ARC Resources

The term ‘presence’ was chosen by the participants to describe their diverse expressions of Christian community action. They were drawn from the following overlapping categories:

• Emerging, fresh expressions of church that were wanting to engage more meaningfully with their local community;
• Innovative Christian social action projects that were wrestling with how and if they were ‘church’ in their local community;
• Small, scattered, under-resourced churches in difficult circumstances in both rural and urban contexts.

Four of the presences were in explicitly rural communities:

• Blackley Baptist Church, West Yorkshire was running a conference centre, providing a ‘ministry of hospitality’ for a wide variety of people.
• A join Methodist/Anglican initiative in Grewelthorpe was providing social housing and a village community facility.
• Healing and Keelby Methodist Church Outreach Project was bringing together these two village churches in Lincolnshire to offer a range of community activities, including a coffee shop.
• In Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, ‘The Connection’ was an ecumenical group bringing young people together from across the community between 4pm and 6pm.

Further details can be found as follows.

The ECPE full report: www.crc-online.org.uk/downloads/ECPE%20Main%20report.pdf
A summary report: www.crc-online.org.uk/downloads/ECPE%20Executive%20summary.pdf
Case study report: www.crc-online.org.uk/downloads/ECPE%20Case%20studies.pdf

These publications, especially the case studies report, include details of how effectiveness is measured and maintained, and how the presences were initiated and have subsequently developed.

From the ECPE project, seven key findings emerged:

1. Partnership or collaborative working is a key (or ‘default’ position) for effectiveness.
2. Volunteers are crucial.
3. Effectiveness requires three distinct leadership styles working together (team building, entrepreneurial and project/strategic management).
4. Effectiveness is dependent on more than the church leader! Teams are crucial.
5. It’s important to strive for quality.
6. Flexible ‘church structures’ can actively encourage effective presences.
7. Sustainability is about more than long-term funding – it’s about ‘keeping the fire alive.’

These key findings can helpfully be represented in the form of a wheel – ‘The Effectiveness Wheel’ (see below). At the heart of an effective presence is its ethos and theology, likened to its hub. The hub holds everything else together and without it the presence is likely to collapse. The hub also defines the structure of the wheel, making it possible for the wheel to do the job it was created to do. Ethos and theology give life to a presence’s activities and unite all the other elements of effectiveness, enabling the presence to fulfil its ultimate purpose which is lasting transformation.

The spokes of the wheel are the elements identified above: partnership, volunteering, leadership, team building, quality, flexibility and sustainability. The hub and the spokes support the rim – where ‘the rubber hits the road’ – that is, effectiveness and lasting transformation. The stronger the hub and the spokes, the more effective the presence, and the more lasting the transformation.

The case studies are helpful sources of inspiration and learning but they are not, of course, blueprints for success. They do underline the importance of being contextually aware and relevant and from them emerge the key findings and ‘The Effectiveness Wheel’, which highlights the building blocks required for any presence to be effective and transformational. The wheel does not need to be reinvented; it simply needs to be reconfigured in each particular context.

PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION OF ‘THE EFFECTIVENESS WHEEL’ (from p.33 of ECPE)