Are you looking for a way to reach families who are not in our churches on Sundays? 

A ‘Messy Fiesta’ is a Saturday workshop to experience and learn about Messy Church.

Messy Church aims to create the opportunity for adults and children to enjoy expressing their creativity, sit down together to eat a meal, experience worship and have fun within a church context.

Reach out to children & young families in your community through Messy Church. This event is both for people who are new to Messy Church and for those who’ve already started up Messy Churches. Connect with others, share ideas and figure out what’s next when you join us for a great day of fun, learning & networking.

To find out more about Messy Church, visit the website where it all started and check out the video at http://www.messychurch.org.uk

Join us at Christ the King – Dietrich Bonhoeffer Lutheran Church in Thornhill ON

on Saturday Feb. 18th from 10 to 3, doors open at 9:30.  Cost is $25.00 each (includes lunch).  

Presenters: Rev. Nancy Rowe (MC Practitioner for over 4 years) & Sue Kalbfleisch (MC Regional Coordinator)

Information and Registration

Length:  1h:13m

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Are you looking for a way to reach families who are not in our churches on Sundays? 

A ‘Messy Fiesta’ is a Saturday workshop to experience and learn about Messy Church.

Messy Church aims to create the opportunity for adults and children to enjoy expressing their creativity, sit down together to eat a meal, experience worship and have fun within a church context.

Reach out to children & young families in your community through Messy Church. This event is both for people who are new to Messy Church and for those who’ve already started up Messy Churches. Connect with others, share ideas and figure out what’s next when you join us for a great day of fun, learning & networking.  Cost is $20.00 each (includes lunch).  Bring a team of 3 or more for $15.00 each.

To find out more about Messy Church, visit the website where it all started and check out the video at www.messychurch.org.uk

Presenters: Rev. Nancy Rowe (MC Practitioner for 4 years) & Sue Kalbfleisch (MC Regional Coordinator)

Info and Registration

Are you looking for a way to reach families who are not in our churches on Sundays? 

A ‘Messy Fiesta’ is a Saturday workshop to experience and learn about Messy Church.

Messy Church aims to create the opportunity for adults and children to enjoy expressing their creativity, sit down together to eat a meal, experience worship and have fun within a church context.

Reach out to children & young families in your community through Messy Church. This event is both for people who are new to Messy Church and and for those who’ve already started up Messy Churches. Connect with others, share ideas and figure out what’s next when you join us for a great day of fun, learning & networking.  Cost is $20.00 each (includes lunch).

To find out more about Messy Church, visit the website where it all started and check out the video at www.messychurch.org.uk

Register by:  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2011

Presenters: Rev. Nancy Rowe (MC Practitioner for 4 years) & Sue Kalbfleisch (MC Regional Coordinator)

More Info and Registration

Are you looking for a way to reach families who are not in our churches on Sundays?

A ‘Messy Fiesta’ is a Saturday workshop to experience and learn about Messy Church.

Messy Church aims to create the opportunity for adults and children to enjoy expressing their creativity, sit down together to eat a meal, experience worship and have fun within a church context.

You will have an opportunity to experience what Messy Church (MC) can offer your church.  The session will allow you to experience a MC, brainstorm your own MC, gather resources, and explore the history of this innovative way of being Church in a changing world.  You will take away knowledge, skills and materials to help you get started.  In addition there will be sessions for those who have already started a Messy Church and want to connect – a ‘seasoned’ practitioner will lead this group.

Presenters: Rev. Nancy Rowe (MC Practitioner for 4 years) and Sue Kalbfleisch (MC Regional Coordinator)

Nancy and Sue have presented 7 Messy Church Workshops/Messy Fiestas over the past year from which have sprung a number of Messy Churches.

Downloadable File:  Registraton form

On Saturday, January 29^th, thirty-four parish leaders (clergy and lay) braved the wintry weather to attend a Messy Fiesta (a Messy Church workshop from 10 to 3) at the Burgessville United Church in Burgessville Ontario led by Rev. Nancy Rowe and Susan Kalbfleisch.

The day began with everyone participating in a Messy Church with a variety of activities – craft tables, games and even a treasure hunt in the sanctuary. Everyone was immediately engaged and one participant remarked, “I’ve never experienced such enthusiasm this early in any workshop I have attended in the past.”  After the activities, we engaged in a brief worship time and then shared fellowship during our meal – just like at a Messy Church gathering.

Following lunch Sue and Nancy discussed the importance of Fresh Expressions as new ways of being church in our current culture and specifically how the Messy Church model meets the spiritual needs of young families who are unable to attend regular Sunday worship. Like all Fresh Expressions, Messy Church is not a church program, but a self-contained worship community.  The presentations were followed by a time for questions and answers.

Special thanks to Rev. Kent Garrett and his team at Burgessville United for hosting a great day!

The Hard Stone Café (HSC) began at St. John’s (Stone) Anglican Church, in Saint John, NB, in 2002, as a connection point for youth, aged 13– 18yrs, and in particular for youth without a prior connection to church or Christianity.  This was one program in an umbrella of programs created to engage the community directed by Ven. David Edwards, Rector of Stone Church. David commissioned his then, newly appointed Youth Minister, Jonathan Springthorpe, to create an event for the young people of Saint John. What began as a monthly event developed into a community, and a fresh expression of “Church”.

Here, in his own words, Jonathan Springthorpe recalls the growth and development of the Hard Stone Café.

“The Hard Stone Café came from humble beginnings in December of 2002. The Stone Church Youth Group helped to construct a stage for musicians, put up decorations, and helped to create a menu of slushy drinks (non-alcoholic of course). As the event approached, my anticipation grew of crowds of youth piling into the church ready to hear the Gospel, yet instead of crowds only two brave souls entered the gothic revival exterior to attend the first Hard Stone Café. The youth group had not invited their friends with any enthusiasm, as they feared I would use the café as a “bait and switch” evangelistic event. After the first HSC event, the youth group invited their friends without fear and we had about 10-15 youth from the community at the second café.

Early on several colleagues in youth ministry inquired if they could bring their youth groups. David and I were committed to reaching the “unchurched”, and we wanted to protect the Hard Stone Café from becoming another event for church youth. We decided that while all youth were welcome we would not host organized Christian groups.

Within two years the attendance had grown to an average of 25-30 youth from the community. In spite of the growth, our experience was one of frustration. We longed to share the Gospel with those who came to the café but we felt like our hands were tied. We feared that any strong witness would break the trust we had worked hard to build and we found out that our fear was justified. On one occasion the Christian musical guests, contrary to our instructions, began the evening with the intimate worship song: “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” and all but four of the Youth Group cleared the room. It was as if someone was spraying teen repellent into the air. Most “unchurched” youth were suspicious, and often critical of “organized religion”. Many youth were reluctant to come to the café because it was in a church.

From the beginning we had hoped we could find Christian musicians who were able to play secular tunes as well. The evening would begin with secular cover songs, many of them classic rock of the 70’s, and 90’s. Once the youth were comfortable the musicians would play a Christian song or two, introducing them as a musical expression of a personal belief in God. Christians could share something brief about God, provided it was through the medium of music. Music is the currency of teen culture. This strategy worked well at times but we simply couldn’t find many musicians who were comfortable playing both secular and Christian music.

An important step forward happened when one of the youth group, asked me: “can my friend’s band play at the next café?” Permitting community youth to play presented us with potential problems: lyrics and spontaneous interactions with the crowd could contain profanity and offensive material, not to mention encourage “moshing” (definition available on UrbanDictionary.com). We became conscious that we were bridging two completely different worlds: the congregation of Stone Church, and the youth of Saint John. We agreed to let outside musicians play, but we drew up guidelines that they must abide by: “lyrics must be 100% free from profanity and explicit lyrics”; for safety reasons: “no moshing”, and musicians had to arrive an hour before the start of the cafe. Virtually all of the bands, in their gratitude for an opportunity to play were happy to respect the guidelines.

Certain aspects of teen culture can be baffling. In 6 years of hosting teen musicians, the audiences were uniformly supportive of their peers, even when an attempt at music was painfully amateur.  Subsequently, the Hard Stone Café became known as the “only all ages venue” in Saint John at the time. The youth of the community rallied around the café, helping to promote the events, spreading the word, and helping to recruit musical guests. Parents of band members stayed on occasion, and were thrilled with the Hard Stone Café. In a few years the phrase: “the café” was adopted in the vocabulary of local youth; this is a milestone of acceptance in teen culture.  A core group of youth from the community began to attend the café faithfully. They were not Christians though God was at work in them.

In May 2008, attendance at the Hard Stone Café reached record numbers through the popular social networking site “Facebook”. Over 800 invitations went out throughout the Greater Saint John area, one friend inviting another, and over 150 youth showed up. It was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. We had to ask some people to leave the loft area and move to the “overflow rooms” for safety. Nine bands had shown up to play and we came close to turning youth away at the door. There was no doubt that we had made inroads into the youth culture but we were still wondering how we could share Christ with them in this setting.

Not by some brilliant design but by necessity something happened. The café began at 7pm and finished around 9pm. The youth group from Stone Church remained till 10:30pm to clean up. Many parents from Stone expressed their displeasure that it finished so late. To address this concern we added a youth group sleepover after the Café. This served to reward the youth group who had worked before and during the café in service of our guests. These sleepovers became times of natural discipleship that I relished. We would worship and talk about the Scriptures together sometimes well past 3am. We began a regular time of worship that became the highlight of the evening for the Christian youth.

The next step forward happened when the core group from the community began to hang out with the youth group after the café. They requested to join the sleepover event. Initially, I was hesitant as I would need to contact their parents to be sure they were permitted to stay, and there was a question in my mind: would their presence interfere with our time of Worship? The first time our group was about to ascend to the upper room to begin our worship I wondered how they would respond. To my great surprise the visiting youth joined us, mostly out of curiosity. These non-Christian youth experienced in their own words: “something inspiring”, though they did not know exactly what.

In the following months this core helped to welcome other youth to the worship session after introducing it as “this God thing”. Over six to eight months teens who were previously hard against organized religion were softening to the Gospel. God was at work in these lives and a number of them came to faith.  The Hard Stone Café had evolved into a form of church that was drawing youth from the community without having to strategize. A new Christian community was forming.

In hindsight, the program that started in Dec. of 2002 that would evangelize young people, turned out to be the start of a remarkable journey. Through much of the journey we felt lost and unable to reach the youth of the wider community for Christ. We learned the importance of community. We learned to work as a team, with the Stone Church Youth Group, as partners in outreach, and seeds of a community were sown.

My time in leadership of the Hard Stone Café came to an end a year ago with a move to Toronto to attend Wycliffe College. The Hard Stone Café continues under the direction of, Catherine Bonham, one of my colleagues in Threshold Ministries. It is my conviction that the way to reach “unchurched” young people is through fresh expressions of church.”

Jonathan Springthorpe

Evangelist, Threshold Ministries

see the HSC in action

Behold! Something stirs in the English countryside

“Tanworth-in-Arden is a small rural parishbetween Birmingham and Redditch. Paul Cudby, vicar of St Mary Magdalene church, explains what they are doing to reach those who don’t ‘do’ church.” read more

Peter McCracken, Rev. Christine Piper and Thor Stewart have joined together to start up a Tuesday-night youth ministry based on skateboarding. Melissa Di Costanzo

What started out as a problem, turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for the the people of  St. James the Apostle Church in Perth ON.  Many people know the story having seen the video, “Skater Church”, online, or at Vision Days across the country. Reaching out to the skateboarding community in Perth was not at the top of anyone’s to-do list, except for God’s, apparently!

Offering a much needed winter home for the many skateboarders and would-be skateboards in the surrounding area, aged anywhere from five to twenty years,  was so successful , that it proved necessary to devote two evenings a week to this venture! So now once again the people of St. James are preparing to open their hall, and their hearts, for a second season of “skate church” on Tuesday November 30th. During a recent conversation with some of the leaders, it became obvious they felt that all this was very much God’s doing. Questions about “where will the leaders come from?” now some of the older skaters have moved away, and how to approach providing those who wish with opportunities to discover more about Jesus, are very much in the minds of  the leaders.

God’s guidance as well as provision is obviously needed, and so those of us who have been stirred by the story of “Skater Church” have an opportunity to support our friends in Perth, by praying for them and the skaters as they commence a new season, against the backdrop of a rash of teen suicides since the spring in the region.

Sue Kalbfleisch, Paul and Lucy Moore

Lucy Moore, (inventor of Messy Church,) touched down in Vancouver in June, for ten days of Canadian messiness! Shortly after arriving home in Cowplain, Hampshire, she wrote this in her blog.

“The flight home was in the company of a young Canadian figure skater come to train for the summer months at Nottingham ice rink. She was full of drive, ambition, vision, confidence and though it was hard to assess her degree of talent whilst jammed into Economy Class, she obviously felt that the future was packed with opportunity. Her mum had loved her enough to let her leave home for two months and spread her wings. Without wanting to get too sentimental about it, I feel the same for Messy Church, the young fresh expression I’ve helped drop off in Canada. It’s all in such good hands: those of the wonderful people who have shown me what real hospitality to strangers is – Elizabeth Northcott in Ladner with her warmth, glowing enthusiasm and seemingly endless reservoirs of love for the people in her parish; Louise Peters, the Dean of Kamloops Cathedral and Barbara Andrews, the bishop, with their creativity, drive, wide vision and bubbling energy; Maddie, Quinn, Thomas and the dynamic clergy of Edmonton Diocese who, if they can manage that level of energy and incisive questioning at the end of a clergy conference, will take Messy Church on with astute and clear strategic planning that can only enrich our understanding of what God is doing through it all.

I need more time to reflect on my Canadian adventure, but as I sit here at home, reeling slightly with jetlag, I am filled with gratitude for having been given this fantastic opportunity to travel and enjoy so many people and places, for the sense of sowing seeds and for the love of Christ bouncing round the world that’s made it all possible. My prayer is that the ideas behind Messy Church will be used sensitively in that different culture and climate to help more people enjoy this warm global family in a cold world. And that perhaps one day I’ll be able to return.

And see a bear.”

Lucy kept a daily diary of her trip. Read all the entries here.

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“I found the Messy Fiesta event to be exciting and inspiring.

With remarkable joy and creativity, Christian worship/education was offered in an inviting, open-minded atmosphere, with wonderful intergenerational appeal. It has huge potential as a means for inviting and welcoming those who are spiritually hungry, but not attracted to a traditional way of doing church. We are delighted at the prospect of beginning Messy Church ministry at St. John’s, Thorold this Fall.” These words, from Rev. Cathie Crawford Browning following the Messy Fiesta (Messy Church workshop) on May 15^th, capture the essence of Messy Church and the two Messy Fiestas held in April and May this Spring in Ontario. 

Messy Church is a fresh expression of church that is drawing families and children to learn about God, as they engage in a faith community in a new and exciting way. Messy Church was developed in the UK as a way of reaching families who weren’t part of the ‘traditional’ church or who due to their busy schedules were unable to attend Sunday worship. As the dynamics of our culture are in constant flux many parents have only the weekend to spend with their children and don’t want to spend it in traditional church while their children are in Sunday School. Messy Church aims to create the opportunity for adults and children to enjoy expressing their creativity, sit down together to eat a meal, experience worship and have fun within a church context, often midweek. Messy Church is a way to reach families who are not in our churches on Sundays.

“Messy Church is a welcome alternative congregational approach that can stand side by side with a traditional Sunday morning congregation. It accommodates the needs of family life while being innovative and post modern.  It may resemble the early church groups with gatherings, discussions and a meal followed by short worship.” Annette Hoare, St. Alban’s Beamsville.

As co-presenter Rev. Nancy Rowe said, “Part of the format for the Messy Fiesta day was to do a Messy Church so that parish leaders could get a feel for what a Messy Church is like. Messy Church is aimed at young families, and certainly that is the nucleus of our Messy Church at St. George’s, Georgetown.   At first it seemed quite strange doing a Messy Church that was adults only, but the energy and spirit of Messy Church is infectious, no matter what the age, the workshop participants were able to enter into the uniqueness of Messy Church to experience the power of God renewing God’s Church. I left each   Messy Fiesta in awe of God’s on-going intrepid plan for us.”

Thanks to St. George’s, Georgetown (April 24^th) and St. John the Evangelist, Thorold (May 15^th) for hosting the Messy Fiestas and all the enthusiastic participants. For more information about Messy Church, contact me at ask@nas.net

Sue Kalbfleisch

Messy Church Regional Coordinator

Sue

You have seen them and so have I: bright, enthusiastic young people leading worship, heading out on short term mission trips, collecting food for the food bank. And we think, “Ah, the future of the church is in good hands.”

But what happens to those young people in the years that follow? Do they fulfill their potential for church leadership. If so, why? And if not, why not?

For many years, my wife and I worked in a Leadership Training Program at Ontario Pioneer Camp, an interdenominational camp in Ontario, Canada. Over that time, we worked with around a total of over 1,200 young people.

In 2003, I had the opportunity of a sabbatical from my teaching, and decided to try and find out what had happened to this particular group of lively, committed Christian teenagers. Where were they now, in terms of faith and church involvement? And what might we learn from them about what keeps them in the faith—or drives them away?

I prepared an online survey, and invited them to fill it out. They were asked to identify where they were at spiritually, and answer appropriate questions. Their main options were:

1. “You still call yourself a Christian and are involved in church.” There were 251 who chose this survey, 75% of the respondents. I refer to these as Loyal Believers.Roughly one third of these (eighty-three), although they are active Christians today, had a time of six months or more when they were away from church and/or faith. This is a distinctive group, so I call them Returned Believers.
2. “You would no longer call yourself a Christian and have dropped out of church life.” There were fourteen who chose this survey, 4% of respondents. I refer to these as Former Believers.
3. “You still consider yourself a Christian but have more or less dropped out of church.” There were fifty-seven who chose this survey, or 17% of respondents. I call these Absent Believers.

All told, I received responses from a total of 333 people, about 28% of the potential pool. As I read through the answers, there were a number of things that jumped out at me. Each one is discussed more fully in the book, but here are some of the highlights:

1. The first surprise was why those who were continuing in faith and church involvement did so. I had assumed that friends would be the primary influence. Well, friends came high on the list, at 80.9%, but two factors were rated higher. Mentors rated fractionally higher, at 82.3%. But topping the list was (can you guess?) “my relationship God” at 89%. It’s obvious, I suppose, as soon as you say it: people continue in their Christian faith because of the reality of God.Not only that, but I was quite startled to find that, in response after response, people spontaneously stated their faith in strong, personal and passionate ways. They testified to their love for God, their dependence on God, their gratitude to God, and so on. These are clearly people who are not involved in church and faith out of a sense of obligation. They are involved because they feel strongly about their faith.
2. I thought that the main factor causing Former Believers to leave faith would be suffering (what I called a “catastrophe,” such as the loss of a child, parent, or partner). Since only fourteen Former Believers responded, I cannot draw sweeping conclusions, but certainly among those fourteen the problem of suffering received hardly a mention.What was surprising however, was the string of stories told by Loyal Believers about their suffering, including the untimely death of children and parents, and chronic debilitating illnesses. For these people, although the suffering was sometimes unbearable, it did not drive them away from faith and church, but instead their faith gave them the resources to cope with it and to survive.
3. It is remarkable how many people have changed denomination since the time they were teenagers. Three-quarters of respondents have left the denomination in which they began life. The book looks in some detail at what these changes are and why they take place, but as a general rule many would sympathize with the Absent Believer who wrote: I don’t subscribe to denominations, but rather, prefer to find a specific church with a pastor and congregation that I relate to.This research confirms what others have found, that changing denominations is a very common thing these days, although, as sociologist Reg Bibby has pointed out, the switching is often within church “families”—that is, from one conservative church to another, or from one mainline church to another. Many, but by no means all, of the changes among my respondents confirm this.
4. Many of the respondents, whichever category they put themselves in, have experienced difficulties with church and with faith: many speak of finding “hypocrisy” in the church, having values that differ from those of their church, encountering intellectual difficulties, and so on. Not only has this driven many (Absent Believers and Returned Believers in particular) away from church: it is also the thing that most often challenges the faith even of Loyal Believers! This theme of what we might call “the disappointing church” crops us frequently in the responses.
5. Largely because of this, fully one third of those presently involved in church were absent from church (less often from faith) for a period of six months or more, the longest “absence” being one of seven years. However, the range of reasons they leave, and the reasons they later return, are varied and (particularly in the reasons they return) often startling. This reinforces the fact that a number of people who are presently Absent Believers will likely return to church at some point. But, equally certain, some of those who are presently Loyal Believers will move away from church at some point. Of those, some, though not all, will return later. And (according to other people’s research), some will leave and return more than once.
6. A lot of people say how difficult moving from one town to another has been for their church involvement. It’s not easy uprooting from a faith community where you feel at home, comfortable, and needed to another where “none of the above” applies—at least, till you’ve been there some time.  As Reginald Bibby says, “every time people move, about half of them will stop attending regularly.”

So what might we learn from all this?

There is much to learn from these respondents. Three preliminary questions come to my mind:

a)      Do our youth groups teach their members what it means to have a meaningful relationship with God which will last and grow over the years? Do we dare to teach them spiritual disciplines, or do we assume these would be beyond the average teenager?

b)      Can we help young people, when they move to another town or city, to find a suitable church? Obviously it is not enough to suggest that Presbyterians (for example) simply look for another Presbyterian church. If they are leaving a family-oriented evangelical church, they are highly unlikely to settle in an ageing, theologically liberal congregation (or vice versa), even if both are Presbyterian. Are we prepared to think “kingdom” more than “denomination”?

c)      What can we learn from their criticisms of church? What these people are looking for in a church is not rocket science, neither is it inappropriate. They specifically ask:

• that followers of Jesus should cultivate a warm and open community
• that they should consider issues of truth, and be open to questions and discussion
• that they should be active in service to their community and the world, and
• that worship (whatever form it takes) should be done with excellence and should include thoughtful preaching.

In some ways, all they are asking is that churches should act like churches. After all, these criteria are pretty basic for any church. It seems as though, if we want young people to find churches credible, the best thing we can do is actually very simple (though deeply challenging): to take seriously our commitment to be a community of followers of Jesus. Is that too much for them to ask?

xxx

Growing up Christian: Why Young People Stay in Church, Leave Church and (Sometimes) Come Back to Church is published by Regent College Publishing (2010), and is available online from Amazon here or (at the end of March) from Chapters/Indigo, or it may be ordered through local bookstores.

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photo courtesy City of Ottawa

fresh expressions canada update

january 12 2010

A very Happy New Year to all of you, and especially to those in the Diocese of Ottawa who have recently joined this list following various Fresh Expressions-related events in your diocese.

It is already shaping up to be a busy year for Fresh Expressions Canada (FXCA), what with two Vital Church Planting Conferences (East & West), as well as the launch of the one year, part time,  Mission Shaped Ministry (MSM) course -a year to be equipped in planting and sustaining fresh expressions of church

MSM is expected to run from Sept. 2010 -April 2011, comprising 6 weekday evenings, 3 Saturdays, and a residential weekend away. Based in Toronto, we hope to have clusters in other cities which will meet at the same time and be conferenced together! For more information email msm@freshexpressions.ca

The newest addition to the FXCA team John Bowen will be our MSM Coordinator, contact him with any questions!

Mission Shaped Intro (MSI)-six weeks to rediscover mission and re-imagine church
This excellent six-session course can be freely downloaded and presented in your neighbourhood. To find out more email info@freshexpressions.ca

MSI Edmonton starts soon! email thomas.brauer @freshexpressions.ca for more details

Peter McCracken, Rev. Christine Piper and Thor Stewart have joined together to start up a Tuesday-night youth ministry based on skateboarding. Melissa Di Costanzo

skateboarding spirituality?

Where signs warding off skateboarders once hung, a new movement to blend skating culture with Christianity is taking root.

Tonight, Christian rock music will blare from the speakers as kids take advantage of the only place in town they can skateboard indoors. When their boards hit the ramps, they will be taking part in a new iteration of a global Christian movement called Fresh Expressions that is making the teachings of the Anglican church accessible to people who haven’t felt a connection to the traditional church… more

The first Vision Dayof 2010 takes place on Saturday, April 17, 2010 from 9:30am –               3:00pm. Hosted by: St. Mark’s Anglican Church, 5 First Avenue,
 Orangeville, ON, L9W 2Z5. Cost: $15.00
If you are interested in holding one in your area contact our Vision Day Coordinator, Sue Kalbfleisch. Contact her at vision@freshexpressions.ca

some more things to watch out for in 2010!

a Fresh Expressions Canada consultation will he held in Toronto, Feb.1-2,  prior to the Vital Church Planting-East conference. Members of the FXCA team will be meeting with Dr. Rachel Jordan and Pernell Goodyer, as well as other ecumenical partners, who are working together to see a more mission-shaped church take shape throughout Canada. Please pray for all those at this important consultation.

Two Vital Church Planting Conferences
“The annual Vital Church Planting conferences are becoming venues where some of the most creative and entrepreneurial leaders of our church—bishops, clergy and lay leaders from across the country—are gathering to network, learn, pray, and strategise together.” more

Toronto Feb. 2-4, places are limited register now!
Edmonton May 18-20, new!

Two Messy Fiestas! – days of fun and learning about Messy Church
Saturday, April 24, 2010 from 10am – 3:00pm.
Hosted by: St. George’s Anglican Church, 60 Guelph St.,
 Georgetown, ON, 
L7G 3Z5. Cost: $15.00

Saturday, May 15 , 2010 from 10am – 3:00pm
Hosted by: St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church, 12 Carleton St. S., Thorold, ON, 
L2V 5C2. .Cost: $15.00
Please contact Sue Kalbfleisch at vision@freshexpressions.ca to join the advance mailing list or with questions about Messy Fiestas! If you haven’t heard about Messy Church, go to www.messychurch.org.uk to see a great promo video!

Watch out for “Mission (im)Possible“.   A 5 week course being prepared by Jenny Andison and Stephen Drakeford to help people re-discover and re-discover mission in your context.  It’s purpose is to provide an interactive tool to assist people in beginning a conversation about what it would mean for their parishes to be shaped by the mission of God and for the mission of God. The course will be fun and easy to use and is being designed to be run over a one hour period for 5 evenings. The course would be perfect to use in Lent in your parish. It can be downloaded from the Diocese of Toronto website beginning  mid-January 2010.  If you want more information then please contact Jenny Andison, Archbishop’s Officer for Mission, at  jandison@toronto.anglican.ca

We need your stories of what’s going on in your area, to put on the FXCA website. Stories of attempts to start something new, something which may stand a chance of developing into a fresh expression of church. Here’s an example of what we are looking for, something that started partly as a result of someone attending a Fresh Expressions related event. Could it turn into a fresh expression of church? I guess we’ll have to just wait and see! Please send your story with photos to web@freshexpressions.ca

Please pray for all of us involved in encouraging “the development of fresh expressions of church alongside more traditional expressions, with the aim of seeing a more mission-shaped church take shape throughout the country.” Yes, it’s a huge job, but with God nothing is impossible, even though it is seldom easy!

Thanks so much for your interest in Fresh Expressions Canada. If you would like to support the work financially you can do so by clicking here and filling out the form, selecting “Other,” from the “I would like to direct my gift to:” options, and writing Fresh Expressions in the “Please Specify” box.

^“… let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.” Paul writing in Galatians 6:9 (The Message)

With best wishes for a mission shaped 2010, from the Fresh Expressions Canada team, Ryan, Sue, Thomas, Jenny, John, &…

Nick Brotherwood

Team Leader-Fresh Expressions Canada

nick.brotherwood@freshexpressions.ca

story by Laura Mueller, copyright Perth Courier

Peter McCracken, Rev. Christine Piper and Thor Stewart have joined together to start up a Tuesday-night youth ministry based on skateboarding. Melissa Di Costanzo

Where signs warding off skateboarders once hung, a new movement to blend skating culture with Christianity is taking root.

Tonight, Christian rock music will blare from the speakers as kids take advantage of the only place in town they can skateboard indoors. When their boards hit the ramps, they will be taking part in a new iteration of a global Christian movement called Fresh Expressions that is making the teachings of the Anglican church accessible to people who haven’t felt a connection to the traditional church…

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While there is undoubtedly a sense in which a life with God is better than one without God, it’s not a simple path of magic. Here, ‘better’ has nothing to do with false ‘prosperity gospel’ promises, and it most certainly doesn’t mean that life is easier. It can, in fact, get more complicated and difficult. Jesus also said that following him involved taking up a cross. In one famous phrase, Dietrich Bonhöffer said that when Jesus calls us to follow him he bids us come and die. One biblical writer said that ‘it is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’

I recall one of my youth ministry heroes, Mike Yaconelli, once responding to a parent who asked for help with her wayward child: ‘Yes, I can help ruin his life.’ He meant, of course, that when someone gets involved with Jesus there is no telling where it will lead, only that it will sometimes lead in unknown paths and difficult directions. In the process, it will lead to wrestling with God.

This reality of the spiritual life is clearly pictured in several biblical passages, but perhaps most clearly in the story of Jacob wrestling with the ‘angel of the Lord’ (who in fact turns out to be none other than a manifestation of God). Jacob wrestles with God, is injured in the process, but in the end receives God’s blessing and a new name: ‘Israel’, meaning ‘God-wrestler.’ Eventually not just this one person but all God’s people in the Hebrew scriptures are called Israel—a nation of ‘God-wrestlers.’

Sadly, many young people are unprepared to meet a living God who refuses to dwell in religious boxes, no matter how pretty we try to make them—a God who is a respecter neither of ‘personal space’ nor ‘comfort zones.’ When you expect God always to lead gently like a shepherd, as God most certainly does sometimes, what do you do when this God turns dangerous and wants to wrestle?

To be sure, much of what passes for wrestling with God is not really so much about God as it is with things we think or believe or have heard about God. Sometimes all of us, young or not, confuse things we’ve been told about God with God.  Sadly, too often young people are subjected to attempts at ‘discipleship by indoctrination’ and are not taught how to wrestle through issues and beliefs. As Anne Lamott puts it, in a slightly different context: ‘God forbid that you should have your own opinions or perceptions—better to have head lice.’ [Bird by Bird, 110-111]. A theology professor I had one time told me in class that ‘You will find it much easier to live with yourself if you would just stop asking questions and believe what I say.’ What he really meant was that he would find it much easier to live with me if I stopped asking questions.

The unhappy truth is that this approach to discipleship doesn’t stand young people in good stead when beliefs are challenged, either from within or without. Through years of experience working with youth, I have witnessed far too often how it sets them on a course for disillusionment and disaster. It may seem like hard work, but it is far easier to teach basic navigational skills than to rescue those who have shipwrecked.

Many youth leaders and pastors, however, find themselves ill equipped to deal with the real-life questions, fears, doubts and struggles that young people face. In part, the church is to blame for this situation because we just have not invested the time, treasure and talent we talk so much about in either our young people or those who minister most directly among them.

In another way, we have simply not awakened to the illusion that we have to have the answers—that we have to somehow ‘fix’ the beliefs and ‘counter’ the doubts and ‘reassure’ the fears of young wrestlers. As we learned the true nature of spiritual mentoring as ‘walking with someone,’ we realise that integrity means refusing to ‘play-act religion’; it means admitting that we don’t have all the answers, letting them know that we, too, are wrestlers and committing ourselves to discerning together. Wrestling with our beliefs, struggles and faith can be a lonely experience when we are left feeling like we wrestle alone. How much better to know that we are part of a community of wrestling people!

This is even more important when we are not just wrestling with things about God but actually with God. God is just not some Big Idea out there somewhere. God is not just some Star Wars Force. God is the living God, and the living God engages us in living relationships. Living relationships are not just joyful and full of easy blessing. They’re messy, sometimes difficult, and often involve wrestling with the beloved—even the Beloved. I don’t suppose it’s coincidental that the biblical writers use metaphors of friendship, family, romance and marriage to describe our relationships with God.

Many biblical heroes from Moses and Lot through the prophets wrestled with God in different ways. Even Jesus wrestled with God in prayer to the point of sweating blood. The post-biblical saints frequently describe their relationship with God in terms of a phrase I’ve chosen for my tombstone: ‘I had a lovers’ quarrel with God.’

Young people simply cannot be abandoned in their wrestling with God. Even though we can’t spare them the risk of injury in the process, what better than for them to engage our dangerous God—or to wrestle with the sense of God’s absence—in the community of other God-wrestlers?

Is it worth it? Yes, of course, because, as Mr and Mrs Beaver said of Aslan, of course God’s not safe—but God is good.

It turned out that a fair # of folks like knitting and crocheting.  So….to make a long story short, I asked my prayer partner, who is a knitter, if she would host a fresh expressions knitting group.  Yes was her answer!

They meet twice a month, there are 2 Anglicans, 2 church goers (we don’t know where) and 2 non church people.  One of the non church girls was so excited that she went out and bought a book on prayer shawls which has prayers in it!  So this little group is fullflling 3 out of the 4 W’s…..Welcome Worship Witness.  Word is not read…..yet!  But it’s there in prayer.  One of the non church girls gave me the shawl she made so that I could pass it on to someone.  Fortunately, no one at St. Alban’s needs it right now, so I’m giving it to Gloria who has a parishoner dying of cancer.

Can a young peoples’ group be a fresh expression?  Perhaps.  Since last May, we have had a Games Night once a month for children 8-14.  We welcome them, we end each night with prayer and they give witness in that they raise money for the church and food for the local food bank.  They will also be involved in our Christmas Adopt a Family program. (the sad thing is that they may be receipients of this program through Salvation Army!)

Those are my stories.  Kate

We arrived at Wycliffe Hall (Anglican Theological College at Oxford University) at noon for an intense 24-hour time of worship, prayer, workshops, conversation, sharing, review and discernment for the future of Messy Church (MC) with founder Lucy Moore and the Messy Church UK Regional coordinators. Colin Fletcher, Bishop of Dorchester, opened the sessions with a warm welcome and praise for MC’s  important ministry to engage families in introducing and telling our Christian story. In the five years since Lucy Moore founded the first MC there are now over 300 MCs operating in the UK. Many engage up to 100 people once a month.

Going forward the group discussed the collection of data on the MCs in operation to get a better understanding as to the demographics, leadership development, how discipleship is being engaged and whether additional support materials are required.

The messiness of MC is not just the crafts and food but the messiness of engaging non-Christians missionally with discipleship the focus while working within the local cultural context.

In addition to Messy Church there are now Messy Markets, where a Messy Church team may set up a stand at a local market of fair with Christian crafts to both engage people and invite them to attend a Messy Church monthly gathering.

An evening session introduced us to some extreme crafts – soap making and enameling.

Emmanuel Church & Addition Loughborough

Sue and I first visited Emmanuel Church in Loughborough in the mid 90’s. Back then it had a traditional interior, dark pews, an organ and a piano. It was a Sunday when they as a community were discerning whether they should proceed with an ambitious scheme of building a new hall and office complex.  Well it’s now complete and during the time of building the addition they also undertook to renovate the church – replacing the pews with moveable chairs, installing A/V equipment and so on. Today it is a vibrant and growing church that offers a variety of opportunities for people to connect with God. They are currently raising money for a new organ.

Loughborough is a University and College town so students and young families are of great importance to Emmanuel’s mission in the community. They have a 6:30 pm Evening Praise service every Sunday that is geared to students and young adults and the young at heart folks (i.e. Sue and I). The Rev’d Canon David Newman, Rector, preached in a teaching style that engaged all in attendance. Prayer was mostly meditative after David set the theme and was supported with soft violin, flute and keyboard music. The worship songs were sung enthusiastically by all (120-140) present. Often the attendance approaches 200 when students are back in term.

The 10:00 am morning service with an attendance of 240 (40 children) was in a liturgical/praise style and Eucharist was celebrated. It was the start up of the children’s program so the adult child and family ministry volunteers were asked to come to the front to be installed – all 30 of them!

David has recently been appointed the Archdeacon of Loughborough so he will be departing Emmanuel sometime in October after which the parish will be looking for a new Rector that will continue David’s ministry in the church and the wider community.