Five disclosures

Discipleship: a long and complex journey

It was the ‘making of disciples’ that was the heartfelt focus of the research for the insider team, and it was here that a significant learning for both teams took place. First and foremost, what became apparent from the interview data was the huge range and depth of attitudes of attending mothers towards faith, together with the length of time it took to build trusting relationships given their wariness of church. The disclosure for both insider and outsider teams was that growing in discipleship was a longer and more complex journey than had been supposed. Here is just one example:

I: Since coming to Messy Church, has it changed in any way your view of the church?

R: Yeah, it has a little bit actually. I think for a long time I was very much an atheist and I think coming to the church has made me slightly more agnostic. I just feel a little bit more connected and I really love the feeling of the community and the feeling of support and it’s made me, you know, kind of almost doubt some of my previous beliefs a little bit, you know. So I think it has changed. And I think it’s also made me more willing to be more flexible with my own children and say “well, you know, if they want to be part of this then that doesn’t bother me”. Or maybe in years to come, I might change a little bit. I don’t know. I’m a bit, you know, the jury’s out, kind of thing.... There definitely has been some kind of softening and I think before I saw [the Church] as a little bit more of a kind of institution and a bit more perhaps dictatorial, and I think, through attending Messy Church, I now see it as something that’s a bit softer than that.

1: And how about your views of Cod?

R: Yeah it has, it has affected my views of God. I don’t really know how;

I think I’m just a bit more open to it. I think before, it was very much a closed book for me because I come from a non-religious family and almost a slightly anti-religion family, not only non-religious, almost slightly anti-religion. I think that’s sort of what I was brought up with and that’s just really what I followed (Interview One).

The Insider Team reflected upon this quote as follows:

If the first stage of making disciples is turning people around - from being anti-God and anti-faith to a position of openness - then thefirst stage has been successful in the case of this participant. So if we define disciples as someone who says 'I turn to Christ’, this is a turning!

(Insider Feedback Document)

The Outsider feedback document also tried to bring together the different views in the interviews as follows:

Discipleship involves a very long journey

This data firmly illustrates that discipleship involves a very long journey from people’s initial contact with church to people coming to faith. The current figure in some literature for this journey is thought to be about three years. This figure matches the time for cat-echesis in the early church. However, this data demonstrates that there are many different shades of experience along the journey to faith and Messy Church has a challenging task of discerning how best to address everyone’s needs and deal sympathetically and reflectively with people’s prior experience of Church. In the data, you find evidence of people in transition from atheism, through to tolerant agnosticism, through to people feeling comfortable with their nominal Christian identity through to those explicitly wanting to explore faith further. These transitions are complex and often guilt is a stumbling block for people. What is clear is that Messy Church is clearly touching some of these parents in quite deep ways and this is leading them to ask questions about faith.

(Outsider Feedback Document)

We illustrated these observations with some direct quotes from the interviews, which portrayed ambivalent, but often ‘opening up’ positions:

I’m basically very agnostic really.... I’m not quite sure what, if anything, I do believe.

(Interview Four)

I would like to have that faith that they [the Messy Church leaders] do but... I think you can just be a nice person and do what are perceived to be good Christian things without being part of a church. I think that’s kind of where I am.

(Interview Three)

It’s made me think about [faith] more. It is something that I hadn’t thought about for a long time and it’s made me think about it more and coming here and seeing there’s a big sense of community, I can see that it is something that would be very nice to be involved in. It is very attractive and I do want to come to church but ... I think this

Messy Church, Croydon 137 is too full on. I think I probably need to ease in gently before I could cope with this.

(Interview Six)

Other mothers were very clear that it was for the children that they came to Messy Church for - but “they were okay, thanks”. The insider team reflected that some mothers appeared content with being passive recipients rather than active participants/disciples, perhaps embracing Messy Church as a good activity for their children, but not feeling any further need to explore for themselves. At the same time, as we shall see in disclosure four below, the relationship of family, parents and children militates against so clear a division.