VentureFX website

The VFX pioneers now have their own website, which has information about the pioneers themselves, the context they're working in, and some links to their websites and blogs.  We'll probably be using that instead of this blog in future, so you might like to bookmark it.  There will still be a page with general information on the Methodist Church website.

VFXtra Learning and Support Days

VentureFX is holding regular learning and support days for those involved in pioneering and fresh expressions work.

The next day will be on Thursday 22 March 2013 and will be held simultaneously in four locations from 10.00am to 4.00pm.  The day's free, though you might have to buy your lunch.

Exeter: The Cavern
Birmingham: The Queen's Foundation
Manchester: Nexus Art Cafe
Newcastle: The Holy Biscuit

More details available at the VentureFX website  If you think this might be of value to you, you'd be most welcome - just email the contact person for the relevant venue.

Rhythm of Life

Click below to see the VFX rhythm of life in a slightly different format!

Rhythm of Life

Ric Stott talks about pioneer ministry

Ric Stott is a VentureFX pioneer in Sheffield using creative arts to explore spirituality and faith.  Here he talks about his call to pioneer ministry:

The Holy Spirit prevents mission!

The mission of God’s people is always prevented by the Holy Spirit. No, that isn’t as heretical as it at first sounds!  It’s a reminder that the way we use and understand words changes over time.  To our ears the word ‘prevent’ often has a negative meaning, suggesting that something is stopped or hindered. We might say, ‘I was prevented from reaching my destination,’ for example.  But the root meaning is ‘to come before,’ from the Latin venire meaning ‘to come’ with the prefix prae meaning ‘before’.  This was surely what was in John Wesley’s mind when he spoke of the prevenience of God’s grace: it is grace that ‘prevents’ us, or goes before us.  That is a distinctively Methodist emphasis which is especially helpful and relevant in our approach to mission today.

It resonates well with the missiological thinking which underlies much of our approach to contextual and cross-cultural mission today.  Maybe John Taylor’s comment that the missionary task of Christians and the Church means ‘finding out what God is doing and trying to do it with him’,[1] is a more recent re-statement of Wesley’s emphasis on prevenient grace.  When Sue Hope says, ‘Learning how to interpret the Spirit, spotting the footprints of God in the earthiness of the ordinary life of a local community and following them into the unknown is at the heart of true mission,’[2] perhaps she is articulating something similar to Wesley for our contemporary context.

Is the movement of our mission to bring Christ to community or culture, or is to bring our community and culture to Christ? A proper understanding of prevenient grace suggests that neither model is adequate.  A true grasp of the prevenient grace of God and the prevenient activity of the Holy Spirit, will remind us that God is already present in the culture and the community where we intend to engage in mission.  It is a mission which has already begun, because the Spirit has preceded and ‘prevented’ us. So mission is essentially a task of immersing ourselves in and becoming embedded in a culture or community in which God himself is already a willing and long-term participant. It is a necessary consequence of the doctrine of incarnation.  Our mission is, as I heard Neil Richardson express it recently,  ‘the bodying forth, in word and action, of God’s will for the world’.  Perhaps Peter made one of the earliest discoveries of the importance to Christian mission of a proper understanding of prevenient grace when he found that the Holy Spirit was already active in the hearts of Gentiles (Acts 10).

Our task in pioneer mission and ministry is certainly to be innovative.  It is to find creative ways of sharing the gospel in a culture that has largely lost sight of many of the traditional landmarks of the Christian story.  It is to reimagine what being an authentic disciple of Jesus might mean in our community and to dream of what church could become in our context.  But it is God who is the real innovator  - the groundbreaker, the missionary, the planter.  The God of mission whose Spirit preveniently works in individuals and communities to create in them an awareness of God’s loving purposes even before they know it, is the true pioneer missioner.  And Jesus, the Word made flesh, already immersed in the lives of those people and places, is both the ‘pioneer’ and the ‘finisher’ of faith and mission.

---

[1] John V Taylor, The Go-between God,  SCM Press, 1972, p.55

[2] Cited by Linda Barley, Christian Roots, Contemporary Spirituality, Church House, 2006, p.viii

VentureFX report concludes it is something of which the Methodist Church can be justly proud

The VentureFX scheme was recently reviewed in the third year of its life.  The project review report is available to be viewed or downloaded here.  The report was planned by the VentureFX project management group for the purposes of learning from the recent progress of the project.  The report and recommendations will be utilised as one particular input to consider the project learning overall and any future adjustments, and the report itself is not an agreed or official statement of the Methodist Church.

VentureFX pioneer in Milton Keynes on pioneering

Rob Winn is one of the most recent VentureFX pioneers to begin work.  Based in Milton Keynes he is in the exploratory stages, prayerfully discerning what God is doing and reflecting on what mission to young adults in that city may look like.  Here he talks to VentureFX coordinator Ian Bell about his views on pioneering ministry.

Facebook discussion of VentureFX review

Interesting discussion about the review of the VentureFX scheme on UK Methodists Facebook page and also an interesting reaction to the review report on Kim's blog

Setting the compass

At their January Learning and Support day, the VentureFX pioneers were led in a time of prayerful reflection by Dave Saunders, pioneer in Inverness. Dave spoke of the varying challenges to be faced and of the need to be directed and guided by God. He produced a compass (pictured) which was used in our prayers and which will be kept by each pioneer in turn for a month to underline our common sense of needing God's Holy Spirit to help us navigate the uncharted territory that our mission often leads us into.

Dave led us in the following prayer which he had written and which others may find helpful to make their own:

May we know the closeness of Christ wherever we find ourselves. 
May we look to Him to be our compass in life's chaos.
May we lose our need for control.
May we epically fail and still limp on.
May we see our scars as the pioneers map.
May we see things upside-down.
May we sleep at night dreaming of possibilities.
May we wake with energy to undo what needs to be undone
May we breath the rhythm of life.

Every wave surfed, every mic sung in, every paint that dries, every street  walked, every coffee drunk and every meal eaten, MAY IT BE for Christ's gain. 

Amen.

VentureFX Rhythm of Life

The VentureFX team of pioneers values being part of a shared journey of experience, reflection and understanding about mission which takes the context of never-churched people seriously.  Over the last two years this evolving community of pioneer mission within the Methodist family has been reflecting on the underlying values and rhythms which give direction to the journey.  Recently the group of pioneers has articulated this in a Rhythm of Life.  Our hope is that, in due course, others who share this or a similar journey might find this rhythm to be helpful for their journey too.

We are a pioneer mission movement of the Methodist Church. VentureFX pioneers are committed to journey together and with others as part of an evolving community of pioneer mission. Our work is with those who don’t currently connect with Christian faith or the Church. We are called to be at the edges, where Christian faith can creatively engage with contemporary culture, building the church from the outside in. We seek to invite people to be disciples of Jesus and to live out that discipleship in radical and relevant community with others.


We are committed to a rhythm of life which flows from three core values:

    Innovation - breaking new ground and planting
                         for the future

    Imagination - dreaming God’s vision for what church
                            could become

    Incarnation - immersed in our communities
                          in the name of Christ


We seek to express those values by:

Daily
Reflecting on our spiritual journey as disciples of Jesus

Weekly
Observing a common day for the discipline of prayer and fasting (normally Wednesday)

Monthly
Gathering together for support, encouragement and learning

Annually
Sharing in a retreat to renew our individual and common life with God