How we speak to our whole community and share God’s Good News is of enormous significance on our journey in life and faith together, and particularly as we approach Easter.
One church in the diocese that has been reaching out to every corner of its community, in all its diversity, is Hope Hamilton Church.
As a growing Intercultural Worshipping Community (IWC), their vision is: all ages, all cultures, living together in Jesus.
To give a flavour of the area, the local primary school - where the church meets - is about one third Christian (including Eastern European and West African Christians), another third Hindu, while the remainder is a mixture of Jain, Muslim and other religions.
The church enjoys a very fruitful partnership with the primary school, working together to support families on the Hamilton estate.
Last Easter, Revd Ed Down and members of the church family created a walking trail around the area, taking in 10 stops and telling the Easter story as it went. It was so successful, with 40 families completing the activity and ending up at the vicarage for a chocolate egg reward, they’ve decided to do it again this year during the two-week school break.
An invitation will be going out to 400 school children to take part in the trail and visit church over Easter.
Ed says: “Last year we really did reach the wider community, and this is such a great opportunity to connect with people who might not otherwise be invited to an Easter church service.”
In fact, of the 40 families that turned up at Ed’s door last year, just five were church families - the rest from the school community and of differing faiths or none.
The trail will begin outside the school, with each stop including a ‘did you know?’, a challenge that can be done there and then, and a QR code revealing part of the Easter story. Bit by bit - from Palm Sunday through to the Resurrection - the Easter story will unfold as the trail goes on.
The trail is just one of the many innovative ways Hope Hamilton has been working to establish a relationship with its culturally diverse community.
“Putting on an activity like this is about visibility for us,” explains Ed. “Some people think that we’re just a church for the school and don’t realise we’re a church in our own right.
“It’s also an opportunity to get a message straight to the people we want to serve, rather than over social media or a chance one-on-one conversation.”
Ed says another aspect of this, aside of delivering the powerful message of Easter, is to offer an activity centred about wellbeing. After all, an hour’s trailing around the estate as a family is a great excuse to get active during the school holidays.
He says: “We’re trying to reach a side of the community who wouldn’t otherwise think about doing a church activity but might when it’s out and about and there is an Easter egg at the end. It’s a sense of engagement in that, you don’t have to come to us, we’ll make an effort to come to you.”
The church is also hosting a community meal on Maundy Thursday.
Similarly, the success of its community focused Café drop-in on a Tuesday, which attracts all faiths and none and supports asylum seekers and immigrants, has led to the creation of a women’s sewing and crocheting club.
Ed says: “Another wonderful thing to evolve out of this is that the lady who runs the group has made 40 simple canvas bags, and we will be filling them with Easter eggs, an Easter story book and a flyer for our events, to give out to the most vulnerable families within the community, as identified by the school.”
Next term, the plan is to make book covers and to gift an intercultural Bible to all the year-six leavers.
This will be made possible using Seed Fund money, available to our IWCs through the project’s Strategic Development Funding (SDF).
Ed says: “This funding has given us a chance to do so much more than we would otherwise be able to afford.”
In addition, the money has also enabled the church to start building a new website to communicate its values and vision and become more visible in the community and has paid for things such as Light Party goody bags and Christmas crafts, including South American crosses made from wool and lollypop sticks.
In recent months, the church has been experimenting with Sunday service times, moving worship to 4pm and 3pm, to accommodate families whose youngsters have morning sports.
“We wanted to try a way of gathering families differently to see what happens,” explains Ed. “It’s been good for two things – firstly, the meals we’ve shared together after, including an incredible Chinese banquet organised by one of our British-Chinese parishioners and the ‘bring and shares’ where people have been encouraged to share different foods from their cultural backgrounds.
“The other great thing was that a few of our youth, who ordinarily would only come every now and then, have been attending every single week. We’re hoping now they’re back in the habit, and feel more involved in church life, they’ll still join us in the mornings.
“While changing the time didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped, it was definitely a good thing to try.”
It might sound cliched but ‘thinking outside the box’ and opening our eyes and ears to the needs of our communities in all their diversity – be that age, ability, culture, the list goes on - is something we should all be thinking about as disciples and in making church as accessible as possible.
Ed says: “As we’ve emerged out of lockdown and as we’ve been thinking about how we can be an IWC, it feels like God is giving us momentum and leading us into a future that He’s preparing.
“He knows where we’re going as a church - in the changes of the last two years and as a transient community. He’s reshaping and regathering us in a vision that reveals who we are.”