West Streatham churches - update 2010

Mitcham Lane Baptist Church ran the Just People course with three other local churches during Lent 2007 (read the story here).This is the next chapter...

The day of action run as part of the Just People course was a great success and lead to an annual day of local action and celebration in June.  2009's big bash was attended by a group of Christians who live locally but travel to another church several miles away. They were surprised and excited about the day and were keen to be involved with something more frequent but more low-key, that would enable them to connect with their community.

Action Sundays

Out of this has come the ‘Action Sunday’ initiative – a team of approximately 35 people from across the congregations of at least three churches goes out for two hours on the third Sunday every other month to do graffiti clean up, ground maintenance etc and other meaningful local activities. The team is commissioned at 10.30 at the start of the morning service and so far it has consisted of different people every time.

Phil Barnard, minister of Mitcham Lane Baptist church says:
“Doing the Just People course has set us on an exciting journey. It has helped us as a group of churches recognise the importance of having a continual community focus. I’m pleased to say that Action Sunday was not my idea but is a constant reminder to keep mission on the agenda.”

The plan is for a steering group to plan the Action Sundays carefully in advance, but that they will service themselves and be well integrated with all the other activities the church. Although it is currently requiring lots of work – one of the biggest challenges being to find appropriate tasks in that timeframe – Phil is hugely grateful that someone is so committed to seeing it work that they are volunteering to give a day a week of their time to organise it. Having begun in November 2009, there are currently plans for four Action Sundays plus the big bash day in June, timed to coincide with the local Furzedown Festival.

A natural outcome

Phil Barnard says: “People recognise the need for change and are now keen to be more outward-focused.”

Some of the work being done on Sundays will gradually come out of the congregation’s increased engagement with their neighbours as they are encouraged to tune into the needs of those around them and feed those into a database of local needs. Ultimately, the plan is also to build up the links with statutory bodies and local referral agencies.

It’s about the drip,drip,drip

All the work done over recent years has resulted in deepened relationships – between the local churches themselves, the local authority and other local dignitaries – at Christmas the local MP did a reading at one of carol services and the church held carol services for two local schools which saw 500 children in church. Phil says:
“It’s about the drip, drip, drip. Relationships do take a long time to form. Although we have not seen many new members coming into church, we are confident that we are significantly raising the profile of the churches locally. People do know and appreciate the work we are doing in the schools particularly and that we want to make a difference - one parent came to church on Christmas day and another parent said recently they’d like to believe.”

Key factors for success

1. Build on a solid foundation

Phil believes that none of this would have been possible without the covenant relationship with the two evangelical Anglican churches in Furzedown: St. James and St. Albans which has existed since 1998. He says, “There is an incredible cohesion and identity and we consider ourselves fortunate to have 3 well-established churches which share the same theology and attitude.”

This commitment to working together - which has resulted in a range of joint activities – from youth work, mixed cell groups and even an evening service – which has at its heart a shared commitment to the local community, means joint externally focused activities are easier to arrange than they might otherwise have been.

• The leadership of the church has to own it and be seen to support it – if the minister isn’t passionate it will fail.
• You need a key group to drive it forward and to be passionate
• If you put your mind to it, you can change the culture but you’ve got to be good at communicating and be prepared to have to say the same things again and again.
• “A long obedience in the right direction gets you a long way. It’s a marathon, not a sprint!”
• Don’t be scared to ask local schools what you can do to help and look out for ways of making strategic relationships. Thare are also plans to work more closely with the Furzedown Project, a local community charity.

3. Get the congregation on board

• Encourage the congregation to look out for local needs – develop the mentality that looks out for ways the church can help. You may be surprised how responsive and keen people are.
• Make people feel they are making a difference in the activities they are involved with locally.
• Be realistic about what your group will enjoy doing and can achieve on each occasion. Never promise what you can’t deliver.
• When you are doing tasks in the community, make sure people are fully employed – take time to identify the need and line up the right people for the right job. There’s nothing more disempowering than getting people all fired up than for them to find themselves with nothing to do.

4. Finally, just do it!
Get stuck in! Don’t wait until you‘ve got everything ‘sorted’