#The Mission Order The Order of Mission (TOM) of St Thomas’ Church launched on 6th April 2003.

The following provides some of the background relating to the formation of this Order of Mission. See also the Introductory Guide and Appendix.

The situation in December 2001

The general vision of St Thomas’ is ’to equip each generation to meet their generation with the Gospel; to encourage the older generations to pass on their inheritance to the next generation, and for all members to live the lifestyle of the kingdom of God.'

When we look at church attendance at St Thomas’, we find three main congregations totalling some two thousand members. All three sociological groupings identified as being present in current society are included, but most significantly, up to eighty percent of members are under the age of forty (ie the elusive Gen X!):

Builder generation (those born before 1946) Boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) Busters / Generation X / emerging generation (those born post 1964) Statistics show that institutional forms of church (in all denominations) are haemorrhaging badly in terms of committed membership, failing to attract new converts, and failing to hold on to the few youth and children they have, post confirmation. Gen X are so notable by their absence, and have values so far removed from those of previous generations that some would see them as unreachable.

The worldview of Generation X is post-modern. It is formed by education, TV, Internet and music. Most young adults have no idea of what takes place inside church buildings, never mind an understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Absolute truth, apologetics, and didactic teaching mean little to them. Their experience of church, clergy, liturgy, and worship, as portrayed by the media and assessed by popular surveys, is not good. They describe institutional forms of Christianity as hollow, boring, having no relevance to them or no bearing on the real issues of their lives. But Gen Xers desire to belong, and spiritually they are searching for the reality, meaning, value, and purpose, which Christ alone can give.

When they experience God and are converted, they see that the relationship between a loving heavenly Father God and other worshippers is also available to them. They will become totally sold out for any church that uses such a baseline.

The issues of contemporary culture should therefore be viewed as windows of opportunity, rather than as difficulties to be overcome. Doing church in a way which allows a democratisation of the sacred, which is relevant to the cultural milieu and which reinforce a sense of belonging will invariably make the ‘mission impossible’ to the emerging generation much simpler. But doing church in this way implies many structural adaptations. St Thomas’ aims to be like ’the men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what to do’ (1 Chron 12:32).

Models from the past

Several have drawn attention to the potential of the English/Roman Minster model with its ‘semi-monastic mother churches’ acting as strong resource centres for the surrounding urban area. Others are drawn to the more rural Celtic mobile bands of peregrini with their ‘strong evangelistic emphasis on planting churches and Christian communities in the surrounding countryside.’

What we really need is a synthesis of the two. With this, we can begin to see a workable model and a ‘Movement for Mission’, which is relevant for today and for a fast-moving and highly mobile post-modern, and similarly pre-Christian/pagan world. Adopting such a synthesis, however, would require the most radical reinterpretation of our present ecclesiastical and diocesan/parochial structures. Nonetheless, the current situation is sufficiently grave to demand we give it due prayerful consideration and step out in active faith, implementing whatever methods are necessary to ensure effective mission in this brave new world.

In 1997, a member of Anglican Church Planting Initiatives (Rev Bob Hopkins), made a presentation to a National Meeting of Archdeacons at Church House, Westminster. This was a special focus meeting, convened by the Board of Mission of General Synod. The agenda was to look at the areas of parish ministry, network relationships, and mission strategy. At this meeting, Rev Hopkins proposed that the example of St Thomas’ Crookes, Sheffield, with its growing network of churches, framed as it was on this Celtic-Minster synthesis, could lead in time to an Urban Movement for Mission and the planting of many missionary congregations. This idea was well received and taken to a further national Archdeacons meeting the following year. It continued to be developed very successfully in practice by St Thomas’.

In 1999, Sheffield Diocese produced their Diocesan Strategy Report to cover the period up to and including 2004. Again, St Thomas’, as one of the largest churches in South Yorkshire, was encouraged in its mission, as an Ephesus-type resource centre and Celtic-Minster missionary church.

The following sections of the Sheffield Diocesan Strategy report are worth quoting in this respect:

Section 2.49: Historically, the Minster church provided a strong resource centre with a missionary emphasis to the surrounding area. While such churches no longer exist, modern applications are needed and are being developed in urban as well as in their original more rural settings. We need to foster partnerships where the excellence of one in some aspect of church life or another, can be used as a resource for others.

Section 2.50: Churches of many different sizes and traditions, and in different geographical locations within the Diocese are already being used as resource-partners by other parishes. These resource churches ought to be recognised and encouraged. Like all churches, they are raised up by God to serve the whole Body and not just produced by being so designated, or by geographical position.

Section 2.51: The ministry of resource churches leads to partnerships that are not always geographically based….

Recommendation 9: The Bishop’s staff recognise and encourage resource churches, and seek to use their partnerships as means of growth for the Diocese.

The story of St Thomas’, Crookes

St Thomas’ has always had a tradition and spirituality that is evangelical, with a Biblical basis and heart for mission. In 1978, St Thomas’ parish church buildings needed extensive renovation, and so the congregation started to meet in a local Baptist church whilst the re-ordering of premises was taking place (about two years in total). This relationship with the Baptists developed and actually led to the setting up of a Local Ecumenical Project (LEP) in 1982, with both an Anglican and a Baptist Roll of Members.

Practical outworking of issues such as baptism and confirmation were clarified at the outset and settled in an official legal agreement. Normally, an LEP comes about when different denominations agree to share buildings and resources which are not sustainable on their own. In the case of St Thomas’ and the Baptist church, both were already self-sustaining, both were moving in renewal, and both had similar values and vision for mission. As a result, their seamless fusion in an LEP-type agreement was merely a recognition that they had more in common than which divided them, and that their combined strengths could lead to a strong evangelistic presence in the local community of Crookes.

Sixteen years after the marriage of the two congregations, and the setting up of the LEP, the church had outgrown the parish building. A desire to be even more effective in mission within the city (Crookes where the parish church building is located is a suburb of Sheffield), coupled with this ‘problem’ of numerical growth, led in 1998 to a decision being taken to rent a city-centre venue in which a Sunday morning service could be held. This service would run simultaneously and in parallel to the one in the parish church. Those who had a vision and a heart for the city, and who lived and worked there, were encouraged to think and pray about being part of the congregation which met in this new city centre venue—a local leisure centre called Ponds Forge.

At the same time, an ingenious advertising campaign, ‘We’re going back to church’ with imagery modelled on the extremely popular TV sitcom ‘Friends’, caught the attention of many people in the city, especially young adults and students, and many more were added to the number of worshippers at St Thomas’.

The initial monthly morning service at the leisure centre soon became a weekly morning service, and it was not long before attendances meant that services were being held there in the evenings as well. Issues of availability, finance, and practicality, however, along with vision and increasing opportunities for expanding in mission, began to force St Thomas’ to look at other solutions—the ideal being a venue available to the church alone, and this throughout the week, as well as every Sunday. Nothing suitable, or large enough was available on the property market.

In the end, a nightclub right in the city centre closed due to bankruptcy. Though an unconventional venue for a church, it was investigated as a serious possibility. Inside it was filthy and painted matt black—it was in every way a symbol of the gates of hell itself! It represented everything unseemly in society—it was notorious for fighting, drugs, drunken parties and sex. Everyone in Sheffield knew about the Roxy night club. Could this be the way God would work—transforming darkness into light, redeeming even the very building for Himself and His Kingdom work?

In January 2000, on a one-year lease, the Roxy became the new city centre venue for St Thomas’ church, and an army of volunteer parishioners, equipped with pots of white paint and scrubbing brushes, went to work to clean it up. The press was fascinated when they got hold of the story. National and international TV crews came in to film the services and to gather testimonies firsthand from members of the congregation. The story of St Thomas’ church and its mission to the community/city filled primetime TV slots and radio programmes.

As a result of such publicity, more people came to the church. Those who came initially out of curiosity, found themselves encountering God and staying. The church grew even more. Many young people, who formerly attended the Roxy as partygoers to the nightclub, were among the new converts.

A plethora of outreach ministries continue to operate from St Thomas’, and full use is made of the parish church and hall premises, and those of the Roxy. Office, and meeting space is at a premium. New and creative initiatives are developed regularly.

The vision of St Thomas’ as far as mission is concerned, is to further the kingdom of God through relevant evangelism and radical discipleship. This is pursued in all programmes and activities and with all groups—right through from under 5’s and children’s work, to schools, youth and students work, to ministry to the homeless, drug and alcohol addicted, to prostitutes, prisoners, the deaf, those with learning difficulties, young families, and the elderly.

Pastoral care is offered primarily through ‘small (fellowship) groups’ and ‘clusters’. Individual growth and holistic development is encouraged through Biblical preaching and teaching, applied to everyday life; through opportunities for prayer and healing ministries; through engagement in accountability and mentoring/discipling relationships, as well as through engagement in small groups and clusters; through social and relational activities and the experience of living as part of a faith community; and through specific training programmes aimed at imparting a vocabulary, values, principles, and skills—a Rule for everyday life and Christian living.

Lifeskills, as this programme ‘Rule of Life’ has been called, has been found to be extremely successful. Many clergy, bishops, and church leaders from around the UK, and the world, who visit St Thomas’—at their own initiative and expense—to learn more of what God is doing, find themselves returning home armed with as many resource materials as they can carry and desiring to implement Lifeskills in their own parishes, lives and ministries.

Many who share the vision, vocabulary (Rule) and values of St Thomas’ have joined together over the years to form a network association, based on relationship. Being part of this network enables churches and leaders to draw on the resources of the ‘St Thomas’ Minster’ at whatever level is appropriate for them. This network is growing and it is global. Partners in mission now exist all over the globe and mission, ministry, and teaching teams regularly go out from, and are received by St Thomas’.

Another outworking of this relational networking can be seen in the form of a formal Christian leadership training programme for young adults (‘Tribal Training’) developed seven years ago in St Thomas’. In this academic year it involves ninety young adults and is operating in five centres in England and Ireland. Further national and international training centres will be developed next year. Of the 110 young people who have completed the Sheffield based course to date, many are now involved as full, or part-time members of staff, or leaders of clusters in the church. Tribal Generation is the name given to the national development of St Thomas’ work amongst Generation X, including this training programme. It is a strategic response to ’equip a generation to reach a generation’.

St Thomas’ is also presently actively engaging in a cluster planting strategy. Each of the eighteen or so clusters within St Thomas’ are about the size of an average parish congregation and the vision for mission embraced encourages each of these to plant out into some part of the community in due course. For some years already, one Sunday a quarter had been designated Cluster Sunday, and instead of meeting as a whole church for worship that particular Sunday morning, the church met as Clusters in various locations around the city, ‘doing church and worship’ in whatever way was appropriate to that people group.

The current strategy is for Cluster Sunday to become the norm ie to develop a local network of mission cluster plants, settled in various locations around Sheffield. In the last four months, three such ’new congregations’ have been spawned, with meeting venues as diverse as schools, cafes, university lecture theatres, and pubs. More are planned for the not too distant future.

The next step: a missionary order? Throughout history, many different missionary orders have been established in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches to carry on the Great Commission (Mt 28:18–20). Each of them shows the elements of UP, IN, and OUT which form the framework of life in St Thomas’:

UP: prayer and worship, renewal, a rule of life, healing, gifts and ministries IN: structured daily life, self-sustaining work, community living, mentoring, discipling, educating, training, nurturing vocations OUT: mission trips to both far and near, from the mother house (peregrination); outreach to ’the least, the last and the lost’; pastoral care; the setting up of sodalities—sister houses and new faith communities Many of the founders of these religious orders were educated, experienced and passionate people of faith who actually began by entering the ranks of an existing institution (Monasticism has existed since the 2nd century) and taking an honest look at the world and church of their day. Often they found a sad and sorry state and much that had no permanent value. So they set out to produce a new set of values expressed in a Rule of Life. The Rule was not intended to displace the Gospel in any way, but to act as an easy means of practically applying the Gospel (the supreme rule) to the actual circumstances of daily life, not only on the individual level but also to society.

In time, what would form was a successful, living, growing, disciplined community and order faithful to Scripture, and the principles of the Rule; committed to mission in its cultural milieu, and to meeting the needs of the wider Church, which was often failing in its role. Religious orders are still recognised as forces for pioneering mission, renewal and evangelism within the Church, and indeed often act as a prophetic voice to the world. What we need is more of them, not less. We need a new Rule appropriate to our spiritual and cultural post-modern climate, which can help us live out the Gospel and share its good news with this generation.

Most, if not all, of the religious orders have further structured themselves into primary orders (full-time religious brothers/sisters); secondary orders (usually contemplative sisters); and tertiary orders (secular associates). In the light of current thinking about taking Christianity beyond the walls of the church into the modern workplace and living out one’s faith in everyday life, and more particularly, in the light of the work that St Thomas’ is already doing, and its vision for the future, the example of each of these categories of religious orders is very interesting, and probably worth revisiting.

What it normally requires for those who want to be Tertiary Associates of an Order is that they merely assent to, and adopt the values of that Order, and embrace for themselves its Rule of Life. They do not become fully professed (ie full-time professional religious). They seek to live out their faith as working people in the modern secular world in which they find themselves, using the Rule as a guideline, but with the full support, resourcing, commissioning and endorsement of the Order. They may visit the mother-house at any time for feeding (through joining in its life of worship, prayer, teaching, and the sacraments) and for personal and spiritual growth and development.

Many have spiritual directors (mentors) who are drawn from the primary and secondary orders. Many have their own tent-making ministries, and outreach interests—which are again fuelled and supported by the Order to which they belong. Usually, Tertiary Associates are laypeople, but even ordained clergy, and bishops can function as Tertiaries of a given religious Order.

Those who are in primary religious orders are usually moved around from house to house at the discretion of the Provincial General—only the contemplatives (enclosed religious) remain in one house for life. It is quite common for new houses to emerge when two or three pioneering or evangelistic-type religious, living in a large house feel called by God and choose (with the blessing of the Provincial General) to settle/plant afresh in a particular community. In the Celtic world, this was the norm—monks (peregrini) were always wandering in groups and forming new communities wherever they found themselves settling for any period of time.

Columbanus, a charismatic and bright young man in his mid-forties, a budding scholar-saint, with a secure reputation as one of Ireland’s most gifted Christian leaders, is recorded as requesting permission from his presiding Abbot to set sail from the large resource base of Bangor Abbey with some brothers—for the love of God—and as a result, he expanded the mission of the church throughout Europe, which was at the time spiritually in darkness and culturally in moral decay. As the pioneering missionary group, led by Columbanus, held up the light of Christ, served the oppressed, spoke publicly of salvation in Jesus, and established new monastic houses, many were drawn as postulants to his community. Some came right through from being helped and converted by the ministry of the religious, others were sent by the mother house to join him for their novitiate, or as fully professed helpmates (team) for the work of their particular ministry. And so the mission grew. Over the next ten years in what was the so-called Dark Ages of Europe, many monasteries were established in the area, thousands were saved, and hundreds of other Celtic peregrini (raised up by these communities and discipled by the likes of Columbanus) spread the Gospel in other places around Europe, embodying the presence of Christ and leading lives of holy boldness.

Teaching orders are quite often used to resource the church at large, and many religious were sent, and continue to be sent, or invited to work in parishes and mission fields far and near—all within the Communion and global jurisdiction of the Church, and certainly with its full blessing.

St Thomas’ Church has a passion to see this and every generation won for Christ, and to share what they have been given by God, and learned through experience, with others. They are being called by God to go into the dark places to redeem them for Christ (not least the Roxy). Many Clusters are made up of pioneering peregrini, who form communities/congregations of faith wherever they settle for any length of time (in cafes, pubs, schools, university campuses, homes etc). Many full-time ‘religious professionals’ are being invited to teach, and others are sent out to resource missions in the city, community, country and continents. Members are committed to living by the Rule of Life (Lifeskills) and to seeing the kingdom come in their workplace. And everything flows from, and is fuelled by a church with a heart of continuous prayer and engaging worship, and a commitment to maintaining healthy relationships with God and with one another.

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