Well worth a look

Following up a footnote, I had a peek at http://www.emerging-church.org/ which is a collection of emerging church/fresh expressions resources put together by Richard Seel. Richard used to work for the BBC and is now a minister in Norfolk, involved in cafe church and training.

I thought the site merited a post all to itself, as it's got lots of helpful material:
1. Book notes: brief summaries and notes on a big range of books, covering things like alternative worship, cafe church, leadership, new monasticism, preaching, small groups. There's a paragraph or so on dozens and dozens of texts, enough to give a flavour of what it's about and whether it's worth looking at. (If you want a more meaty version of the same thing, Alison Morgans fantastic site has longer summaries of lots of key books on prayer, apologetics and ministry)

2. Video resources for worship: helpfully indexed by different parts of the service (welcome, confession, prayers etc.). Not such a big collection to be overwhelming, but plenty of good stuff.

3. C21st Church a course Richard teaches to lay leaders in the area, full teaching notes for 8 sessions covering culture, worship, preaching, spirituality, the Bible etc. Plenty of good material in this to mull over (or borrow!!!) If it came with powerpoints then Mission Shaped Intro would be up for some serious competition.

4. Some papers and reflection on Xpressions Cafe, the local 'fresh expression' which Richard is involved with, a cafe church in a rural setting which runs in 4 zones at the same time - cafe, families, exploring faith and a contemplative zone, allowing people to move in and out of the different zones all as part of the one event.

This is a really interesting approach instead of having 1 event and then trying to provide something else as a lead on (e.g a community cafe, then trying to encourage families along to Messy Church), it runs them all at the same time, in the same complex of buildings, so that people can base themselves in the cafe but explore the other zones at the same time. The latest Encounters on the Edge from George Lings has more about Xpressions Cafe, which is where I got the footnote from!

Another story about a similar kind of project tomorrow...