A CELEBRATION OF IMAGINATION
PROPER NORTHERN PIONEERING Left: Mountain Pilgrims explores church in the hills Right: Richard Passmore
Richard Passmore, director of mission, innovation and fresh expressions in the Diocese of Carlisle, introduces the Northern Mission Centre, a collaboration between Church Mission Society and the Diocese of Carlisle.
GOD ALREADY AT WORK Fresh expressions have been growing across Cumbria during the last five years, with over 3,000 people now involved, the majority of whom wouldn’t necessarily call themselves Christian. We’ve got fresh expressions connected to local churches or mission communities – Messy Churches, cafe churches, as well as one of my favourites, which the leader describes as a youth club for the over 70s. There’s a huge Network Youth Church. There were only about 235 young people involved in church across the diocese five or so years ago. They invested heavily in Network Youth Church, appointing workers at deanery level. That’s grown significantly, with around 2,000 young people now involved in Network Youth Church, with about 800 at the core. We have a charity shop called
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Restore – we’re developing a new monastic community around that, reaching out to people on the margins through the shops, community spaces, an allotment project and Men in Sheds, which seeks to create a space for men to come together, support each other and make things. And there are more pioneering fresh expressions, such as Mountain Pilgrims (how do you do church in the hills?), Maranatha Yoga (a holistic practice infusing yoga postures with Christian spirituality and meditation) and the St Kentigern school (contemplation for spiritual nomads, reaching out to people on their spiritual journey).
CUMBRIAN COLLABORATION Cumbria is an ecumenical county working across Anglican, Methodist, URC and Salvation Army churches, with other denominations
THE C A LL – W I NTE R 2 0 2 1
involved as companion churches, all under the God for All banner. When I arrived at the end of 2015 the God for All vision was: “By 2020 every person in Cumbria of all ages and backgrounds will have an opportunity to discover more of God and God’s purpose for their lives, so that they will discover more of Jesus and the Good News and become followers of Jesus within a Christian community.” A bold vision! The growth of pioneer projects necessitated thinking about how we resource, equip and build an ecosystem for pioneering. At the same time, we were beginning to be recognised as having a strong profile across the northern England and southern Scotland through our fresh expressions day events and weekends. CMS was a really natural partner. To start with we were focused on training people in pioneering settings, but quickly recognised
