It is with a somewhat heavy heart that I write to let you know that this coming Sunday will be the final meeting of Grace West, which has been meeting at the Encore Hotel in North Acton and of course was the original work that we started in Chiswick in September 2000. Hayley and I would like to express our gratitude to all those who have helped us to “Heal the hurts and build the dreams” of the hundreds of people who have come our way over these last eight years. We would like to especially thank David & Loretta and Jon & Anne who took care of the work when Hayley and I went to East London to plant the new work, Grace East.
Whether this is the end of our “westbound service” is too early to say. There are a number of us who have put our roots down in West London and certainly those stakeholders will want to explore alternative ways to express their life in Christ together. But in terms of regular Sunday meetings in their current format that chapter is about to close.
When I wrote the Bonsai Conspiracy a couple of years ago I said that were there to be a second edition of the book that the one section that I was felt sure would be revised would be the section on the way we meet.
“Our meetings have gone through a seemingly endless evolution.I imagine that if I ever need to revise this book in years to come, this section will require the most radical updating."
However, I did not envisage that the process of evolution would become a revolution. I wrote:
As we look forward, we do so not in search of the next initiative-du-jour but as part of our desire to facilitate and deepen koinōnia.We fully expect our meetings to continue to devolve and it is possible that ultimately, we will make the transition to a house-church model (certainly this is our preferred church-planting model; our most recent initiative, Grace East, conforms to this pattern).We have resisted that thus far as we still feel that there is merit in a corporate-body life and the providing of a neutral portal for people to sample our evolving brand of church life.
As it has transpired the Lord has led me in a different direction, one that I have struggled to come to terms with but know in the depths of who I am is the right path for us.Far from devolving into small “communities of God” my sense as I have been writing about in various blogs is to establish a highly influential ‘model’ church in London whose members having discovered their ‘strengths’ been grounded in the identity in Christ will move from simply knowing who they are to actually being who they are freeing them to be ‘God’ in their communities.
It has been interesting to see how we have simply not been able to contain Grace East, which we began as the most unassuming house church.It growth has been both spontaneous and organic and has catapulted our work from the wings to centre-stage. Grace East is bigger, bolder and even more exciting than ALC (AbundantLifeChurch) was when we first started in 2000.However, it is also altogether more mature, as indeed we have learnt many lessons in these last years. We are seeking to build Grace East on the four pillars listed below:
Worship
Community
How can we create an environment that enables people coming to The Grace Project to experience the presence of God?
How can we establish an authentic Christian community?
Children/Young People
Discipleship & Personal Development
How can we create an environment in which our children/young people can know God for themselves?
What additional tools/structures/initiatives/programmes do we need to make available in order for people to have the grace to live fully?
It will be exciting to see how the core group in the West will choose to express their life in Christ together.In respect of our Sunday meetings we are consolidating our work in London into what will now be our one central Sunday meeting in Stratford East London. Grace East is taking “a central line” as we seek to create an authentic and robust Grace Church. Our objective is not to simply create a graceful community but by building a church by grace alone to be grace for the community.
Our vision is to change the way that the world perceives Christianity and part of the way that we will do that is by changing the way that Christians perceive God. For most Christians their perception of God has been shaped in church and that is what we want to reshape. Our emphasis is on growing ‘big’ people not a big church.
At Grace East we are seeking to experience the presence of God in new ways. We want to know his presence both individually and collectively in our worship and in our being together. We hope that you will join us East bound on the central line as we discover the difference between being in Christ and having Christ in us and see what happens when we realise that the only thing that counts is “faith is working through love.”
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