things arise we support each other.”

Changing the way you think

“PMC changes the way you think about where you are,” says team rector the Rev Mark Bennet.

For example, Leanne – who is now exploring a call to ordained ministry – is part of a new pastoral team, formed as a result of the PMC process, which is aiming to take discipleship out into the community.

“One of the big things now at St Mary’s is our response to dementia,” says Mark Bennet. “We host a memory cafe and are thinking more widely – in our community a number of residential homes for people with dementia are being built.

“PMC helped us to listen and respond – just the spiritual practices equip you to see what’s going on in the world and respond. Embedding those is what’s changed us most.”

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On Holy Saturday, the small congregation of Caversham Park Church, based on a large housing development on the edge of Reading, were taking part in a prayer walk around their community and distributing Easter gifts.

By Jeremy Woodham

Just one example of the increased confidence they have found through participating in PMC.

Church member Christine Viney says their church is now more a like a river – flowing out into the community.

“I enjoyed doing the questionnaire [an early part of the PMC process] – talking to people and getting a bit under the skin of what was happening in the village. People said there was no centre – they were feeling lonely.”

In response, the members of Caversham Park started a coffee morning based at a local social club and a monthly bring-a-friend lunch at a local cafe. Not rocket science but crucially out in the community, not in a church building (in fact, they don’t have one!). Along with the Easter (and Christmas) prayer walks, these are another sign of confidence, wanting to be visible Christians in the community, says the vicar, Derek Chandler.

PMC has also, says Derek, had for the congregation “a profound effect in terms of discipleship and God being a real presence that’s around every day of the week, not just someone you visit on Sunday.”

That said, the Sunday service has seen some PMC innovation with the spiritual practices of Dwelling in the Word (which now begins every service) and Announcing the Kingdom becoming firmly embedded.

“We have some tealights in the form of a cross at the front of the church,” explains Christine, “and people come and say how they’ve seen God working during the week and just light a candle in thanks and praise to God.

“That’s what’s helped me personally, the way of seeing God in everything.”

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The post Seeing God in everything appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Three years ago, Woosehill Church began its participation in PMC, a fairly new initiative which encourages churches to ask God to show us what he is doing in our communities and where he wants us to join with him.

By Eileen Fletcher, Woosehill Community Church

After much discussion and prayer the PMC team had felt that we should try to address the problem of loneliness and isolation.

It was clear, however, that Woosehill Church didn’t have the people or finances to undertake grandiose schemes to reach out to build community here on Woosehill. So we thought about traditional communal activities and set up a “knit and natter” group, which we called Wool With A Mission.

We began with a core group of older church ladies, which drew in people who were a little on the periphery of the church. This immediately brought a sense of involvement and purpose among the congregation.

Our mission was to create a truly welcoming group while crafting garments for good causes and the group has been growing as people respond to the leaflets we circulated.

One of our ladies hadn’t knitted for 45 years! Prior to joining the group she had been through a brutal time, with two bereavements within months. “Knitting has been my saviour,” she told me. “Life has been tough, the hardest year of my life, but once I pick up the knitting an inner peace comes over me. It’s difficult to explain and I wouldn’t have believed it, but it’s true.”

We had also been encouraged, through PMC, to think in terms of working with other people and organisations. And so we prayed: “Bring the people you want us to work with into our lives and enable us to be channels of your love in our community.”

Shortly afterwards, as we were meeting to knit and crochet, one of the ladies mentioned First Days, a local charity working with childcare professionals who refer families to them when they are at a time of crisis; when they need something for their children and simply cannot afford it.

Such a good cause and right on our doorstep! It seemed like a marriage made in heaven; lonely and isolated people, knitting for local children in need.

We attach a label to each garment that we produce. It says “crafted with love” and we hear from the First Days volunteers that mums, with tears in their eyes, express their amazement that someone would go to all the trouble of knitting or crocheting for their children.

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Smack bang in the middle of an area of Stockton-on-Tees known for prostitution and drug dealing is a church. A traditional Anglo-Catholic church, they used to be content to keep themselves and God within their four walls. Now, they are actively involved in the community. This is their story.

By Camilla Lloyd

A couple of years ago, their diocesan development officer nominated them for Partnership for Missional Church (PMC), Church Mission Society’s three-year layled programme which encourages churches to explore what God is doing in the local community and how they can be a part of it.

At the time, the small church of 70–80 members had a thriving choir and ran Messy Church and Toddler Praise in order to attract young families. But at the same time, the church was fairly static, almost lethargic, with an ageing congregation. Ruth Hicks, leader of the PMC steering group, says, “We were very satisfied with ourselves. We used to come on a Sunday for ourselves, for the congregation.”

Initial surprises

One of the first things the PMC process led them to do was a community assessment, which yielded some surprising results. For one thing, their neighbourhood wasn’t full of elderly people as they had assumed: most residents were aged 20–35, which came as a great surprise. The team also came across research by the University of Durham stating that the average life expectancy for a town centre resident is a whopping 18 years lower than that of a resident on the outskirts.

A discrepancy likely due to the high incidence of generational cycles of poverty, addictions, poor diet, etc. in the town centre. While some churches need to spend time looking for where they can be of use, for St Peter’s, local needs were staring them in the face.

Street workers were dropping in to the church, asking for money or help. The church was approached by police – they’d had complaints of goings-on in the church grounds, and perhaps the church could install more lighting as a deterrent? The vicar, who lived a five to ten-minute walk away, was propositioned almost every time he walked to church.

A leap into the unknown

When a particularly demanding girl came to the church one day and wouldn’t leave, Ruth rang local charity A Way Out. Anita Burke, general manager of the charity, says, “That was a phone call that I often recount. And I probably will never forget.”

On the phone, Ruth explained that the church was right in the centre of the patch where the girls work, and that the girls kept propositioning the vicar. Anita listened, and waited for Ruth to berate her or ask her to move the girls on. To Anita’s surprise, Ruth asked how the church could support these women, welcome them and help them. The rest, as they say, is history.

A Way Out embraced the offer from St Peter’s and took time to equip these new volunteers by putting together and delivering a comprehensive, rigorous training package. It was during this phase of waiting and preparing to work with street workers that the current vicar of St Peter’s, Bill Braviner, took up his post.

Passionate about going to people on the margins, like Jesus did, Bill was excited and surprised by their plans. “I haven’t really come across a church before who said, ‘We’ve realised there’s a need here and we want to do something.’ They felt challenged by God to leap out of their comfort zone.”

Getting started

By now, St Peter’s was almost ready to put a plan into action. Having chosen a ministry they were excited about, found volunteers easily and organised training, the PMC group took a proposal to the parish council. Their proposal outlined a six-month pilot in partnership with A Way Out, inviting girls into the church once a fortnight, offering hot drinks and food.

The council passed their proposal unanimously. “I was shocked rigid,” Ruth says. “That was a huge change. For the congregation, and especially for that council, and they’ve been supportive ever since.”

They went ahead with their pilot, but it wasn’t a great success. Once a fortnight wasn’t often enough to build relationships and the early evening timeslot wasn’t convenient. Additionally, the chaotic schedule that often accompanies street work made it too easy for girls to turn up on the wrong day. Another barrier was that some of the girls couldn’t get past the fact that it was happening in a church. Whether they had faith or not, the street workers felt condemned and judged and gradually stopped coming. After a few months, St Peter’s exciting new offer needed to be reviewed.

After so many green lights, including from the church council, what had gone wrong?

“Send us out, Lord”

At the end of every Sunday service, the congregation were praying to be sent out, but in practice, they were asking people to come to them. If their pilot was anything to go by, this method wasn’t working. A Way Out’s other staff and volunteers, however, had the opposite approach, and were actually doing what members of St Peter’s were praying for every Sunday. The charity’s tried, tested and trusted method of engaging with the girls involves going out and meeting the girls on their own turf. “We know it works,” Anita says.

At this point, the only thing that made sense was for St Peter’s to abandon their idea of inviting girls into the church, and join in with what A Way Out were already doing. Now, a team of volunteers, which includes nine people from St Peter’s, takes turns going out in the van from 8–10 at night, three times a week. They don’t have to go far – driving in circles around the church, they always meet girls who are out working. How many girls they talk to in a given evening varies; sometimes it’s two or three, another time they spoke to 11.

“When we go out in the van, we might be the only people that day who have looked them in the eye and smiled. And asked them if they’re all right. They’re either invisible or they’re scorned,” says Sandra Hawkswell, volunteer with A Way Out.

Understandably, A Way Out require all volunteers be female. For Bill, it’s the first time in 24 years of being a vicar that he can’t participate in a significant project going on in his church. Happily, though, the team is so capable he has no qualms about supporting from a distance.

Baby steps

Local street workers are generally comfortable talking to the ladies in the van – those who haven’t met them before hear from others that they are safe. But getting beyond a chat can be more difficult. For many of these girls, their life experiences have completely disintegrated their ability to trust, meaning the volunteers may spend a long time building trust through hot drinks and sandwiches before the girls feel they can accept anything more.

As the volunteers get to know girls better and they disclose that they are sex workers, the volunteers’ attitude is acceptance and a desire to help them to do what they do safely. “We offer a needle exchange, condoms, toiletries, and once they trust us, we invite them into our centre to a drop-in where they can access hot food, a wellness session and a one-to-one assessment where we start digging down into why they’re on the street,” Anita says.

Whether they are working to fund their own or a partner’s substance habit, or to pay the rent and put food on the table, none of the women are there by choice. Each one of them is trapped, unable to find a way out on her own.

Anita tells of one girl who said, “I was stood on this corner and I was crying out to God, and saying, just give me a sign that you’re there, because I am desperate, and I’m having to sell myself.” As she was thinking that, the A Way Out van came down the road. When the ladies saw her, they did a U-turn and stopped alongside her. Testimonies like this inspire volunteers and the charity to keep going, even though tangible results take time.

“Just making themselves vulnerable to open up to receive love in a different way for me is a step towards Christ, towards the arms of Jesus, because they’re actually realising what real love is,” says Anita.

From first encounter to fresh start

The journey from meeting a girl for the first time to seeing her start over in a new location is a long one. For most of the girls the team meet, their behaviour and emotional trauma is highly entrenched, and sex work is generally part of a much bigger and more complicated picture of interconnected issues. It can take five, seven or 10 years from meeting a girl on the street to the point where she’s living independently. Rather than steady progress, it’s a long process of continual ups and downs.

Girls who have gone on to start a new life with the help of the charity have generally done so in a new location, meaning the charity often doesn’t see girls come all the way through to a living faith. But they have sown the seed; girls know that the organisation is based on Christian principles, and they meet Jesus through people like Anita and the many volunteers who are Christians.

In addition to their partnership with A Way Out, members of St Peter’s Stockton help at local primary schools, provide emergency accommodation for homeless people and support families in crisis. They also put their church building to good use, hosting Toddler Praise, Messy Church, Cafe Church, as well as a weekly English class for asylum seekers and refugees, with 130+ registered, and 40 people attending regularly from 24 countries. They will soon be running a children’s lunch club during the school holidays as well.

From ordinary to buzzing

People in Stockton-on-Tees say St Peter’s is very different now compared with three or five years ago, but how did this church go from static and inward-facing to active and engaged in the community? According to them, it’s very clear what’s made the difference: prayer and PMC. It all kicked off when they started praying together every week, and prayer is still very much at the heart of everything they do. PMC helped the congregation to know the community better and be more intentional about mission. Now, they’re looking, listening and engaging with the real issues, making church more real to people on the outside, and their congregation has almost doubled in size, to nearer 150 communicants.

According to Bill, “PMC has transformed St Peter’s both in terms of what it does and in terms of its self-understanding as a church. It’s turned the focus outwards, which is a great thing.”

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The post Beyond the four walls appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Meet Eileen Fletcher and Steve Lewis from Woosehill Commmunity Church. Here, they share what the PMC journey has been like for them personally.

“Go and ask about it! Go and ask about it!”

EILEEN: Someone had been talking about Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) during the church service. I’d only been been half-listening. But as the service ended, a strong impression seemed to come upon me: “Go and ask about it! Go and ask about it!”

I knew I needed to know more about PMC. My query resulted in an invitation to the next PMC meeting.

STEVE: Woosehill Church started its PMC journey in September 2015. Initially all went well, ably led by our minister Paddy and Gavin, the then steering team leader. Unfortunately, as we started Year Two of PMC, Paddy left and owing to a change in his work commitments Gavin was unable to provide the required input as the steering team leader.

At this point we started to flounder, unsure what to do and struggling to make any progress.

EILEEN: I had questions – such as “Where is God in all this?” – and a lot more. Steve Lewis, the PMC leader, patiently answered my bombardment of questions. Eventually I got my head round it all.

What struck me most was the fact that PMC is about looking to see where God is at work in our community and joining with him in the work. That was what attracted me and drew me in.

You see, 40 years ago, God intervened powerfully in my life to bring me to know that there is a God – and not a distant God but one who can break into human lives and share his heart with them. So the primary concept of PMC totally resonated with me.

In fact, I absolutely loved the idea of being involved in a process of seeking to know where God wants us to join in with His work in the community.

STEVE: By February 2016 I had taken over as steering team leader and our new minister, Patrick [Mukholi, a former CMS mission partner in Oxford] had arrived, but he was still getting to know his new church and understand what PMC was all about. The Missional Innovation Team [formed to coordinate the church’s ‘experiments in mission’ in the second year of PMC] was in crisis – unable to recruit members or make any progress, so I agreed to attend one of their meetings to see if I could help.

That’s where I met Eileen, who like me was on the margins of church life and took quite some persuading to join the PMC team. But now she is the driving force in getting our outreach activities up and running.

EILEEN: Our ‘brief’ was to reach out to isolated and lonely people. So, after much prayer and discussion, we set up three groups, Sing Something Simple, Wool With A Mission, and Woosehill Watercolour Group.

The most exciting and fulfilling aspect of my involvement in PMC has been watching God at work in answer to the prayers that the church has been praying.

He has inspired and provided for the groups, led people to us, and blessed the work of PMC.

STEVE: Eileen provides me with much needed support and reassurance as I carry out my steering team leader duties, acting as my conscience, questioning me, challenging me, correcting me! Both of us have moved from the edge to the centre of church life.

EILEEN: Prior to becoming involved with PMC, my husband, Ian, and I had been at Woosehill Church for about eight years. However, my job as a travel photographer meant that I was out of the UK a lot of the time. So I’d never really had the time to become terribly involved in the church, or to develop strong relationships. It was not long after I’d given up the travel photography that PMC came to my notice.

For me, one of the most satisfying aspects of PMC has been the deepening of my relationships within the church. Woosehill Church is a lovely, gentle church. We have been so happy there. But now I find that relationships have moved onto a different level; deeper friendships; a sense that these people really are ‘family’.

But what I love most of all about PMC is that, when God ‘shows up’ in answer to prayer, people get excited. I’m reminded of the saying “God is most glorified when we are most delighted in him.” I believe that PMC is a God-glorifying process and, for me, that is more important than anything else.

But a very close second is the joy of seeing lonely people, with tears in their eyes, talk about how much it means to them to be able come to the groups. Sometimes they haven’t spoken to a soul for days; so being able to spend time in supportive company is a very important to them. That gives me an awful lot of satisfaction.

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The post How PMC changed me appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

The Partnership for Missional Church journey is about setting churches free to join in God’s mission. Nigel Rooms, leader of PMC in the UK, shares a bit about one of the key spiritual practices in this process.

By Nigel Rooms, leader of Partnership for Missional Church in the UK

A minister who was new in his post began regularly attending the church’s men’s breakfast on Saturday mornings. Each week, he asked the same question: “What’s God been up to this past week?”

Generally the men told stories of their comings and goings or how they had participated in a church activity. One man kept quiet every week until one Saturday morning he burst out: “I knew that you’d ask this question for the umpteenth time! It’s made me really mad until this week when I began to really think about it…” And he proceeded to tell a story that began with God, not himself or the church.

“Practical atheism” vs “spiritual discernment”

Research in churches in many places around the globe has found that when people are asked about their beliefs, they will affirm the creeds and their faith in God’s care. However, when asked to describe God’s activity – what God’s up to, how God’s working – the responses tend to be about human or churchy activity. People, not God, become the subject of the sentence: “We’ve been running a children’s club”; “There’s a new cafe ministry happening.”

This is what we call “practical atheism”.

On the other hand, when churches journey through the PMC process, they stop talking about the church so much and start talking about God. This is the result of asking repeatedly and intentionally: “What is God up to here?” This question is the essence of what we call “spiritual discernment” – one of the six “holy habits” of the PMC journey.

We are inviting churches to develop a way of life that is attentive to the movement of the Spirit among them and in the world around them (as we see in the case of one Nottingham church). God is present and active, working for good at all times and in all circumstances – even on a cross. Our task is to “discover what God is up to and join in”.

Spiritual discernment: paying attention

To discover what God is up to, we must pay attention to three things.

1. The first is the Scriptures and our theological traditions. What do we know of God from the testimony of the Bible and the saints who have preceded us? We need to understand God as revealed in Jesus Christ and learn from those who have recognised the movement of the Spirit through the ages. This in turn can fuel our imaginations.
2. Second, we need to pay attention to our own experience. What are the emerging passions and concerns among the church? What gives us joy and makes us feel most alive? Who is coming to be part of our congregation and flourishing through our ministry? These questions go beyond evaluating our perceived effectiveness. They focus our attention on what is stirring in the hearts of our fellowship.
3. Third, we need to pay attention to what is happening among the people around us in our wider community and society. Who are our neighbours? What are the passions, interests and concerns that clamour for attention among them? What shapes their lives and how are these things changing? We can gain insights in this area from the media and social commentary and from observation and conversation.

Detectives of divinity

Having these three perspectives in mind, we ask the question, “What is God up to?” How does the God revealed in Scripture respond to the cries of people around us? Are we in tune with this and responding likewise? Or have we become so preoccupied with ourselves that we are oblivious to the needs around us? Perhaps we can find God at work among those who would never darken the doors of our church?

Again, the question is not, what is the church doing? Our aim is to discern what God is up to. Our response is to name this and to try to align ourselves with the Spirit.

Churches that have taken this practice seriously have created congregations full of detectives of divinity. We have noticed an enormous increase in encouragement, energy and enthusiasm when people create and articulate sentences with God as the subject of an active verb, for example: “God is bringing…”, “God is helping…”, “God is moving…”. They now sense that God is alive and active among them.

If you would like to find out more about spiritual discernment, one of the six “holy habits” in the Partnership for Missional Church process, contact Nigel Rooms, leader of PMC in the UK: nigel.rooms [at] churchmissionsociety.org

If you would like to read more about the six holy habits, purchase Forming the Missional Church: creating deep cultural change in congregations (P139) at grovebooks.co.uk

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The post How to… notice what God is up to appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

We go ringside at a church in Nottingham, where the idea of “wrestling with faith” is taken to a whole new level

By Jeremy Woodham

The House of Pain Wrestling Academy. It would be a great name for a church. A truthful name. A house where pain is held, shouldered, wrestled with – ultimately leading to victory.

There is one church in Nottingham where you can see this story being vividly played out on Saturday nights – and in a rather more ‘in your face’ way than it is on a Sunday morning.

The ‘congregation’ on Saturday nights is a little different too. Though you will find members of St Ann with Emmanuel church there, cheering along with other wrestling fans – because this is where the House of Pain Wrestling Academy now stages monthly shows. They regularly attract around 120 people, many of whom had nothing to do with the church in the past.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were some initial objections to hosting wrestling shows in the church, says church warden Kevin Redmond (who has turned up in his House of Pain t-shirt). “At first some of the older generation were a bit against having violence in the church,” he says. But opinions changed.

“I think it was three shows in and the vicar came down to watch the show,” says Paul ‘Stixx’ Grint, the man at the heart of House of Pain wrestling. “She came down early and saw everyone working as a team to set up, and then she saw the same people squaring off as good guys and villains and she just got it straight away. That it was almost meant to be a morality tale: that good overcomes – or bad overcomes by questionable means, but that bad guy will eventually lose and get their comeuppance.

“It’s fun, it’s action, it’s like a comic book come to life.”

The initial House of Pain link came through Kevin, whose daughters were training at the wrestling school, which was looking for a new venue.

“Now it’s just second nature but at first it was nerve wracking,” says Kevin. “Even with our mission statement of breaking down barriers it was quite a big barrier.”

That mission statement of ‘Believing in St Ann’s and breaking down barriers’ came from the church’s participation in the Partnership for Missional Church journey, which is now being offered by Church Mission Society in the UK. St Ann with Emmanuel was one of the first UK churches to adopt the PMC process.

“Partnership for Missional Church caused to us to wrestle with being a church for the community around us and it’s ironic I suppose that out of that we have got wrestling in the church,” comments Kevin.

St Ann’s is a community that bears a lot of stigma from drug and gang related violence in the past.

“Mud sticks sometimes I’m afraid and people forget what a hard working community this place is and how everyone looks out for each other,” says Kevin.

“A lot of different places have been shut down and everyone says the church is the centre of the community. Partnership for Missional Church has helped us realise how to utilise that.”

One of the outcomes was being willing to open the doors to House of Pain.

As well as turning out to be a surprisingly affordable and family-friendly entertainment (£15 for a family of four), Kevin reckons the wrestling has had an all-round positive impact. The shows have brought in some who would not have set foot in St Ann’s before and on show nights the police have noted a marked drop in anti-social behaviour.

Arriving early for the show meant getting to meet the wrestlers and watch them work together to set up the ring and practise some of their moves. The biggest surprise was how sweet and gentle they all were – and it was immediately obvious what strong friendships existed in the House of Pain community.

It seemed like a community many churches would be jealous of. Wrestling really seems to be life-changing for some.

Andrew Parker, or ‘Syntax’ as he is known, is not afraid to say “wrestling probably saved my life.”

“When I started wrestling I was about 20 stone. I don’t mind saying that I was depressed and pretty much suicidal. I knew I needed to make a change. I chose to do wrestling at that point because I thought it would be ‘Oh, there’s no wrestling schools, I can’t do it; I can give it up and go back to my life of being a 20-stone hermit.’ But as luck would have it, on the doorstep there was House of Pain wrestling and, as luck would have it, it was run by Stixx who is one of the most encouraging tutors you will ever meet in your life.

“I remember my first lesson: even though I had no athletic ability, I was accepted. I found a huge group of friends there, everyone just wanted you to succeed.”

Now Syntax is not only a popular wrestler; he has qualified as a personal trainer. “I can put on a mask and suddenly I’m not me. I can entertain the kids, I can high-five them. I’m someone completely different and I can bring those experiences into Andrew Parker the person and make him better for life.”

The wrestlers have played their part in blending church and community, Kevin explains, and even pitched in with the church spring clean. “In June they did a charity show for the church as a thank you for letting them use the place. So we are working quite hand-in-hand.

“Most of the British wrestlers call this church the spiritual home of wrestling; that’s how they refer to it. A few of the people from the wrestling are slowly discovering the church. Sometimes they wanted to pray in the church.”

A prayer station, with wrestling related prayers, was well received: “That kind of thing, it goes above and beyond,” Stixx says. “That’s a really awesome gesture as a far as I’m concerned.”

Both Stixx and Syntax say they are agnostic but open when it comes to faith. But as Syntax says, “You can’t deny how this community is brought together, just by the existence of this place.

“This church brings people from all round the community and gives them a purpose. Whether you believe in God or not you can’t deny that’s a power for good.”

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The post Welcome to the House of Pain appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).