The journey started many years ago, but I don’t want to talk about that.
This part of the journey started in the middle of 2009.
Pathway was a church fellowship (founded in 1997) that I joined in 2003. It was set up in a school – we were a “church in a box” with a “spare time leader”. Pathway was a small church – not numerically, but in outlook. We didn’t want to be a big church, we were set in a local community, founded originally to support the parents and families of children who went to the school.
Before the summer break 2009, the leadership team (including me) started to consider whether Pathway should continue as a Sunday-morning oriented fellowship, and what would it look like if we didn’t meet together. This was in part due to a long term trend of more people leaving the fellowship than joining, putting pressure on our resources (people) – we were getting to the point where there were just enough people to make Sunday morning happen, but another few months and the anticipated loss of at least four families meant that we considered it no longer viable.
More importantly, we looked at our core values and aims and felt that we were not able to build links with the community in our current form. In November we decided (with the vicar and parish wardens) that we would formally close Sunday meetings in January 2010.
So the Pathway phase of my journey finished at the beginning of the year and this part of my journey began.
During the year, I’m visiting other fellowships and churches just to see what’s out there – I don’t intend to settle anywhere immediately: there is rarely an opportunity to visit other places particularly when you are involved in leading and running a church.
I’m reflecting on the nature of church and its expression in the community, looking at how (in Rob Bell’s misquoted words) we paint the picture of faith in this place for this time.
