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Tag: urban ministry

  • Estates Evangelism: Justice on the Margins

    Fr Alex Frost, Vicar of St Matthews, Burnley and member of General Synod

    At this February General Synod I had hoped to speak in support of Bishop Philip North’s motion on the topic of Estates Evangelism. I didn’t get called to speak, but I didn’t lose heart because everyone who did speak, did so with empathy, kindness and consideration for people living and working on our most troubled estates. I get so much enthusiasm for ministry when I hear people discussing and focussing on a loving gospel response to serve the poor and to call out injustice.

    In 2021 I was part of a religious cost-of-living crisis piece for the BBC News. It was viewed by 12 million people, and led to an outpouring of love and affection which has affected my life and my ministry forever, so it’s no surprise that I supported +Philip’s  motion at Synod because, if we don’t do something now, then when will we?

    There were other matters of justice, particularly racial justice, discussed at this Synod too. The contributors offered heartfelt stories and inspiring words and there was a huge consensus that calling out injustice should be the heart of what we do as a church. Calling out injustice means discussing many emotive topics and I am reminded that injustice comes in many forms, including colour, race, sexual identity, disability and class.

    Returning to Estates Evangelism, St Matthew’s Burnley – where I’m the vicar – serves a number of challenging estates. Through the outstanding support of my colleague and Associate Priest Rev Kat Gregory Witham, we have created a new worshipping community called Fun Church. Fun Church is like Messy Church only the difference is that it does get very very messy, with squabbling, fall-outs, swearing, and tantrums, and that’s just the parents! Rev Kat, with an outstanding team, created this for families, and around 40-50 kids attend on a weekly basis. We heat the huge church, do some crafts, we do some singing and we feed them their tea. We have drop-ins, we offer food support, mental health support, weekends aways, and trips out.

    When I was telling somebody this, they were like ‘Brill, that’s amazing, are you an HTB church or are the Church Army involved?’ To which I replied, ‘Outside of the stipends we get nowt, zilch, zero from the Church of England’. All our funding comes from grants or charities and benefactors and fundraising, but the truth is we get nothing from the central Church. In fact the reality is we have to pay £30,000 a year in parish share for the privilege so we are doing our bit to support the Diocese. That’s not a criticism of the Diocese, but of the paralysis that is passed on by the processes placed upon estate churches that bind us to the national strategy to pay parish share.

    And so I want to add to the amazing voices at Synod, for the many estate churches that get on with doing what they are doing, with the millstone of money and debt preventing them from doing more. I want to speak up for the churches that refer individuals to Christians Against Poverty but are crippled by their own financial woes and yet carry on to a pathway to oblivion. And I want to speak up for clergy making the best of what sometimes can feel like an impossible situation. I also want to raise a cheer for the clergy who literally can’t cope, for the priests and deacons who are hanging on by a thread. For Ministers and Pastors who risk the sustainability of their own respective ministries, who jeopardise their own wellbeing, because of exhaustion, depression, worry and stress. And I want to give a voice for churches that serve in the most challenging places, who give their time in blood, sweat and tears, who are running churches at a loss but somehow keep going, to serve the most vulnerable places in our society. And to speak up for the families I come into contact with, who are literally picking up and eating the crumbs from under the table.

    After the ravages of Covid 19 and after the savage way in which the cost of living crisis has taken away people’s dignity, aspiration and zest for life, I want to ask: if not now, then when, Church of England?

    I truly believe that the growth of the Church of England will not come by producing a definition of fornication, or even by blessing same-sex unions; something, by the way, which I fully support. It won’t come in the calling out the wolves from the sheep. It can and it will come only from serving on the margins, by calling out the injustices of social and financial deprivation, and by walking in the footsteps of Jesus in the darkest of places.

    Growth will come where ministers are not shackled by carrying the weight of so much expectation with so little resource, but are instead enabled to offer more than soup and a sandwich, a prayer and a blessing. It will come if we can offer a radical distribution of the extraordinary and sometime repulsive wealth that is within the Church of England, wealth that will enable churches and church leaders to challenge injustice. The Church of England needs to fight for an end to foodbanks and to stop celebrating soup kitchens as great bastions of pastoral care; instead giving us the tools to stir, not just soup, but hearts and minds. The church should enable us to make a difference, and should hold those in power accountable to make a cultural change to how we serve the poor in mind, body and spirit.

    Churches do make a difference; they offer wonderful Christian witness. But they are so often held back by financial woes and lack of opportunities. I hope and pray that the motion passed at Synod leads to change and makes a difference to how much support is offered to our estates. The motion provides a route map to recovery, a route map to growth: what is important now is we all travel in the same direction.

     

     

     

  • Clearing the Slate: The Realities of a Declining Church

    by Fr Alex Frost, Vicar of St Matthews, Burnley and member of General Synod

    In my capacity as Vicar, St Matthew’s Burnley, I sometimes wonder how Urban Ministry is perceived or understood within the Church of England community. Particularly if you are not living in it daily as I do in my parish of over 17,000 people where only the tiniest of numbers attend church on a weekly basis.

    So, what is the perception versus reality in modern day Britain in 2022?

    Maybe one of the perceptions is that urban estates are simply full of lazy good for nothing spongers, who want everything literally on a plate, including food, fuel, and freebies. Maybe the perception is that these areas are full of uneducated layabouts who make their own bed and should lie in it, and if that bed happens to be sleeping bag outside Tesco’s, then it’s someone else’s problem and not theirs. Maybe there is a perception that urban deprivation is all made-up poppycock nonsense and propaganda to build an agenda against a political ideology; just an imaginatively-created fairy tale by the ‘Left’ to create political and social discontent.

    I think one of the key dangers faced by the Church of England with its aura and aroma of middle- to upper-class arrogance is that it takes the moral high ground by believing that throwing clergy and the commissioners’ cash at the problem, Christianity will burst into life like bluebells in greenbelt Surrey.

    The reality is that the pandemic has brought huge issues to Urban settings that already had huge issues long before COVID 19 was even a thing.  Many Urban estates and communities have been dealing with their own localised pandemic and were already rationing toilet rolls and petrol long before the cost-of-living crisis we are facing at present. For many families living at this sharp end of existence, life is simply about surviving from one day to the next. Trust me when I tell you the last thing many of these folks want is some Christians in the Marks and Spencer summer range rocking up on the estate with a ‘vision’ or a ‘plan’ to lead them into still waters whilst Matt Redman belts out 10,000 Reasons on the portable speakers.

    The reality is that our urban settings at times are very tough, at times they are very sad whilst at other times they are funny and joyful. In my past life as a stand-up comedian, I used to think hard about my material, but here on the estates the landscape is a hive of humour and hilarity. Often, it’s a case of ‘If we don’t laugh, we might die’. If we don’t laugh at one other, we might hurt one another. During the pandemic I have felt extremely blessed to walk alongside many of these incredible characters. I’m also very fortunate that I have been afforded the opportunity to give a voice to some of these people via my new book ‘Our Daily Bread’, published by Harper Collins North and out in October. At times the stories are harrowing and deeply upsetting, but underneath all the pain and hardship are some of the most resilient and faithful people you could wish to find.

    They are people that have gone way beyond ‘Been there, got the T-shirt’; they are people who been fully kitted out in a lifetime of challenge, poverty, and let-down. They are all people who have lost faith in ‘services’, politicians, and policing. These are communities who have had so little engagement with faith groups that they have never had the opportunity to discover a faith in Jesus because it’s never even been there as an option. Instead, they have experienced a creaking out-of-touch Church that in many cases only opens its doors to exude a complex fragrance of exclusive traditional theologies that’s as easily lost on newly-confirmed teenagers as it is on a single parent on benefits.

    So where is the hope? One of the great joys of an abandonment of estate ministry by the church is that slates have been cleared like that etch-a-sketch classic toy. The church has been dormant for so long in so many places, that few people know what it was even like, other than the trail of damage that has been left behind by homophobia, bigotry and intolerance. The joy can be found in a new ministry that truly reflects Jesus’ encouragement to love thy neighbour as thyself and serve the most needy.

    We have much work to do at St Matthew’s, Burnley, but our ministry through the pandemic has opened our church doors to a fragile and broken community. We have simply tried to serve, be that food, friendship or faith. Not too pushy, not too judgy, always inclusive, never exclusive, in the hope that our visitors might find something of worth: worth in themselves, worth in each other, worth in our church and in Jesus our redeemer.

    Wherever you are or whatever you believe about the cost-of-living crisis, I can tell you it exists, it is real. It is painful, it is traumatic and that’s what makes it necessary for our national church to do more in our urban settings. Just two sessions into being a newly-elected General Synod member reminds me that we are not doing enough. Only when we place the most marginalised people in our society at the heart of our church will we grow and make a difference. If we don’t, we face a church in palliative decline and our future could be terminal. That’s what is at stake: this is where we are, and for that we must truly repent.