At the heart. On the edge.

 

I wrote the following article on HeartEdge for the latest edition of the CMD Bulletin for the Diocese of Chelmsford:

Churches are closest to the heart of God when they at the heart of their communities and with those on the edge. That is the contention and belief of HeartEdge, an international, ecumenical movement that is about church becoming fully alive as it seeks to transform church and society through commerce, culture, compassion and congregational life.

HeartEdge is about churches developing four Cs:

• Commerce: Generating finance via enterprise, creatively extending mission.
• Culture: Art, music, performance re-imagining the Christian narrative for the present.
• Congregation: Inclusive liturgy, worship and common life.
• Compassion: Empowering congregations to address social need.

The network supports churches in reimagining themselves and society by working with churches moving beyond conventional notions of church, being open to partnership and collaboration with others in the wider world. Fundamentally, HeartEdge is about recognising the activity of the Holy Spirit beyond and outside the church and about a church that flourishes when it seeks to catch up with what the Spirit is already doing in the world.

There was a time when church meant a group that believed it could control access to God – access that only happened in its language on its terms. But God is bigger than that, and the church needs to be humbler than that. Kingdom churches anticipate the way things are with God forever – a culture of creativity, mercy, discovery and grace – and are grateful for the ways God renews the church through those it has despised, rejected, or ignored.

HeartEdge seeks to do all this through:

Transforming Practice

• Encouraging, fostering, training practitioners in imaginative and holistic approaches to mission.
• Through training, education, consultancy, peer support, signposting and examples.

Transforming Discourse

• Coining new language and engaging topical issues through the lens of God’s abundance.
• Through seminars, summer schools, events and conferences live and online.

Transformative Programmes

• Offering tested ‘products’ that practitioners can swiftly implement.
• Through cultivating and promoting specific mission initiatives that can be adapted for local use.

HeartEdge is active in the Diocese and in Essex through two hubs; the Harlow Archdeaconry Learning Hub (see https://www.facebook.com/Learning-Hub-545693942608410) and Shoeburyness and Thorpe Bay Baptist Church (see https://www.stbbc.org.uk/heartedge). A number of excellent awareness events have already been held as a result, that have grown and deepened the network here. 

The next focuses on Congregation and is called ‘Signs of Hope’. This is an evening at Shoeburyness and Thorpe Bay Baptist Church on Wednesday 14 September beginning at 7.30 pm where Rev Erica Wooff, Rev John Goddard and Rev Claire Nicholls will tell stories from their congregations. To book a place email Nicky Snoad at nicky.snoad@stbbc.org.uk. Then, on 8 November, there will be a similar event focusing on Culture.

In between is a further opportunity to explore the relationship between churches and Culture, this time with Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on whose theology much of HeartEdge’s thinking is based. Sam Wells sees churches as meeting places of human and divine, gospel and culture, timeless truth and embodied experience, word and world. As a result, they are like estuaries.

Estuaries, where salt water mixes with fresh in a confluence of river and tidal waters, are environments of preparation where, for example, young salmon, striped bass, and other fish come downstream after hatching. Churches that regard themselves as meeting places of the human and divine are essentially functioning as estuaries. Creating cultural estuaries in churches happens when the creative capital of an artist, the social capital of a minister or community leader, and the material capital of finance or business, converge.

Explore these ideas further with Sam Wells, Revd Paul Carr (Team Rector, Billericay and Little Burstead Team Ministry), Nicola Ravenscroft (Sculptor), Sarah Rogers (HeartEdge), and myself in ‘Gospel and Culture: Churches as meeting places’ at St Andrew’s Wickford on Tuesday 20 September, 10.30 – 3.30 pm. To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gospel-and-culture-churches-as-meeting-places-tickets-391772731787.

For more information about HeartEdge, see https://www.heartedge.org/, including information about their online learning and support groups.

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Johnny Cash - Where We'll Never Grow Old.