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About Church on the Edge
Project description:
The Church on the Edge project is a UK based partnership between Frontier Youth Trust, Church Missionary Society, the Anglican Diocese of Exeter, and local churches. It was initiated to research what mission shaped youth work and emerging church can learn from one another, and explore this through practice. The project has at its’ heart the intentionality of growing church with young people on the edge as a missionary endeavour and to develop a framework that can facilitate locally grounded and “resource light”, expressions of church.
Process:
- A Contacting Community
- A Growing Community
- A Connecting Community
- An Exploring Community
- An Practicing Community
A contacting community – is about the initial approaches made towards the young people, the idea of going to them (incarnation), but also includes the management committee or structure that enables the process to happen. Critical Questions may include: What structures work and release this sort of project to happen? What initial approaches to young people work? What shape does the project need, balancing needs of young people in the community with ethos of growing church, are the two compatible? How/when do you introduce the concept?
| Ideas on this stage in practice settings (see stages 1-3) | ||
| Detached Work | Youth Club | Toddler Group |
| Cold contact | Developing the drop in | Establishing the group |
| Regular Contact and presence | ||
| Basic relationship building | ||
| Offering to walk away if yp don’t want you around | Using physical barriers to enable yp to enable secure contacts eg Tuck shop | Developing the ownership of the group through purchase of equipment etc |
A growing community – is about the growing relationship between the young people and the workers, and between the young people themselves. It is about spending time with young people, building relationships and securing trust.
Critical Questions may include: What helps or hinders the relationship process? How/when do you introduce the concept? Where does ambiguity[1] fit into the process? The role of groups and risk?
| Ideas on this stage in practice settings (see stages 4-7) | ||
| Detached Work | Youth Club | Toddler Group |
| Area Work and group stages | Beginning activities day Trips | Social meetings outside of group |
| Continuing relationship building | ||
| Start meeting as leaders ready to receive groups | ||
| Use metaphor of journey in activities, trips etc Introduce Story of Brendan if appropriate | ||
| Responding to needs and interests | Working with existing groups freeing leaders to build on these | Responding to needs and interests, eg healthy eating course |
| Look for Flow (eg skaters) and introduce concept | Develop a residential to provoke Flow/raise issues of Spiritual awareness | Discuss flow moments with the parents |
A connected community – This stage is not about the young people committing to Christ but about being willing to commit to one another to go on a journey of discovery together as to what church may mean. There is a sense in which in part we are looking for young people to become action researchers and ask if this process in itself is transformative, in a similar way to the disciples being prepared to journey with Jesus before they knew who he was.
Critical Questions may include: What might resources might help build a sense of commitment? How we continue to work if young people do not want to? Can we mirror a rite of passage pre commitment to Christ what might this look like?
| Ideas on this stage in practice settings (see stages 7-8) | ||
| Detached Work | Youth Club | Toddler Group |
| Exploration - COE stages 7-8 | Develop | Social meetings outside of group |
| Develop Rite of Passage residential provoking Flow and concluding with activity that gives yp space to continue exploration on return (see below) | Similar but adults so Rite of Passage experience questionable | |
| Develop a symbol to give to those who want to continue | ||
| Use the image of Finding Nemo to describe the flow through the ages and ask if they are wiling to connect with you to explore this on a regular basis when we return home | ||
An exploring community – is the process of navigating and journeying together, exploring what Christ might mean to them, what concepts of church are relevant to them, work on the sacraments etc and an exploration of what church might look like in their context. It is about joining our story, Gods story and their story together.
Critical Questions may include: Is the exploration transformative, what does this look like? What are the young peoples takes on issues like the sacraments? How would they communicate the story?
| Ideas on this stage in practice settings (see stages 7-9) | ||
| Detached Work | Youth Club | Toddler Group |
| We are planning to meet on a Sunday to connect into the historic flow/help the yp identify that it is Christian but in Youth Clubs and Toddler Group you may be able to meet as part of this session | ||
| Eat together, meet regularly, experiment, call it church / church on the edge? | ||
| Find the right parables to tell, but retell in a modern way and do not interpret them for the group | ||
| Be creative | ||
An ecclesial community – (perhaps this should be changed to a practicing community) where the group begins to practice what they have discovered over the previous stages.
Critical Questions may include: Has this approach collapsed gaps between mission and church? Is this relevant to young people not involved in the other stages of the process? How is it connected to tradition? How can it be replicated – is it temporary or group specific? Is it a cycle or a closed process?
| Ideas on this stage in practice settings (see stages 7-9) | ||
| Detached Work | Youth Club | Toddler Group |
| Evaluate with the group where you are and if you want to continue. | ||
| Ask them who else do they thinks flows and how can they bring them into the group is it by invitation or do they need to revisit the residential stage | ||
| Visit other expressions of church and evaluate | ||
| Base church role play | ||
paulmtilley |
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