Welcome to the Share Community
- an online gathering place where people who are pioneering (or just interested in) new forms of church can rub shoulders with and support each other.You can write blogs, start or join a 'Group' or a discussion 'Forum', invite users to be your 'Friend', use the 'What's new' box to write how you're feeling, share files and photos, or read what others are saying.
To take part, follow these three simple steps:
- Register - The registration page can be found here. If you are already registered with the main Share website, you will still need to register separately with the Share Community, but feel free to use the same username and password. You will need to confirm your account request by responding to an email sent after your initial registration. You will subsequently receive a further email confirming your account has been activated. You will also receive periodic emails telling you of new activity on the community.
- Profile page - Select 'My Account' in the menu bar at the top of the page, then 'Profile', then 'Edit Profile'. Here you can update your profile details, and upload a photo ('avatar') of yourself, if you've not already done so.
- Explore and interact - On the top right-hand side of the page you will see links to different parts of the Share Community. You can see blogs that people have written and groups or forums that users have started. Feel free to respond to these, or set up your own. Remember to invite people to become 'Friends'.
If you have any questions, contact the administrator, Andrew Wooding, at: andrew.wooding@freshexpressions.org.uk
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Gerald Gillespie became a registered member 14 minutes ago · View
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Albert Compton became a registered member 58 minutes ago · View
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Kurt Savage became a registered member 2 hours, 26 minutes ago · View
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Willie Drake became a registered member 2 hours, 52 minutes ago · View
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Ted Gonzales became a registered member 3 hours, 24 minutes ago · View
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Carl Heath became a registered member 4 hours, 41 minutes ago · View
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Gwen Barlow became a registered member 16 hours, 45 minutes ago · View
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sharlene may knight became a registered member 6 days, 4 hours ago · View
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Rev. Danae Ashley became a registered member 1 week, 3 days ago · View
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Nicola David joined the group Online fresh expressions 1 week, 5 days ago · View
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Natalie Bowers became a registered member 1 week, 5 days ago · View
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Nicola David became a registered member 1 week, 5 days ago · View
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Beth Keith posted an update: 2 weeks, 4 days ago · View
RURAL CHURCHPLANTERS FORUM IN CONJUNCTION WITH FRESH EXPRESSIONS
making and growing disciples in the countryside
4-5 May 2011
Bawtree Hall,
Cost £85• You have planted or are seeking to plant a fresh expression of church in a rural area
• You long to see new people becoming disciples of Jesus in the countryside
• You want to keep growing in faith and love yourself
• You want to learn and pray with other rural pioneers
If these things are true of you, “making and growing disciples in the countryside” is for you – not just a conference but a gathering for learning from each other, story-telling, and prayer.
Our learning will be facilitated by Graham Cray (leader of national Fresh Expressions), Sally Gaze (author of Mission Shaped and Rural and leader of the Tas Valley Cell Church) and other members of the Rural Churchplanters forum. Our hosts will be Pete and Kath Atkins (leaders of the Threshold family of churches in rural Lincolnshire).
If you would like to receive an invitation to this gathering, please contact Sally Gaze (sally@tasvalley.org) with some brief details of the Fresh Expression of church which you are involved with or hoping to start. -
Gareth Edwards joined the group Online fresh expressions 2 weeks, 5 days ago · View
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Richard Seel joined the group Movies and Fresh Expressions 2 weeks, 5 days ago · View
Hi,
Just joined the group and thought I’d say a little bit about why. I was a BBC documentary film editor for 20 years and I still use/make a lot of movies in church – both in the schools and children’s work I do with our children and families worker and also in the fresh expression I oversee: Xpressions Cafe.
There is a lot of good studd out there – and even more that is poor (at best). I’ve put links to some of the good stuff on my website (www.emerging0church.org). If I can’t find what i want online I will make my own or re-edit stuff which I find there.
I do also use clips from commercial movies sometimes but not so often. I look forward to discussion in this group.
Richard.
Sorry – can’t type! It should be emerging-church.org (and studd is stuff, of course)!
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laul posted an update in the group Encounters discussion forum: 2 weeks, 5 days ago · View
Encounters No.46 is now available – http://www.encountersontheedge.org.uk/encounters-on-the-edge/46-messy-church.html
Messy Church is clearly popular and fun – but are those very qualities praise or problems? There are lots of questions to be asked about this most numerous kind of fresh expression. Does it have serious values beneath the cheerful bubbly image? Is there such a thing as ’pure’ Messy Church and can that be contextualised without making compromises on the purity? What are the patterns nationally, why might it be that it attracts so many non-churched people, and in what ways may it be changing how we view church?
Messy Church being fun is certainly not a problem, so long as it is clearly communicating and living out the gospel so that it isn’t just a playgroup. My question is, what happens to the families once their children have become too old for it? Are they fed into ’normal’ church or does Messy church adapt as they grow?
Thanks Andrew, thats a very good question – and one that no doubt will only be answered as the Messy CHurches grow older themselves. Maybe a similalr thign will happen with Messy Church that happened with KidzChurch/Club, (can’t remember what its called now) which was great with younger kids but the same old teenage problem persists. i guess maybe its one of those things we only find out about as peopel get passed 19 – was enough done to mean they come back when they begin to choose how to shape their adult lives?
maybe neither. Maybe they move on to a different kind of fresh expression of church for their next stage of life. Or several messy church type ’graduates’ regroup themselves into new mission-shaped Christian communities according to their calling and passion at that time of their life? The important thing, I think, with Messy Church, is that there is enough discipleship ’teeth’ about it for people to discover genuine contextually-relevant faith, and then they WILL want to discover their next step after Messy Church is no longer the right thing for them. And it might even be joining a more traditional church (such as may still exist by then) or a cathedral congregation or…
That’s a really interesting question, which raises another one – who is it for, the children, the parents, or both? Presumably unchurched chlidren have unchurched parents and vice versa. What is it about messy church that attracts/doesn’t repel parents and will that be taken on by mainstream church culture?
And the other question is developmental – could messy church become crystallised as a format, remaining very much part of the cultural context within which it arose, or will it develop?
WELL – thank you all for the comments – it turns out that the Sheffield Centre will be having a research day on this in 2011 where we will attempt to write up any findings that are… found. We hope Lucy Moore and a few others will join us, so next March/April i hope we can add some wisdom to the future of Messy Church!
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The Sheffield Centre’s summer 2010 research bulletin is now available – http://www.churcharmy.org.uk/ms/sc/sfc_researchbulletin.aspx
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Julienne Jones joined the group Online fresh expressions 2 weeks, 5 days ago · View
Just popping in to say hello! Not quite sure what I’m doing yet :/
My experience with online spirituality started with Church of Fools 6 years ago and has actually become my main area of ministry over that time. I was very active in the leadership of St Pixels until a few months ago, when I pulled back in order to re-focus on ministry rather than organisation.
I am a C of E Reader but I have become increasingly ambivalent about the excessive focus on church services at the expense of the concept of worship within our everyday lives. I far prefer to work ecumenically, and become impatient with the obsessive focus on individual aspects of doctrine which obviously divides the body of Christ, and seek to find ways to concentrate on what unites us. I’malso a trained spiritual director.
Great to see you here – hopefully this format allows people to network without any particular structures needed. There’s no agenda over and above networking and whatever that might bring forth!
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Dave Roberts and Julienne Jones are now friends 2 weeks, 5 days ago · View
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