Square Mile Project

Would anyone in your community notice if your church ceased to exist?

Trefor Williams, Communications Coordinator at RUN, reviews the Evangelical Alliance's new four-week course for small groups.

'Would anyone in your community notice if your church ceased to exist', is the starting point for this four week course for small groups - an honest, possibly brutal question which seeks to prompt churches to look at how they are a missional force in their community.

Ok, so we’ve been here before. If the Decade of Evangelism was a downright failure, it has at least prompted a wide range of resources since, some more successful than others in prompting churches to missional thinking. Perhaps those with the most potential are those looking beyond how the church has traditionally ‘done’ evangelism and Square Mile is thankfully one of these. In fact it’s one of the most focussed and approachable resources of recent years.

MILE is an acronym for the themes that make up the four weeks of the course: Mercy, Influence, Life discipleship and Evangelism which take those following the course on a journey that start with looking at what the Bible really says about mission through to how we can be missional as a community of believers.

"A key message is that the approach often taking by individuals – that of being a Christian in whatever situation you find yourself – is one that church should also seek to replicate. Rather than engaging mission programmes, forming action groups and setting targets, a church wishing share the Good News should be asking itself about what its role in the community is."

The unifying theme of this course is ‘integral mission’. That is, taking a holistic approach to mission both as churches and as individuals. A key message is that the approach often taking by individuals – that of being a Christian in whatever situation you find yourself – is one that church should also seek to replicate. So rather than engaging mission programmes, forming action groups and setting targets, a church wishing to share the Good News should be asking itself about what its role in the community is, what their community needs and what would Jesus be doing for those people? A church’s response to those questions should result in action that allows us to share the true nature of Christ in a genuine way rather than a manufactured one and almost certainly doesn’t result is going out to ask strangers ‘why not come to Church?’.

Of course this is a pretty obvious and biblical approach but is all too often overlooked by the Church’s need to organise instead of just being or its desire to achieve targets rather than really help where it’s needed most. There is good brief introduction to this theme at: http://www.eauk.org/squaremile/integral-mission-for-four-dimensional-churches.cfm

How the course works

Each session works through different approaches to the theme - theological, reflective and real life situations. And the best part is that there’s no messing about – Square Mile is honest, direct and practical. The questions in the slim study guide get right to the heart of why we need to be engaged in mission and how to go about it in our own unique circumstances. That said, a group embarking on the course will need a leader to preview the material and occasionally interpret it for their group as sometimes the single sentence questions might be a bit too concise to get a discussion going but there isn’t acres of material to read before you can get started.

The short DVD Introduction clips are especially useful to watch first to get a group talking and the editors and contributors to the DVD should be congratulated on the honesty of these which aren’t full of ‘perfect’ Christians but often bring home the truth that as Christian communities and individuals we often isolate ourselves from the very people who might need Church most.

Each week an In the deep end section provides a DVD montage of theological reflections which are very nicely put together to make them digestible and then use as a basis for discussion. Theses reflections often take a very practical approach to what the Bible is saying about mission.

On the Street case studies are genuine examples and just having them on DVD rather than as written stories reinforces that these are real life situations where ‘ordinary’ Christians are engaged in mission and where people have come to know something of Christ. The only criticism might be whilst each case study can be said to be inspiring, the majority would seem to be well established initiatives that are surely time and money intensive which might seem rather daunting to a church who are only just beginning to look at their missional reach. A few more ‘achievable’ or ‘newly born’ examples would have been welcome.

Each session concludes with Round the Corner prompting the group to look at their situation and then Out the Door – a time of prayer. In addition to the guide and DVD there are downloadable resources via a website. These mostly take the form of links to organisations, initiatives and further resources across a wide range of denominations. There are also participants’ sheets for each theme although as these would seem to formalise the group sessions along the lines of school activity sheets I would questions how useful they are.

One crucial observation about Square Mile is that only one of the case studies shows an example where the mission activity sought to bring people into an existing church set up and form a worship service, and this was actually a by-product of reaching out to an isolated ethnic minority. Rather than supporting situations where people are thinking ‘we need to bolster our congregation, and quick!’, this course encourages exploration of what it means to be Church for the community. It potentially asks ‘why are we a church?’ and any community which followed this thinking to its logical conclusion could very likely see a radical and wonderful transformation.

This is an excellent resource for any Christian community who genuinely wish to discover what it means to be church in their part of the world.

Trefor Williams, Communications Coordinator, RUN, Spring 2009.

For more information about RUN visit www.run.org.uk
For more information about Square Mile visit www.eauk.org/squaremile

Last Updated 24 November 2009