Hello everyone and welcome to the latest edition of THE BUZZ.

I’ll be taking over as editor for the next few months so many thanks to Roger for all his hard work and commitment over the last five years.

Alison Pollard
  

Four more exciting and encouraging stories from around Methodism. The contacts provided will be pleased to give you more information.

On 12 August we are holding a service on board the Yorkshire Belle boat. We will be having a one hour commentary on the trip out and then a Praise Party at sea before fish and chips on the harbourside. We already have a waiting list of 30 people!

As part of our commitment to exploring progressive Christianity, we watched the Saving Jesus DVD set to encourage open questions about the historic Jesus and the Jesus created by the Church over the centuries. This has attracted a number of new regulars, who are now also attending Sunday worship and our monthly Permission to Speak meetings. This has led to an opportunity to restart the junior church after an absence of families over recent years.

We have just begun meeting as Church in a bar in Manchester city centre. We wanted to leave our comfort zone behind and be where everybody else is. This also makes it more accessible for people to join with us. We begin by catching up with each other, we learn by discussing a theme together and we close with prayers of intercession in which we talk about concerns and issues in our lives. So far, people love it and it has attracted many who have never been to church. I'm looking forward to ordering a bread roll and a glass of red wine for when we do communion! We're hoping it grows so we can start other meetings at different bars on different nights.

Our Sunday school was one of the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1797, but in 2004 its future looked bleak as numbers fell. We decided that we needed something new for the twenty first century, so we closed the Sunday school and formed “Spirit Blazers” which was half an hour longer than before, had a tuck shop and asked the children to pay subs. It has been a great success, with over 50 new children attending over the last two years.