I’ve been thinking more about community lately although to an extent it’s been a big topic the last few years. One of the big passions of Oasis/Steve Chalke is getting the church back to the heart of the community which in many ways is the reason that Oasis build academy’s across the country…not just schools but community centres with churches and doctors surgeries etc. and it’s a great idea and I suppose without reasing perhaps I’ve got into that mentality a little bit.

One of my biggest frustrations over the last few years here at Peterborough is that everyone comes from so far to church, people don’t go to their local church but go to a church for whatever reason they have, a City centre church doesn’t always have a direct area to catch people from (although arguably no church does anymore) and one of the things I felt when having an interview at St Nics in Nottingham last weekend was that I’d feel the same frustrations.

I know that people will come to a church from miles off and that working for a church with some kind of community around it will never stop that, to an extent I’m in no place to say it’s wrong….my family attended a church 20 minutes drive from our house.

The thing is that from September I shall be a rural person doing church work at a village church where I suspect that many of the congregation will be from the village…the youth work will probably reach out beyond the village to the other churches I’ll be partnered with through the Hunsley Christian Youth Trust but there will be people from the village of South Cave at South Cave Church…and I want to be one of them!

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the message translation of John 1 when it says ‘the word become flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood‘ and I’ve been reflecting on this in two senses.

Firstly I believe that Jesus went out and got stuck into the neighbourhood and that is what the church should do….the church should get outside of it’s four walls and middle-classness and go out into the schools, onto the streets, into the local pub or wherever people are who need to meet Jesus…Jesus went and met with people!

Secondly I’ve been reflecting on this verse in terms of being part of something…being part of a neighbourhood. I don’t want to go into a village for church or to do some youth work, I want to experience what that village is like…experience the community in the local pubs, use the post office for banking, buy meat from the butchers, experience the frustrations and joys of being part of the village, celebrate in the lack of Tesco. To serve that community more effectively as a youth worker I think I need to be part of it!

So that is where I am at the moment and it means that I will be living in a village soon and I’m liking the idea a lot…I’m gonna move into a community…exciting stuff!

P.S. Hopefully this blog will be the start of some more serious blogness in the coming weeks!