I'm writing this from an attic in Sheffield, my room in a low budget B&B! This week I have been attending 'The Pilgrimage' at St Thomas Crookes and St Thomas Philadelphia in Sheffield. This is one of the biggest and most dynamic Anglican/Baptist Churches in the country and have a fascinating approach to being Church and doing mission.
The subtitle of the week is 'Developing Missional Communities', which sounds rather a mouthful, but actually is quite simple. Groups of people who have a particular vision for mission to those around them make it their primary purpose and form a community of people to support it. Some of the ways they do mission are quite familiar and people in Whitwick, Thringstone and Swannington are already doing them. They have just found a way to keep doing stuff they enjoy and bringing people into the kingdom.
One example - a good one for a city with two universities - is that a group of students decided to reach out to their fellow students by offering to clean their communal kitchens. Anyone who has seen a shared kitchen in a house full of students will know just how disgusting they can become. So this group has been making an offer that a lot of students have found absolutely brilliant and has led to relationships and people joining the cleaning group's other activities.
So instead of having a brief but very intense - and extremely exhausting - week of mission, mission is going on in different ways the whole time. All of the good ideas that we have had at different times don't have to be left in abeyance until mission week comes around.
Different groups may have a heart for different situations and serve people around them in different ways. Similar to ways that are part of our church programmes. The difference is that those who do those things form not just a team for that purpose, but form a small community who share life together. So they worship as a group, they socialise as a group, and they reach out to the people they feel God is calling them to care for.
Sometimes a group that exists to provide a ministry within the church, such as worship group, or mother and toddler group, women's group etc etc decided to become a missional community. We heard of one of the early groups that decided to do that and out of 30 people involved, 27 left! Later the group grew and developed in mission.
I was reminded of that time when many of Jesus' disciples left him, when the challenge became too great, and he said to the twelve - are you going to leave me as well?
This has also been a time of personal blessing for me. So thank you to all who continue to pray for me on my sabbatical. Please keep it up.
