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Lynne, that sounds very exciting…hopefully the research will filter out to the wider Christian community…the hurch of England has done lot’s of work in this area - their report recently published: Mission-Shaped Church….

not sure if this is what you meant, but what about planting in some almost self-contained communities, like retirement villages, university campuses, large employers like major hospitals?

these places have proven viable markets for their own little retail centres… so all that people traffic could be reached in terms of spiritual needs too. maybe churches could be based in places where people already spend their time.

A couple of questions…

How rigid are the “Baptist” boundaries?
Is there space for cooperating with other churches, denominations etc. working together to form these new communities of faith?

Paul - thanks for the tip re the book… has anyone got a copy in NZ?

Kelli - yes. That’s certainly included in the sorts of stuff I’m thinking of… I wonder how you can retain an intergenerational component in such contexts… can you? do you need to? could such groups be linked somehow? to other similar groups? to a church?

Stephen - no idea how open the Baptists are to cooperative activities. I keep trying for another sentence, but it doesn’t come!! So I’ll stick with No Idea! But don’t let that stop the ideas from coming!

Lynne, In thinking of your quest, and thinking of Kelli’s answer, I start thinking of how society is so well insulated from needing or admitting our lack of anything. And, when people are faced with the Eternal, the Eternal One is so much more welcomed. Hospitals, I think, would be a great place. Hospice, here in the US, another place.Home churches, focused on neighborhoods, is a church idea I find intriquing. I will keep thinking - I find this fascinating.

Thanks, Anj.
I’ve also become aware of “Apartment Life” which places couples/two singles in apartment buildings where they can act as sort of community builders and chaplains, welcoming new residents, organising social things, being a point person in times of need.

NZ’s biggest city, Auckland, is picked to have 500,000 residents (25% of projected population) living in higher density, multiunit accommodation.

While some of these things are probably more “ministry” than “church”, it is certainly worth having them in our brains and wondering how they fit in the bigger scheme of things.

this is developing into such an interesting discussion!

re plants on the sites of major employers, hospitals etc: maybe some would start as ministries of existing churches and grow into in(ter)dependent churches if there were enough non-transient participants?
it would be a cool project for a church to set up a ‘baptist (or just christian) spiritual centre’ in a place where there’s a need for one - i like the hospice idea too. or airports. if we were in a bigger city environment, at a train station.
they could offer services to the people who were there regularly, and set up drop-in resources and a reflective space for both regulars and passers-by. people from a nearby church could do maintenance etc…

with retirement villages, i think people might want to form more of their own congregation on site. so it would be important that they drove the decision-making, but a link to a more intergenerational church would be a good thing to offer… a church like graceway could go and have church at a retirement village once every couple months or something. we’ve got plenty of younger generation to go around
way out of my field, hope some of this is useful!

Yes
That whole spirituality centre is a great idea.

We dreamed of it at Graceway, “Spirituality to go”; morning devotions with coffee en route to work, but the old lack of a building factor…

They could be mobile too… spirituality to go “booths” that go into hospital and uni chapels and workplace lunch/staff rooms as optional weekly/monthly activities.

we are just about to get a bunch of people mostly post-clubbing 20’s-40’s - artist, activist and music colonies.. very difficult to define.. across edinburgh; both alt.w and church planting scene and even the ‘emerging’ language hasn’t quite taken here - we think something indigenous is going on that has its own life - and wants to cut deep to the core of ‘here’ in a very fast changing liquidized scottish capital. The clubbing area of the capital burnt down 2 years ago - something is stirring in the burnt ground… where (old roots) inc. past covenants, promises, dreams, tears and prayers - are being sifted and (new routes )an archipeligo of networks and groups and mini-geographies are springing up.. around the city -in the meantime. I’m not sure what this is yet! but something is definitely in the air - its a pregnant city space - trying not to second guess and name what Christ is doing too quickly!

I am interested in your discussion on church planting. I don’t know if PaulT was part of the Raven project in Edinburgh (part of a Presbyterian Church of Scotland mission to church plant among club culture. Check out google for Raven.It was funded from StCuthberts Parish Church, Edinburgh) They had interesting start in the church plant area No3 you are posting. I can give you an email contact on that if you’d like.
They are in transition now. I think that there was a sense of ’stabalising’ amidst the fluidity of life. A tension therefore between cletic mobility and what was significant in initiation, but yet the struggle for fluidity. I gather it is moving into something other now, but don’t know much more.

You also might want to check out Urban Expression. (www.urbanexpression.co.uk)It is concerned with inner city church planting in London. It’s Stuart Murray-Williams (Anabaptist) His Book - Church Planting - is a basic good intro to subject. There you’ll find some things of interest.

Isues of sustainability are important, but from what little i have seen, when you aim to church plant “for a particular sub-cultural group, likely to be un- or under-represented in our existing churches.” I actually wonder if at this point and maybe even beyond we have the right image that the phrase ‘church plant’ implies. Too often we envisage the church plant, when in actual fact there are strong emergent factors. Among them I think is in your later blog about CHCH Art Gallery. I share your sense of the place - spatial matters. I think that our mission praxis needs to consider this more and more.

I planted a congregation in Aberdeen Scotland (I’m now down in Dunedin working on what we call the Highgate Mission(presbyterian PCANZ)in my experience it was in coming to reflect on the spatial elements that it brought fresh insights not only for worship, but also people movements around the place and how they ‘lived’ in the area. Again I have some ponderings on this and some reading if you care for it.A good start would be Philip Sheldrake Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory and Identity. SCM PRess 2001

I’m interested in getting in on the scene in NZ here for things like this and being in the loop for the likes of Converse. I wondered how possible it would be. Perhaps you can let me know.