Over the past twelve years, we’ve been involved in encouraging and supporting church planting, revitalisation and urban mission.
At Bearwood Chapel we planted new congregations sharing the building, resources and overall leadership team but also developing their own style and autonomous leadership teams responsible for pastoral care. These included
The 930 Service -an informal style service with a particular focus on being accessible to families with young children.
1115 Morning Worship -a congregation welcoming people from all ages and a wide variety of backgrounds including refugees and others seeking leave to remain.
Sunday Night Church – a café style gathering with food, conversation, praise and interactive Bible teaching. This started out life as a Bible teaching group aimed at young people and twenty-somethings but evolved into a congregation with a mix of ages and backgrounds including a significant outreach to our local homeless community.
We also attempted to plant a Sunday afternoon congregation Engage though this never really took off. However in the last couple of years prior to COVID-19 we had established a monthly Messy Church which was reaching a number of unchurched families.
In 2015 with support from Raglan Road Christian Church we helped Jose Galindes plant Nueva Vida Con Cristo. This is a multi-ethnic church that uses Spanish as its primary language. Initially the congregation met as part of Bearwood Chapel on a Saturday night with a midweek Bible study and a an outreach through ESOL classes and practical skills workshops to asylum seekers.
In 2019, the Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches asked us to help with a replanting project at West Smethwick Congregational Church. We helped with some consultation sessions on the way forward, preaching support and by helping identify and recruit a lead planter, Tom Martin
We’ve also sought to support existing and potential urban planters and pastors by providing training and mentoring through Faithroots Live workshops, hosting a Union School of Theology learning community and hosting a planters hub on behalf of the Church Planting Initiative (CPI – now Counties Planting Network). As well as seeing churches planted we have also been encouraged to see people who have trained with us go on to pastoral ministry in places as diverse as Austria, Suffolk and Warwickshire.
We’re always keen to hear from people who are interested in urban mission and church planting. Please get in touch via the contact page to talk more.
Faithroots 