In 2003 I returned to Christian faith from many years in orthodox Judaism.  I come from a mixed faith family background.  I’m a single woman with three children, one married and with a baby, and two still living at home.   I came back in 2003 to the Salvation Army in which I’d grown up, and then moved with my family from Manchester to Penzance, Cornwall  in 2006, to be closer to my mother and other family members.

Coming back to the Christian community was a glorious and rich experience, and having been something of an independent soul in orthodox Judaism, I tended to view the established church as optional and look for something with an intentional community flavour.   I’m studying for a theology degree, and took trainings in church planting, mission, spiritual direction and conflict mediation.

Moving from the highly energetic Christian life of Manchester to Cornwall was quite a change.  Here almost all churches are aging and in decline.  It is very striking – almost nobody below retirement age. In Penzance, the picture is of a selection of Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Salvation Army and Catholic congregations, a Quaker fellowship, and two independent charismatic new churches which are the only ones with a group of attenders under the age of 50. So far as I am aware they are all attractional, programmed churches, even the new independents.   I have been here a year and seen only three teens attending churches, though I’ve heard of a few more.  There are I think approaching 2000 young people in Penzance area aged 5-18yrs.  Many have never heard the gospel and have no residual knowledge of Christian faith.  There are a significant number of families who will not allow their children into an established church because they view churches as a bad influence.   To give an example, we know of a mid-teen who will be punished if her mother finds her with a Bible.  She has to keep it hidden at school, and she is not allowed to attend church.  Her only contact with other Christians is through those she meets in her school of 800 pupils, and last time I asked, a couple of months ago, she did not know of any or none were in.  My son believes he is not only the only Jewish pupil in the school, but the only Christian at least in his year.

Against this backdrop I wondered where to start, and I don’t have clear answers, but a beginning sense of direction. My training pointed me to finding a gathering place and meeting with people on a regular basis, and then exploring with them if any expression of faith discussion or spirituality exploration would be helpful.   Sounds a bit clumsy, and to be honest I couldn’t quite imagine it working.   I became a Franciscan Sister when I rejoined the church, going through the postulancy and novitiate in the Third Order Soc. St Francis before asking the Salvation Army to receive my vocation as an independent religious.  (They said they’d get back to me! :0)  )   Meanwhile, I renew my vows with my local church from time to time, and get on with living out a vocation as a Sister under private vows in the community in an open and visible way.  It’s a bit of a fudge, but it works, and I’m kosher up to area level (SW UK).  

So stages I can describe:

First of all as a Sister I continued the usual routine of morning and evening prayers, anyone welcome, at home.   I was prepared for adults – but erratically children came in, enjoying singing, playing djembe drums to CDs of African Gospel music, and exploring ways of praying.  After a little Bible reading or story we ask one another the question, ‘So how are we going to go out and be the people of God in our neighbourhood today?’  and we reflect on what happened in the last day or so, and how Jesus might lead us to respond.  The principles I aim for are broadly those argued by Alan Hirsch, www.theforgottenways.org , centrality and Lordship of Jesus (as a way into a balanced understanding of Trinity, so the result should not be unbalanced, but the Christocentric beginning gives a tangible handle on discipleship), discipleship taken really seriously, missional-incarnational impulse, organic systems, apostolic environment, and communitas which is that reality of high-challenge, high-support teamwork in mission.

Problems unfolded. There is only one of me, and a small crowd of children soon included those from very disturbed and troubled backgrounds, with serious behavioural challenges.  Slowly the valuables were moved from first the downstairs of my house, then out of the house to a safer place altogether.  An original painting bought for me by my father in the last weeks of his life tipped onto a child’s head, and now has a large circular dent in the canvas.  A flute has an extraordinary dent in one end.  But the music is improving - as have my conflict-defusing skills.  Local musicians were mercenarily befriended and occasional music lessons scrounged. I net into the wider community, helping at another youth club to gain experience, and find out both where we can contribute and how we can progress.

The local estates are full of bored young people, desperate for attention, hope, and male role models.  But I’m a middle-aged Sister.  I’m training in detached youth work later this year, but have nobody to street patrol with and not enough volunteers in the neighbourhood to initiate Street Pastors.  I go out a couple of hours each day, but in the middle of the day for practical reasons.

I contacted my friends in Vancouver exploring how we rebuild the church in Cornwall.   They chewed it all over with me.  The truth is that the outreaches to the poorest communities, rife with drugs, crime and violence, give rise to very few believers who go on to become church leaders.  A few do, but it is slow and difficult work, and takes a team to sustain for reasons of basic security. Leaders are easier to develop from stable backgrounds – we know this already, but it’s a fact to face.  I listened to Derek Purnell stressing how poorer communities need to grow their own leaders, with our adjusting our expectations and culture to theirs, and our getting out of the way as soon as possible to enable the church to be culturally appropriate in their context.  But every Christian influence is a cultural challenge, not just on the estates but amongst even the quieter residential streets, whether it is to stop ripping off the system financially or to chose dialogue over violence, whether in language or in physical expression.   As a conflict mediator I’m acutely aware of differences in linguistic styles – my colleague took a few local children to one of the local church youth groups and they were banned the same day, for using the F word in every sentence.  It would mean that the other parents would otherwise remove their children.  I looked longingly at the two key local estates, but I have no team workers (simple age demographics again) to run a church project there, and there are effective secular programmes in place.  We not only could not compete, we should not try.   There are not the hours in the day to go work with them unless I’m certain this is the place I’m called to, and the estates are small for that kind of focussed work – many of the families with the severest difficulties live on ordinary residential streets locally.

I’ve taken a pause of a few weeks to regroup with God!  It occurs to me to circulate the times of daily prayers here more widely to help a little core group form, develop the sense of a Franciscan house more carefully,and provide prayer support and help with reflection.   I explored and am now training in workshop leading to see if there is a way of branching out via workshops on St Francis, or aspects of Christian spirituality – as spirituality is so embedded in Cornish culture, and Christianity so unknown it is becoming exotic in its own right.

Looking at Alan Hirsch’s principle of going out and finding a group of people who are missionally far removed from churchgoing, and making them – genuinely – your tribe, I realised one of the difficulties in Penzance is that there are countless small tribes to be part of, many small, and highly specialised.  
So the next step is to pray and search for some helpers for work with the group of children, and a team to make a youth worship service for the few young Christians we have.  We need to care for them, and rather than pray for God to send in people from outside as youth leaders, we need to grow them ourselves, using Christian leadership materials designed for the job and beginning from age 11.   A little worship band is forming, and we are scrabbling around for music lessons to nourish them.   For outreach, we need to use our imaginations.  So the latest development is to invite anyone from any of the churches to come along for an evening on Fresh Expressions, to watch the DVDs produced by the joint Anglican and Methodist initiative, and to dream together, explore and develop ideas, and just network to see where we go from here. A team/think tank seems to be developing, so far Anglican and Salvation Army, but ecumenically open.   It can be ecumenical, a united effort, or individual small projects.  It can be denominationally funded or self-funding.  It can be passionately rooted in someone’s denominational charism, or open and simple.  The limits are our ability to listen to God and search out the openings in our community – I think there are many, many possibilities, from the fishing communities to the alternative youth, and the young mothers to those exploring all kinds and flavours of spirituality.  I sense God moving, and the most exciting mission field imaginable all around us.