Many of you will know at the weekend there I was down at the Crowded House in Sheffield. ‘Crowded House’ is headed up by Steve Timmis (also director of Acts 29 Europe) and Tim Chester. This pair wrote a book a wee while back called ‘Total Church’ which has become very influential and respected among the church planting and ‘missional’ circles.
I was down there to check out what was going on and to get a feel for the movement. Granted I was only there for the weekend but I think I got a good taste of what life is like in the Crowded House. Stylistically Crowded House is rather different from many typical churches. Many churches have small groups and this plays an important role in the church but Crowded House do it the other way around. They call the small groups Gospel Communities (GC’s for short), the GC’s are viewed as church. These groups hang out together, eat together, worship together and interact basically on a daily basis. Each GC has a focus some target the arts community, others help asylum seekers and others minister through football and pub quizzes. On a Sunday all the GC’s meet together (in the network I was in there was 7) in what they call the Gathering (which is basically a typical church service) but to them this isn’t church it’s a gathering of the GCs, church is something that is done every day in each GC.
So what did I get up to down there, well lots, I met a heap of people (most of which I can’ remember), I got to hang out with the guys at refuge GC who took me along to help them teach asylum seekers English. Here I met 2 Iranian men Hussein, and Usman. I can see how effective this relational ministry can be because they come along every Saturday morning for 3 or so hours just to chat! Awesome!
I went for dinner with Beccs and Ben and 3 others who are in the Manner GC. The Manner is a rough housing estate in Sheffield here they are very intentionally getting to know the community. One of the ways that they went about this is by establishing a pub quiz in a local pub in the centre of the area.
I got to hang out with the guys from South View GC, there focus is to the arts community. They put on events in the building Crowded House has. This particular event was a folk night, they booked a popular folk band from the area (there name escapes me but they were sweeeeet!!!). This event attracted many non Christians from the area, the place was packed. The entry fee is like a fiver and u get free cakes and unlimited coffee (not the crap stuff, but rather they have one of the big starbucks machines, much coolness). Again this was another effective method of relational evangelism.
I also got to hang out with a guy called Tm from the Broomhall GC. I think they are also into working with asylum seekers. However he was talking about building relationships up with the people in the area by attending local comities, political events and anything else that is going on in an area. This area is very divers ethnically and in age also, there is a mix of students, Jamaicans and many other people groups. Tim told me that a month or so ago just outside his house there was a drive by shooting. Time felt really strongly about living in this area and making a difference with the Gospel.
On the Sunday I attended the Gathering where Michael Tinker (the guy who kindly let me stay with him and his family) lead worship with the team. There was a good mix of songs, some older ones jazzed up a bit, some that was written by people in crowded house and some from Sovereign Grace. One thing I found a little different was, Fredrick a German guy who is hoping to plant a church got up and shared a book review with the congregation. After this Steve Timmis got up and gave a good word. They were working through Tim Keller’s series on the prodigal God. On that day Steve was talking about the older brother who is angry, self righteous and bitter- he compared this to many people in the congregation and many people appeared to be convicted.
After the service I got to hang out with the Living Room GC which is the one that Steve Timmis was in. These guys don’t really have a focus at the moment, to some extent the focus is football. Here we ate together and chatted about the sermon.
All in all I had a great time hanging out with the guys at the Crowded House, they are a great bunch of people who are really seeking the Lord and trying to live life’s that are pleasing to Him. I’d recommend to all of you to buy a copy of Total Church it’s worth a look!
Crowded HouseTotal Church
