Future Church Songs of Praise

Well, it might be hard to believe

but in a few years' time,

there will be a brand-new church right here.

It's one of the ways people are rethinking what Church is about

and how it will look in the future.

Well... I'd better get on with it!

So, this week, as we look at some of the ways Church is changing,

there's a virtual congregation,

a very messy church

and a tweeting nun,

with music across the country.

This inspired project is just one of a variety of ways

the church is reinventing itself,

and we'll hear more about the plans here later.

One man who takes a keen interest in how the Church is evolving

is Reverend Dr Michael Moynagh.

He is Research Director for Fresh Expressions,

an organisation that supports people

who are exploring new ways of doing Church.

Michael, what's the state of the Church today?

Well, it's a mixed picture.

Some of it is brilliant. There are areas of growth.

But overall, I think everyone knows that numbers have been declining.

Each generation is less religious,

less committed to Church than the generation before,

and you can track that back over a number of generations.

-Why do you think that's happening?

-There's a great debate about this.

Some people think, "It's happening because society's changed

"and there's no need for Church.

"It's passe, it's had its day."

People aren't particularly interested in faith and organised faith any more.

And then there are other people who are saying, "Well, it's not quite like that.

"The problem is that the Church hasn't adapted."

So society has changed but Church hasn't changed enough

in order to connect with people in the new cultures that we experience.

And my hunch is it's more the latter.

That Church has failed to adapt but it's now beginning to do so.

And it's really exciting.

So what are the new, exciting things that are happening?

What's happening is that bubbling up,

ground upwards,

are all sorts of new forms of Christian community that are emerging.

And this is a really interesting, significant

and growing movement.

When I started researching this ten, 12 years ago,

you could find a handful of examples.

Now there are hundreds of examples,

and many of these examples are, as it were, under the radar,

but a whole variety of different expressions of Christian community

that are living the Christian faith, expressing the Gospel,

trying to serve their wider communities in different ways

but are being Church in ways that are very different to the past.

The internet has become a part of everyday life,

from shopping to keeping in touch.

But it's not necessarily the first place you'd expect to find a nun.

So, Sister Elizabeth, what in the world

inspired you to start tweeting?

The one reason we started tweeting was because

that's where people are today.

That's where they're having their conversations, are on Twitter.

Millions of people having conversations

from all different backgrounds all over the world.

God wants to be where people are.

We're messengers of God, we're His representatives in the world,

so we need to bring Him into where people are,

and so that's why we started tweeting.

Can you describe or explain what tweeting is?

Tweeting is...

For example, we have a noticeboard

where people would put notices up, Post-it notes, and things like this,

of messages, things for people to read.

Twitter is like an electronic form of that,

so you've got your noticeboard on the computer

and I come along with a Post-it note every other minute or every other day,

depending how often I'm tweeting,

and stick it on the site for someone to read.

So what do you tweet about?

We tweet about anything and everything to do with life,

with God. God is life.

He's involved in the everyday and wants to be involved in the everyday,

involved in people's lives.

We try not to make it too churchy or preachy

because at the end of the day, that's possibly not where people are

in the everyday. So we try and make it

almost like some kind of magazine or consumer-type approach, really, to it.

And so anything and everything.

Look at the tweets and you'll see that it covers and so many subjects.

Is Twitter a dangerous place for a nun to be?

No, no worries about that kind of thing at all.

We have received tweets from people who do want to shock us

featuring bad language,

things that are suggestive.

We simply reply, thinking, "Well, God loves that person.

"Regardless of what they're saying,

"they've actually made contact with us, which is good."

Whether that's quite abusive or whether that's kind doesn't really matter.

And we welcome their view on things because sometimes they make us think.

People who liked to shock...

Actually, sometimes they do make us think and bring us out of our comfort zone,

and so that has to be a good thing. The Church needs more of that, I think.

How is all this affecting you personally?

It's affected me greatly.

It's made me look at the world...

a little bit differently.

It's made me more, I think, compassionate,

more understanding of people.

Because we're more in touch with people,

whether they're Christian or not, whether they're people of faith or not, that doesn't matter.

People are on Twitter, people are on Facebook.

As a Church, we do need to embrace it simply because that's the case.

That's where people are having conversations.

That's where God wants to be, and at the end of the day, Jesus would be on Twitter!

He'd be on Facebook. He'd be engaging with people where they are!

So if it's good enough for him, that's what we should be doing as well!

# And can it be that I should gain

# An interest in

# The saviour's blood?

# Died He for me who caused his pain

# For me who Him to death pursued?

# Amazing love

# How can it be?

# That Thou my God should die for me?

# Amazing love

# How can it be?

# That Thou my God should die for me?

# He left His father's throne above

# So free, so infinite His grace

# Emptied Himself of all but love

# And bled for Adam's helpless race

# Tis mercy all

# Immense and free

# For O my God, it found out me

# Tis mercy all

# Immense and free

# For O my God, it found out me

# Yeah, ye-eah

# Long my imprisoned spirit lay

# Fast bound in sin

# And nature's night

# Thine eye diffused a quickening ray

# I woke, the dungeon flamed with light

# My chains fell off

# My heart was free

# I rose, went forth and followed Thee

# My chains fell off

# My heart was free

# And I rose, went forth and followed Thee

# Ye-e-eah

# Yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah

# No condemnation now I dread

# For Jesus and all in Him is mine

# Alive in Him, my living Head

# And clothed with righteousness divine

# Bold, I approach

# The eternal throne

# And claim the crown through Christ, my own

# Bold, I approach

# The eternal throne

# And claim that crown through Christ, my own

# Amazing love

# How can it be

# That Thou my God would die for me? #

Twitter isn't the only way the Church is embracing new technology.

There are now virtual churches.

I-church is an online church and it's run by the Diocese of Oxford.

We hold services in our chatroom

and we do that on a Wednesday evening.

We've found by trial and error that people don't tend to want

to use it on a Sunday as much so we do have a short service on a Sunday

but the main one is on a Wednesday evening British time.

And people log in to the chatroom

and then the leader will type the prayers or whatever,

and if it's a joining-in prayer, you type the responses.

And we also will think to YouTubes which we can show in the chatroom,

or we'll bring in other material we want to share by putting a link in.

So it's quite interactive. It's very, very interactive.

As the church is a virtual, the congregation come from far and wide.

We have people, quite a few in England. We have people from America.

We have a pastor in America who's been part of our church from the very beginning.

We've got somebody right up in the north of Scotland

who can't get to local Church very easily

and so they find it very useful to come to prayers with other people.

We've got one member who's in a very, very quiet rural area

and wants to go to their local church

but doesn't find there's the range of activities, like Bible studies and things,

and so she finds that by coming with i-Church as well,

she can kind of add to her Christian experience

so she's still able to be a member of her local church, which is very, very important to her.

So I would hope that people will look at i-Church

and other online communities

and say not, "Oh, dear, this is something we have to fight

"because it's competing with real Church."

I would hope that people are able to look at it as something God's doing for the church

and that they can benefit from and learn from.

Another example of how the church is connecting with people

in new ways is Messy Church.

It's the brainchild of Lucy Moore.

Messy Church as a way of doing church for families,

and invites families to come together to church

and have a great time for two hours, usually.

The format is usually a warm welcome

and then about an hour

of having fun together, making stuff

that explores the Bible's story.

And then we bring it all together in a quarter of an hour celebration

with stories, song, and prayer, and then we have

a sit-down meal together.

With Messy Church,

one of the things was let's make it easy for people.

Let's have it at a time which suits them,

let's do it in a way that suits them,

and see where that takes us.

THEY SING AND CLAP

In a short space of time, Messy Church has gone global.

There are now 1,400 worldwide.

The whole Messy Church network is fed from a lot of different backgrounds.

So it's not just something that is fed from a suburban church

just outside Portsmouth.

It's getting ideas and attitudes and inspiration from, you know,

churches in Melbourne

and churches in Wellington in New Zealand.

The Danish church has taken it on hugely.

All these ideas and understandings of God

feed in, to make it a very rich mix.

And why is it called Messy Church?

Because I think God works with people in a messy way.

That we sometimes have the feeling that

it's got to be cut and dried and neat and tidy,

and we have to have all the answers sorted

before we come anywhere near him.

And for most of us, it's a much messier journey.

We come near him

and then we go further away,

and we have questions and doubts

and we also lead very messy lives.

And perhaps the Church in the past has projected a little bit too much

that you have to be neat and tidy

and put on your best clothes to come to church.

And what we're trying to say to everybody is,

"Look, however messy your life is, you can come.

"You can come and be messy with us, because we're messy too."

# God sees you

# He knows where you are

# You are not forgotten, no

# God knows you

# He chose you

# You're spoken of in heaven

# Only God

# Only God can see

# Inside every human heart

# Only God

# Really knows you

# God made you

# He loves you as you are

# You are not just a face in a crowd

# God hears you

# He's near you

# And he's closer than you think

# Only God

# Only God can see

# Inside every human heart

# Only God

# Really knows you

# You, you, you, you

# And only God

# He truly understands

# The issues of the heart

# Only God

# Only God

# You are God's masterpiece

# When will you realise

# That it's true?

# There is a God who cares

# A God who loves

# A God who sees

# God hears you

# He's near you

# And he's closer than you think. #

Today our daily bread. Our church has been inspired...

'Reverend Frog Orr-Ewing is no stranger to Songs of Praise.

'We last met him in Peckham,

'where he turned a derelict church into a thriving congregation.

'Not content with that challenge, he's now going a step further,

'building a new church.'

Well, Frog, we're here in the middle of Beaconsfield,

in this beautiful shell.

What's been happening?

We left Peckham about two and a bit years ago,

with the vision of planting a minster, a missionary community,

and having some land

and working a whole holistic thing for the next generation.

On the practical side of it, its cost quite a lot of money,

so I sold my house and I sold everything that I had.

And a friend came alongside me and he did something similar.

We really prayed and we sought God and asked for a lot of wisdom,

and it's a whole new territory for me, really.

OK, it's so exciting, I don't even know where to begin!

What are you hoping to do exactly here?

I've seen there's a lot of buildings.

What are we standing in now,

and what do you want this to be?

Well, we're still developing that. Very early days.

We've only been here for eight weeks.

I'm casting an idea, I suppose.

I would expect that there would be people doing training here.

Some people living here, some people working the land.

Other people meeting and praying here.

I'd love to see 24/7 prayer

and people praying and worshipping all the way through the week.

So the idea is that it's a sacred hub.

Why are you doing this?

The ancient minsters were places where missionaries gathered,

and from that place of worship, study, prayer

and fellowship and hospitality,

they then sent outliers to other places and other communities.

And if that went well, a church was established in those places.

So they did mission and churches were established out of that.

So we're trying to go back, really, to an ancient model.

To get excited about the future and make a difference

so that 25 years from now, it looks very, very different.

The situation in the British Church, than it does at the moment.

And I think we're part of an answer.

Now you and your wife,

you've literally put everything on the line for this.

Do you ever worry that it will fail?

We've had some anxious moments,

and some sleepless nights over the last couple of years.

I think, though, that...

..there's a lovely scripture about having come so far

that He's not going to leave you,

and He's going to see it through to the end.

So I'm trusting in that element of things, really.

That God has a perfect plan and I'm just doing my best to tune in

and listen in and try to be as courageous and obedient as I can be.

I'm totally aware that I don't have

maybe necessarily the entire skill set necessary

to take on a plan like this,

but I'm trying to gather other people

who can see other parts of the vision

that they feel is a kind of life call for them,

and to try to, you know, connect with those people,

so that we can achieve these things together.

We're going to bring this place back from the brink,

and hopefully, it will serve people for generations to come.

That's my plan.

CHEERING

CHEERING

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Lord, thank you for new ideas which inspire us

to approach Church in different ways.

Thank you for new technologies, which help us to reach people

wherever they are.

Thank you for the dreams that you give us

and hope for the future.

Amen.

How can any of us know what Church will be like in the future?

Which makes me wonder what our legacy will be

for generations to come.

And our final song reminds us

that from the humble beginnings of just 12 loyal followers of Jesus,

there are now billions of Christians over all the earth.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Next week, Ann Widdecombe will be presenting the programme

and she'll be exploring a very personal subject, the single life.

Her guests will include Roy Castle's widow, Fiona,

and Benedictine monk, Father Christopher Jameson.

And of course, there'll be

plenty of hymns and songs to suit the occasion.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd