Rich Kao

Love this write-up from St. Mary's-Bryanstone Square, a hopping church in London, and related birth home of the famed Alpha Course.

Church belongs to God
We believe that God must be allowed to do with his church what he wills. God caused our church to come into being through unusual circumstances, he’s protected us and he has caused us to grow. We seek to follow God’s direction as he works through us.

Church belongs to the people of God
Obviously people are very different and this always poses a challenge for anyone wanting to bring them together for a common purpose. We aim to establish a community life that diverse people can own and where everyone can play.

We have come to believe that some people are motivated above all else by such values as risk-taking, impact-making and stimulation – we call them ‘adventurers’. Others are more motivated by relationship, friendship and acceptance – we call them ‘carers’. There are also those who value integrity, honesty and authenticity – we refer to them as ‘truth-tellers’. We believe that people reflect these important drives or motivations in different balances and although we are all meant to grow up into mature expressions of all three, we tend to identify more readily with two out of the three sets of values. We believe these drives reflect real differences of temperament and that it is important to understand what motivates you because it is indicative of the kinds of gifts you have, the aspects of spirituality you will find easier and the kinds of people you will find more difficult!

Generally, churches don’t reflect all of these drives properly and tend to turn their distinctive visions into the drives the leader is most comfortable with! Hence some churches are evangelistic and some are more pastoral etc.

In our view church is church
This means that we must give full expression to adventuring gifts (apostolic and evangelistic), caring gifts (pastoral) and truth-telling gifts (teaching and prophecy). None are optional. The absence of the right functioning of any one causes the church to remain immature.

We are an immature church but we are trying to grow up.