Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.1 Peter 1:22-23
TAS VALLLEY CELLS & THE REV’D SALLY GAZE
St. Mary’s Newton Flotman
St. Peter’s Swainsthorpe
St, Mary’s Tasburgh (once site of an encampment of Roman soldiers),
St, Mary’s Tharston
St. Mary’s Saxlingham
All Saints and St. Mary’s Shotesham.
I really enjoyed the service at Saxlingham:
...the comfort of fortress like ancient Norman architecture
...the sweet aroma of the sanctuary: a home for centuries of glorious worship.
...stained glass windows with the earliest figurative glass in
...the robed choir numbering nearly as many as the two dozen in the congregation.
...the rope-pulling bell ringers peeling four of the eight church tower bells.
...the mainly older yet still lively and eclectic congregation members .
...and I especially appreciated the noble English gentleman in the choir who said my Father’s day sermon on the Lord’s Prayer was “brilliant, smashing!”
It felt as if I was back home reliving fun times shared when I was rector at
The same message was given at Newton Flotman (i. e. "Newton" = "New Town" the most often used name for villages and towns in Britain and "Flotman" = Float man – i.e. Ferry man – so Newton Flotman is “the new town by the ferry”). The village was well established when it was recorded in the Domesday Book (1086), the church dating from the 14th century. Though warned that the band and some others were away that day, nonetheless, Deborah and I were warmly received. Here there was a small Sunday School called "God’s Special Agents". Here there was much more time to chat. These are loving people meeting in a gorgeous church.
The worship at both churches that day was ASB (BAS-ish). All six churches “share the good news of God’s love in Christ and an emphasis on serving our local communities.”
“The Team” www.tasvalley.org.uk/whoswho.html, serves everyone but the formula for how to cover it all is exceedingly complicated :
...A rotation of BCP and BAS Communions
...Morning Prayers if a priest can’t be there or if it is a Morning Prayer Sunday.
...The rector needs to get to each three times a month.
...Eager and loyal honoraries cover what they can but you don’t want to overwork them
...Then there are diocesan events and “feasts of obligation”
...oh, right, one of the team can’t yet do communions…
...and one of the team just moved on so they are short-staffed
...then consider holidays, vacations and days off (what are those?)
...also local church customs, preferences and village events are intervening
...“No, wait. Church “X” rented the hall two weeks earlier – it can’t be then.”
...then pressing pastoral concerns of members in each congregation
...funerals of the faithful and the occasion humanist service (for non-Christians)
...add local controversies for which the rector’s counsel is urgently sought – now! e.g. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1580371/Teachers-seek-end-to-sex-class-opt-out.html
… so a zillion things make scheduling in a multi-point parish harder than an advanced Sudoku…
… and then the Rev’d Gaze launches yet another parallel cell church! (I'll describe how that works below).
It boggles the mind. Why would she do that?
LOVE
That says it in a nutshell. Though there are empty pews in each of these rural churches, some of those who are coming to Christ, especially those with little or no previous church experience, feel they won’t fit in in any church on Sunday Morning.
...Or maybe church presents a different foreign culture
...or there are village, status, class or educational barriers
...or maybe it’s an unbelieving spouse who resents his/her partner being away from with the children on Sundays – their only day to relax together…
… whatever, but if people come to Christ through Alpha or some other way and Sunday AM is not on for them, what’s a pastor to do?
Love says feed them. And so the parallel cell church was launched.
“As well as a church in each village, the Tas Valley cell church lives up to the
All told there are about seventy people meeting in at least some eleven cell groups who regularly belong to the
The three cells we visited were a blast. The first two were at the Monday night JAM Youth Group which sub-divides after their opening welcome into as many as three youth cells. On our night to visit, Deborah went to one and I went to another. Some teenagers were absent because they were at the Newton Flotman church preparing for baptism/ confirmation with the rector.
We also went to a Tuesday cell (more below).
There are three cell groups meeting Wednesday night, if you count the occasional leaders’ training.
Plus there are one or two Thursday day time cells including a moms-and-tots as well as a Thursday night adult cell and a Friday multi-generational cell.
PRAYER DAY
On Monday, “Mary” and “Jim” opened up their spacious home for an all day drop in prayer-fest. Their expansive and sensitively landscaped terraced garden at the rear – a green
As soon as we arrived, Sally introduced us to our hosts. We then huddled to pray for God's blessing on the day but by then early arrivals had already been praying for some time.
Poeple came and went as the day progressed - it's a drop-in -when-you-can sort of thing.
The garden was transformed at times into a place of multiple-solitudes: here, a man with a Bible reclining on a lawn chair; there, a woman with head bowed sitting on garden bench;.
Meanwhile an occasional quartet of pray-ers would huddle in unity around some petition.
Post-it notes were available on an end table in the living room for people to write prayer requests. Through the day, people would drop by to collect a few requests and then, going off on their own, offer them in private prayer.
We asked that they remember the Rez in grief over the loss of our dear friend Preston Sewell. It was the day of his funeral.
Tea was available on request or when our host offered. Home made-soup and bread was on offer for those who were staying through lunch.
Conversations were allowed to develop naturally - being respectful, of course, of others' need for silence.
Meanwhile, "Jim" was installing a new shower off the master bedroom - not that he wasn't into prayer - but in celebration that his once "fatal" illness was now in remission. This task he could now do in praise of his Healer!
TUESDAY'S CELL
When the Tuesday night cell met at “Jim” and “Mary’s” home, we knew our hosts and how to find their house. It was good to be back to that place of prayer where we had been welcomed so warmly. We had also met some of that cell's members during the prayer day so we felt right at home. The meeting opened with news that some of yesterday’s prayers had already been answered. Yea God!
What does a Cell group do? Both Deborah and I felt the experience was very similar to what we had known in some small groups we had belonged to in the past.
Yet cell churches intentionally have all the DNA of regular “church”, including all of the following:
We…
Welcomed each other,
Listened to God’s Word,
Worshipped together
and shared God’s love in Witness to the local community and the wider world.
(note the 4 W’s).
Perhaps in the Tas cells there is a stronger emphasis on the group having its own sense of mission and mission activities. But the mainly difference is this: you don’t have to feel you have to attend any of the Sunday morning congregations if you belong to these cell. The cell, with the occasional larger celebration gathering and special events added in IS church.
Here's how they put it: The cell church is “a sister church within the Tas Valley Team, committed to working to complement the ministry of the six parish churches.”
The most important bit is keeping cell values first and foremost in its life; which are
A ll Involved
B ecoming Disciples
C reating Community
D oing Evangelism
E ncountering God
[From Phil Potter’s easy to read The Challenge of Cell Church (BRF, 2001).
GOD LOVES IT SO...
Yet love is not just for the cell:
it is for all.
In Norwich only a mile or so from the massive Cathedral is the little church where the famed medieval mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich (1342-c. 1416) had her visions and proffered wisdom to any seekers, Bishops and peasant alike. Her writings are the oldest known in English by a woman. In one of Julian’s famed visions, she saw in a large hand a tiny tender vulnerable…
"little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.' I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that he loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially owned to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me."
http://www.umilta.net/westmins.html
At
So often I have watched leaders lay and ordained, with the best of intentions, attempt to bring renewed life to a congregation by the introduction of new liturgies, new programmes, new more up-to-date styles of ministry. No matter how sensitively this is managed it is almost inevitable that some feel that they themselves - clinging to the older things - have been jettisoned in the process.
At
God made them, God loves them and God keeps them. Out of such love flows…
MIRACLES (pseudonyms used below).
Whereas Julian of Norwich stayed put in her cell as a spiritual anchor for the people (that is what “anchoress” means), the
In the FX DVD one woman at
“Mary” shared a similar story about her husband “Jim” – who once had been given little hope by his doctors but looked mighty fit and well to us by the time we met.
“William” decided to follow Christ during an Alpha course. With great enthusiasm he told me his story, the importance of the cell group to him and how he was one of those to be baptized by immersion on the grounds of St Mary’s Newton Flotman in a fortnight.
“Claire” had been led to Christ by her young daughter “Janice”. “I want to go to God’s house” she said. “Claire” and her daughter both found a spiritual home and life-line in their Cell Churches. On Tues. June 24
“Janice” was among eight people were baptized by immersion and/or confirmed on the grounds of Newton Flotman. Most came to faith and are being enfolded in the cell church.
“Jake” heard about all the good that was being done in the
BUT HOW?
So how does Sally lead all those cells and add them to her schedule?
She doesn’t.
Most cells are led by lay people – who she has carefully trained and for whom she provides ongoing supervision.
It is obviously doable – and great fun.
Bishop Graham Cray says of Fresh Expressions, “What we want is bland not brand”. What he means is that we want styles of ministry that can be reproduced by ordinary people, that are easy to do - and easy in the training and supervision - yet effective for the gospel.
[NB: When a church’s paid pastors end up doing most of the leadership for ministries and / or small groups, not only does the church limit its effectiveness and risk burning out the staff; we also infantalize the church’s members. We need not only to allow significant pastoral lay leadership but also to challenge all God’s people to grow to maturity by extending adult care for each other in Christ. This promises to multiply both ministry in the church and outreach beyond it. Though our small groups are among the healthiest part of our life, we have a way to go at the Rez before we arrive at this blessed place. If you belong to the Rez, might God be calling you to consider this form of leadership? If not you, who? End pulpit pounding here.]
DOWN TIME
We came to
IMHO our stay in
MORE ON
… read
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mission_shaped_church.pdf on
… get the George Lings’ booklet “
… watch the
… read Rev’d Gaze’s own book
Mission Shaped and Rural (
Thank you Sally, Chris and Matthew and all those others named and not named above for a mindboggling, life-changing and, I pray, Diocese shaping never-to-be-forgotten experience.
The next post is all about cells from
You might also read Phil Potter’s The Challenge of Cell Church (BRF, 2001).
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