The Revd Fiona Barber, Curate in Sinfin Moor, Derby, shares some of her learnings and experience of building community and sharing Jesus while living on a rapidly expanding new housing estate where she was was placed as one of the first residents.
When completed, the estate will house 4.5k new families, doubling the population of the parish. How to engage with this influx of new people had been on the radar for both parish leaders and the Bishop’s Officer for New Worshipping Communities, Paul Desborough.
Supported with ongoing prayer from the existing Sinfin Moor church, Fiona was commissioned with simply ‘building community’ within the new estate.
Fiona remembers her first task was to find ‘the peacemakers and gatekeepers’ who she could build relationships with and who might partner with her in the work.
She recalls: “It actually happened very quickly, since there were only five houses to begin with! Intentionally knocking on doors, introducing myself and suggesting a community gathering was all it took to get the ball rolling.”
Meet the neighbours
A ‘Meet the neighbours’ coffee morning was established and continues two years on, now bringing together families from 24 houses.
“What I discovered was that people longed for that sense of community – I think it came out of Covid when togetherness was denied people. The value of community was suddenly much more appreciated.
“After the initial connections were made, I started leaving welcome cards and sunflowers seeds for every new family that moved in, inviting them to the coffee morning. At Easter, I secretly left daffodils on people’s doorsteps as an unconditional blessing. Despite my best efforts to remain anonymous, someone’s doorbell camera revealed it was me and shared it on Facebook! It wasn’t so secret in the end, but it was very much appreciated.”
With 120 of 140 houses now lived in, Fiona has also found the estate has become richly multicultural.
“It seems there is almost every nation and every faith here, so my ministry has adapted for that. Our plan is ‘no plan’ – I’m learning through experience all the time, being led by the Holy Spirit into situations and contexts that are completely new to me and seeing where God is at work.”
Joining in with community events around other faith festivals such as Diwali has been part of the learning curve for both Fiona and those in Sinfin Moor Church. But with a conviction that it is part of her own faith to ‘see God in everyone’, Fiona has viewed these events as opportunities for more relationship-building and for enabling social cohesion and mutual respect between faiths early in the formation of the community.
Another key aspect of her role has been in encouraging the lay people in the parish to get involved in her ministry, and to begin to form a team. She’s mindful that soon, she will be moving on from her curacy and is keen that the work will be sustainable.
A Garage of Light and Bags of Hope
“The momentum is growing all the time”, she says, “We listen to what the community wants and then enable it. Out of this listening and enabling, we’ve had a community street party of 40 people, a WhatsApp community group, and a Hallowe’en trail that led to my house where I’d created a ‘Garage of Light’, where children could collect ‘Bags of Hope’. Seventy children came to that. It was wonderful because people were walking around the estate and having conversations with other families. I was also able to explain why, as a Christian, I’d created the Garage of Light and the Hope bags.”
Having established strong community bonds already in the housing estate, Fiona has begun to gather interested Christians from within the estate to form a new worshipping community, called Food & Faith. Using TableTalk cards to help with faith conversations, and by introducing space to share the bread and wine, she says it has slowly begun to form a truly worshipping community.
It’s still early days for the group, and learning from experience, Fiona realises it’s not the right context for those who have never had any Christian engagement, but there’s now a Walk & Talk group that enables gentle discipling at a pace more suitable for non-churched people.
As well as the ongoing prayers of Sinfin Moor Church, Fiona finds support through the Greenhouse Gatherings and says that simply being in touch with like-minded people enables her to reflect, learn and be encouraged.
Enabling others
“I really think Greenhouse needs to be in ordination training, particularly for Curates. In the whole area of growing new worshipping communities, I often hear them say ‘I’m not a pioneer’, but what I discovered was that as a member of the clergy, you don’t have to do the actual pioneering – you’re really just enabling it among the lay people in the parish.”
Fiona’s next steps involve working towards a situation where she can leave Food & Faith and all the community work in safe hands, and she hopes that will come from within the estate.
Reflecting on her learning experiences, Fiona offers a final nugget of wisdom, “New housing estates present an exceptional situation for ministers and we’ve learned that it’s important for the Christian presence to be placed there early and to take a lead on building relationships. My overriding advice would be simply ‘Be a neighbour’ and all the rest will flow from that.”