Urban To The Core: Motives for Incarnational Mission

Over the last twelve months I have been working on producing a book about Urban Expression and after much procrastination and distraction, it is finally at the printers!  On 29 January Urban To The Core: Motives for Incarnation Mission will be available.  This is some of the blurb I have started to circulate about it:

“Why would anyone choose to move into one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the country? Why would parents take their children to live in an inner city estate? What leads church ministers to give up the security of a salary and a house to have the freedom to go and live in the shadow of a high rise tower block?  Urban To The Core gets to the heart of the motives which have inspired more than one hundred people to relocate to inner-city communities in Britain with Urban Expression.”

 

I have written this book because I think the story of Urban Expression might inspire and motivate people to think differently about our world.  As the global population becomes overwhelmingly urban and the church in the West comes to terms with its diminishing ability to connect meaningfully with the majority of society, I wanted to showcase the significant steps a small group of people have been taking to bridge the gap and prioritise those on the margins of society and the church.

 

In 2012 Urban Expression celebrated its fifteenth anniversary.  Each of the one hundred plus people who have joined our teams inspire me, and their commitment to the urban poor is something to celebrate.  I have written this book to honour them and draw out their street level experiences and stories.  This book is rich with their personal, sociological and theological reflections.  The lessons they share with honesty and vulnerability will resource, equip and inspire the reader as they consider how they live out their own faith in a majority urban world.

 

I think this book is a helpful purchase for those who are concerned about the future shape of mission and for those who want to be inspired and equipped to engage with our majority urban world.  It seems to me that many contemporary books on missional church tickle the ears of suburban Christians but do not face up to the fact that the world is urban to the core with most of the world’s population living in cities. I fear that strategies which fail to prioritise cities will become increasingly inadequate.  This collaborative and multi-voiced book reveals what has motivated us to prioritise the urban poor and offers stories and reflections to provoke, inspire and challenge.

 

You can access more information about the book and read the generous endorsements from Colin Marchant, Pat Took, Gary Bishop, Ann Morisy, Peter Sidebotham, Fran Beckett and Mike Frost here (no I didn’t pay them!!):

 

http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=2052

 

I have self-published this book and so any purchases will help to cover those costs and any profit will support the ongoing work of Urban Expression.  The way to enable most money to go towards this is to buy books direct from me.  You can contact me at enquiries@urbanexpression.org.uk.  Alternatively you can buy from Troubador who will still pass on more of the money than Amazon or other online book stores.  I am hoping it will be available as an ebook sometime soon.

 

If you read the book and like it (!) and feel able to write a review and signpost others, that would be very much appreciated.

#Occupy

Last month I wrote a post about the Openshaw guys and the work they do in Sure Start centres and I asked whether churches might be prepared to step in to help if and when centres like these close.

Having followed the Occupy movement closely and now watching the innovative development of the Bank of Ideas I find myself deeply challenged and asking how many of us would have the courage, determination and creativity to take over empty buildings and reclaim them for community use?

David Cameron has been in search of Big Society – surely the voluntary re-occupation of empty buildings and facilitation of community resources is exactly what he has been looking for – right?  According to this Bank Statement he should be quite pleased!

When our local Sure Start centre, youth club, care home, social club or shops close (as they will continue to) will we sit back and bemoan the sad situation or will we take community action into our own hands and re-open them ourselves?  Remember: schools, hospitals, hospices, children’s homes etc didn’t exist until someone somewhere identified the problem and simply got on with it.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?  ARE THERE CLOSED BUILDINGS YOU THINK SHOULD BE RE-OPENED?  WOULD YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO?

Leave comments below

 

 

 

Urban Saint

I have fallen behind with my blogging but my brain is going to burst if I don’t start writing some down soon, so I thought I would start with the most important one first:

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On Friday 18 November I attended the funeral of Kathryn Copsey at Church of the Ascension in Custom House.  Kathryn died on 11th November having fought a brain tumour for 1 year.  Having had a long term presence in East London with her husband Nigel for many years Kathryn was a natural person to connect with as we began the work of Urban Expression back in 1997.  I am no good at remembering dates, but early on Kathryn became a member of our founding steering group and helped to formulate an initiative which has grown out of East London to other inner cities.  When new steering groups formed in other cities Kathryn chose to remain on the London Steering Group in order to retain a local focus.

Not only was she interested in the mechanics of Urban Expression but at her core she wanted to spend time with children and was interested in helping us establish some meaningful work with some of the most marginalised children in Tower Hamlets

It was beautiful to hear tributes from people who told stories from many aspects of her life.  Throughout her life Kathryn has maintained a passion for people to know God and has focussed that passion especially on children in inner-city neighbourhoods.  This led her to develop numerous resources and the establishment of CURBS.  Kathryn believed that every child was made in the image of God and as such in every child there was a ‘God-spark’ that could be discovered – she wrote about this spirituality in her highly acclaimed book From the Ground Up.  Kathryn contributed to the fledgling work of E1 Community Church (Cable Street Community Church as it was when it started) and tested out some of her materials on the energetic, beautiful, diverse children of Shadwell, Stepney and Wapping, allowing her passion and informal teaching style to rub off on to us.

I remember fondly the evenings spent in our kitchen in Shadwell with Kathryn as we ran ad-hoc ‘clubs’ for local children.  So often these felt like nothing particularly special and certainly incomparible to many well-resourced youth programmes, but looking back I can see without doubt how these affected so many childrens’ lives – children who are  growing up knowing that there is a God-spark within them still.

One of the things that made me cry was when someone said that Kathryn had commented only some time before her diagnosis that she wished she had made more of a difference.  It is tempting to feel that unless our work gets public accolade that it is not significant or does not make much of a difference.  It hit a chord with me because I recognise a similar trait in myself – always wanting what I do to make a difference but convinced there is always more to do. I hope Kathryn came to realise how valuable her ministry was and I pray that in years to come she will rejoice with the angels as she sees the fruit.

And I pray for those who take up the mantle in CURBS that they will continue to provide much need resources for children in urban situations for whom standard materials, often written from a middle-class, suburban, churched perspective, don’t relate.  CURBS are being prophetic, for one day soon there will be hardly any children in the UK who grow up in churches and then these resources will come into their own.

Along with many others I give thanks for Kathryn, a creative, incarnational prophet and value deeply the foundations she has laid in East London that others have the privilege of building upon.  On Saturday at our Urban Expression Community day we reflected on one of our values which says:

We respect others working alongside us in the inner city and are grateful for the foundations laid by the many who have gone before us.

In response we wrote on bricks the names of those who have laid foundations in our neighbourhoods and gave thanks for them, adding our own fingerprints and DNA in the concrete as we seek to play our part in laying foundations too.

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Sure Start – Sure Beginnings

The first place David Kerrigan, Peter Dunn & Mat Wilson visited on their tour of Urban Expression in Manchester last Friday was a Sure Start centre in Openshaw.  Here Tim Presswood & Clare McBeath were hosting the Living Well project which offers play & craft for toddlers and parents/carers plus free fruit & juice.

Whilst there we met local Mancunians plus newer ‘locals’ recently arrived from Syria, Jordan & Algeria.  Reflections on the issues asylum seekers and immigrants face will be reflected on in more detail in future blogs but here I want to reflect on the situation many Sure Start centres and churches find themselves in.

I guess on one hand the Living Well project is not much different to the thousands of toddler groups run in church halls up and down the country.  Churches have always been superb at running such groups and without them there would be a massive gap in opportunities for parents and children to mix and support one another.  But what makes the Living Well project special is that it is taking what churches are brilliant at doing and making it even more accessible for those who will not naturally enter a church building.  The Living Well project has found a home in a purpose built welcoming centre of community life.

But Sure Start is in trouble.  The budget cuts caused by the recession are biting hard and thousands of Sure Start staff are losing their jobs and thus Sure Start programmes are being slashed to the all but necessary.  In this sad situation there is an opportunity for churches which already have a reputation for positive children’s provision to step in and offer to help sustain these excellent centres.  If a church already has links with their local Sure Start centre it may be easier to begin the conversation, but even if connections need to be initiated from scratch, their assistance, from what I have seen, is likely to be welcomed.

But why shouldn’t churches just wait for the local children’s provisions to close and then woo people into their existing groups?  Well, I guess that is one (selfishly-motivated?) option and indeed parents may well look for other opportunities when their regular programme is disturbed.  But these Sure Start centres are purpose-built places (better equipment than many a church hall play group that I have seen!) and have in themselves become inclusive centres of community life for many.  Perhaps in serving these excellent places and helping to prop up a valuable resource to society (especially valuable to our poorer neighbourhoods) we can play our part in working together to get through the tough times ahead and prove that the church and the Good News is there for all and show that followers of Jesus are prepared to go out of their comfort zone for the benefit of others.

Tim & Clare are both ministers of Openshaw Baptist Church which currently has no building, so the impetus for utilising existing places is high.  As they progress towards creating a new building of their own, the challenge will be how not to lose the exceptional benefits gained by not having one!

BMS visit to Urban Expression Manchester

Last Friday David Kerrigan, Peter Dunn & Mat Wilson of  BMS World Mission spent a day visiting our Urban Expression teams in Manchester.  It was one of the most encouraging visits we have ever had, mostly I think because these guys live in a ‘missionary’ paradigm rather than a ‘maintenance’ one. 

Urban Expression occasionally has all sorts of visitors.  Many leave us encouraged, most leave us pondering useful questions, some leave us feeling discouraged and as if we have to defend why we are committed to pioneering new forms of church in the inner-cities.  The BMS guys last week did not shy away from asking good questions to help us think, but they did so from a stand-point which ‘got’ what we are about. 

Over the coming days I will try to compose my reflections on this visit but for now let me share with you one of the most encouraging things that I heard.  Together Mat, Peter & David agreed that if they were receiving reports from their BMS missionaries overseas which included stories like they heard and witnessed on Friday in Manchester, they would be delighted

I am so pleased that Urban Expression is working in partnership with BMS World Mission.  There are still things to learn about how a mission agency which has for centuries sent people overseas can support mission in an increasingly post-Christian and unchurched Britain, but it is a learning journey that we are delighted to be on together.

You can read David’s reflections of his visit on his blog here.