Vision Talk 2020 by Owen Lynch - January 26 2020

What has God been doing with us at Severn Vineyard in the last year, and what are we looking forward to in 2020? In this talk, Owen Lynch outlines what has been happening with soul care, opening our front door wider and launching new community services. In the vision for 2020, soul care and spiritual health remain top priorities, along with empowering leadership and multiplication.

What Owen Said:

It’s that time of year when we look back with thankfulness and look forward with anticipation! We are doing our annual vision talk! If you are visiting today, we hope that the insight into the life of Severn will be helpful. Let’s start with the three things we sensed the Holy Spirit wanting us to emphasise during 2019, in addition to all we do.

1. Embed a culture of Soul Care

The first was to start to embed a culture of soul care, by which I mean creating opportunities for us to better understand our identity and authority that we have because we are made in the image of God. We made this theme of identity and authority a centrepiece of our preaching this year, two community groups - the “Gold course” and the “SHAPE of you” course have pioneered the same theme in a smaller setting with 14 people completing those courses. Fourteen people have done the Faithwalking 101 retreat and six people have completed Faithwalking 201. 13 people have been trained in facilitating Immanuel Prayer, and 22 people including the team have experienced the process in 2019.

The stories that are being told by people who have participated in these courses and retreats reveal profound and life changing experiences that have dramatically deepened their relationship with Jesus. We intend to further embed a culture of soul care in Severn this year.

2. Open the front door wider

The second of our emphases for 2019 was to open the doors of the church wider to welcome new people in. Some of the ways we did this, was to reopen the cafe for Sunday services, strengthen the host team, the provision of branded T-Shirts for volunteers to identify team members, improve the ranking of our website on google, paid for advertising in the UWE student union during Freshers month and the commitment to run an Alpha course at least twice a year.

The reality is that in 2019 we have welcomed 43 newcomers to our newcomer dinner parties and 16 fresher students to our student lunches. Again, we have said goodbye to friends for reasons of life, love and work, which is normal churn for a city centre church with a younger demographic. We have always had this churn, so much so that I estimate that around 700 people have called Severn their church in the first ten years.

So this last year we have just had fewer new people through the front door. Reasons for this include us not inviting as many friends and family to church, but also include the fact that many other churches in Bristol are doing a great job of attracting new people to their churches. I know the leaders of these churches personally and it’s safe to say we are getting less of the pie, so to speak, than we did in the first 8 years of the church when we we attracting around 80 to 100 new people a year.

The pie is as big as you make it though, there maybe 10,000 people in Bristol churches, but there are half a million people within 20 minutes of the city centre! Severn exists to serve the needs of everyone in our city not just the 10,000 Christians. Therefore, we expect this season to change, just like winter turns to spring, we may have been pruned back, but pruning back always precedes a period of new growth. As you will hear today, we may have been pruned back in numbers but the richness of our community has only deepened.

3. Launch three new community services in South Bristol

Our third emphasis was to launch three new community services in South Bristol: CAP debt management service, CAP Life skills course and the South Bristol Foodbank.

The CAP debt management service launched with Rachel Goodchild at the helm. Paid for just two days a week, Rachel has set up the service, taken on 11 clients and built a network of 16 churches, trained up 20 befrienders, generated £50,000 in funding, built strong relationships with 6 referral agencies and two clients have given their lives to Jesus! All in 9 months! Rachel will be speaking at Severn in three weeks time and telling some of the stories of people who are in financial stress, so I don’t want to steal her thunder, but here’s a brief description of one of her clients:

Visiting him in his home, no carpets, bare walls, the man was depressed, agitated, chaotic, alone and broken. The bailiffs had taken most of his possessions and left him suicidal and hopeless. Rachel and a befriender visited him several times, sorted out his debts, got him back on his feet financially. The befriender struck up a fantastic relationship with him, invited him to his local church where he gave his life to Jesus.

Isn’t that a wonderful story! Do come and listen to Rachel speak on this in three weeks.

Also in collaboration with CAP, Shelley Neal, Iola Solari and Cat Pennington have been trained as life skills coaches, equipping people with basic life skills like cooking on a budget, healthy lifestyles and financial budgeting. They ran two courses last year in Bishopsworth out of St Peter’s church Hall. We are working in collaboration with St Peter’s church Bishopsworth this year with a series of courses and events for families in the local area.

The third community service project is the South Bristol Foodbank. We have been working with three churches - Victoria Park and Counterslip Baptist churches and Bishopsworth Catholic Church to bring together three food banks in partnership with the Trussel Trust. The plan will be to have a central food warehouse in South Bristol and for us to open a fourth food bank outlet on those premies half a day a week. Still in the pipeline, but working with East Bristol Food Bank to make this a reality in 2020.

Whilst we wanted to bring added emphasis to these three priorities last year, there was tons of other stuff going on as you would expect.

Life events

First of all we have celebrated the birth of three babies: Blake Aitken, Emily Pudner and just this week Luke Watson has been born, we have celebrated the adoption of Alana Boulton and the Calladine family have fostered five children this year. Lis Lung, our kids pastor, tells me we have three more babies due in 2020 already!

As a community we embrace and support all of these parents and children, knowing that families thrive in healthy community.

Three couples got married in 2019: Matt and Sarah, Jenni and Victor, Luke and Victoria. We celebrated and helped to prepare them for marriage. Three couples got engaged - Elliott and Sarah, Tom and Ruth, Lydia and Tom. As well as helping these couples prepare for marriage, another eight couples not connected to Severn or in some cases any church joined our marriage preparation course.

We celebrated the baptisms of Ellie and Tamsin back in April 2019 and also celebrated with three families who dedicated their children.

Of course, we have mourned the loss of loved ones this last year and many of us have suffered hardships and ill health, many of us have spoken of the support and encourage being part of Severn has been to us through those times.

Community

During 2019, we were thrilled to have people involved with Severn from approximately 15 nations other than the UK. We were thrilled to have a Spanish speaking community group start this year which has seen a number of people put their trust in Jesus for the first time. We are a community spread across most age groups and from different walks of life demonstrating the power of the gospel to unite us whilst honouring our diversity.

We aim to be a church of community groups rather than church with community groups.

We ran 26 different community groups during the year with 13 of those Open House groups, as well as these activity groups: Gospel Choir, Parents & Tots, Climbing, Mountain Biking, Life course, Translating God, Song writing, Alpha, Gold, Shape, Marriage Foundations, Boots and Brunch, Life Skills, Metal Church and Home for Good.

These groups multiply friendships, fun and spiritual growth and many people have grown spiritually this year including two people who have put their faith in Jesus for the first time.

You can see the value of community groups from a couple of comments:

“As a newcomer to Bristol, my community group has been key to my sense of community and belonging at Severn”

“Everyone in our group is so different and that’s brilliant because we’ve really come to enjoy those differences and enjoy spending time together chatting, cooking, eating, cleaning up, drinking tea, singing, praying and studying the Bible together. It can be a real commitment to give up an evening a week but the friendships and the time with Jesus are so worth it!”

We ran three training events for Community group leaders covering Mental Health & Wellbeing, Serving your neighbourhood and Prophecy & Prayer for Healing, two all leaders meetings and the Annual Leaders Day in March for all the leaders with Steve Nicholson. We also ran a training event for staff and leaders with Alex Venter from South Africa and invited the Vineyard staff and leaders from our sister Vineyard churches in the South of England and Wales.

Kids

Our kids and youth church has continued to flourish this year with 43 kids under the age of 11. Sunday gatherings have been a central focus with all sorts of crafts, activities and games to invest in the kids spiritual health. In 2019, in partnership with our worship team, we have been leading the kids in worship regularly, as well as weekly prayer and bible study. The young teenagers have started serving as junior leaders in each of the Vineyard Kids age groups once a month, to the obvious delight of all involved! All age services, picnics, parties and easter egg hunts have brought all the families together through the year, including monthly Lord’s supper with all the kids and adults. One of the children said that, “they love Acorns more than nursery and they really love nursery.”

Youth

With fourteen teenagers our youth team have been busy facilitating them doing church each week. The younger teens (Severn Up) meeting during the adult service and the older teens (Tribe) meeting every Sunday evening - with a ton of creative and fun activities as well as spiritual support as they work out what they believe about Jesus, life and TikTok and Rainbow Six Siege. They went to the two youth festivals - DTI and Soul Survivor and a regional youth event in Cardiff Vineyard all of which was spiritually nourishing for the kids with one of the youth putting their faith in Jesus for the first time. Our youth team has been working closely with youth teams from the other vineyard churches in the Westcountry and Wales, and we will be hosting a regional DTI Nano event in Bristol open to all teenagers in February, and of course we all have the opportunity to help make DTI step into the gap created by Soul Survivor this summer with 5000 teenagers gathering in Staffordshire.

Students and young adults

We have been privileged to have around 20 students calling Severn their church in 2019. Tom Hayes developed a team of student leaders who organised a programme of events through the year, including weekends away in March and November, freshers events during the autumn term, group trips to David’s Tent, Cause to Live for and our student leaders will be joining us at the Vineyard National Leaders Conference next week. Our students serve on most of the teams and also get involved in community services, releasing them from the student bubble. Our students have been actively sharing their faith on campus, running a LIFE course, as well as serving practically - three of them headed off to Magaluf in the summer to give practical and spiritual assistance to drunk and drugged up students leaving nightclubs in the wee hours of the morning.

Our young adults community makes up a significant proportion of the church, so much of what we do is led by and empowered by our young adults. However in addition, our young adult network led by Ed and Amy has created a vibrant social diary of events that have connected many of our young adults and provided a place for friendships to deepen and flourish, as well as having a ton of fun!

Worship

One of our highest values as a Vineyard is worship and intimacy with God. Time and time again we hear comments about how tangible the presence of God is in our times of worship. And we have our talented and humble musicians to thank for this.

Becky Evans volunteers her time to lead and coordinate worship in the life of the church working with department leaders to facilitate worship amongst kids, youth, community groups, as well as Sunday services. In 2019 we held three Essence evenings - worshipping God for two hours uninterrupted. Becky has been recruiting, training and releasing new worship leaders and musicians who have faithfully served us every week. The variety of our music reflects the diversity of our musicians with rock, pop, gospel and even a brass band at Christmas. We are so blessed to have so many talented musicians and artists.

A group of five worship leaders went last year to the National Vineyard Worship Leaders Weekend, connecting them in to the wider church and equipping them to lead us all into God’s presence. Becky will be speaking in two weeks about this value of worship and intimacy in more detail.

Compassion and justice

Collectively working to stand up for and serve vulnerable members of our city is super important to Jesus and super important to us at Severn. As well as the new projects I mentioned earlier we have been able to organise ourselves to look after the needs of those in our midst through the work of community group leaders, the pastoral support team and staff.

The Life Recovery Group with 16 members provides a safe space for people who are in recovering from what life has thrown at them to explore faith, share struggles and build friendships.

Anna Simmonds as a champion for the charity Home for Good has been hosting a group of adults interested in fostering, adoption and respite care of children without homes or families.

A team of people from both Vineyard churches in Bristol have been serving at the chaplaincy in Southmead hospital once a month helping patients find hope and solace during their stay in hospital.

A number of us have become ‘befrienders’ of refugee families from Syria and as a church we are significantly invested in the work of Bridges for Communities enabling Peace Feasts language classes and a number of other activities that bring people of different faiths and cultures together in the city.

A team has provided a storehouse of children’s clothing and equipment for vulnerable families for several years and even though we paused the service from July to the present date, we still served 212 families from January to June. This service is much needed and we are reforming the service with a view to multiplying the storehouse so it is more accessible for the families who use it. Often, the Mums and Dads using the Storehouse are struggling with more than a lack of money and our team have been able to pray with them and build supportive relationships with them through the year.

Teams from Severn helped ten vulnerable families last year with practical DIY assistance to decorate homes and clear up overgrown gardens amounting to 200 hours of work. These are often lonely people who don’t have the support of family and friends, are not part of a supportive community like Severn and are unable to improve their homes for themselves because of physical and mental ill-health. Those teams didn’t just help practically, they restored faith in humanity. One person said, “your church made me realise that kind people still exist”, and another - “I feel so alone and have had suicidal thoughts, thank you for helping me”.

Teams from Severn and Bristol Vineyard provided food and drink to the homeless on 26 nights in 2019. We prepared 3151 sandwiches, over 1200 food packs and served 1266 people with respect and compassion, often in challenging circumstances.

We continue to partner with two projects in India and Mexico. Working with a vineyard church plant in Chandigarh, Northern India, we have provided a small amount of financial support and personal mentoring.

Working with Sheila and Iain Crofton Briggs, two members of Severn who have established a residential home in Mexico for young men recovering from drug and alcohol addiction called Casa de Esperanza. A small team provide ongoing pastoral care and mentoring for this couple.

Both projects have been helped this year by our website developer who has built websites for both Chandigarh Vineyard and Casa de Esperanza for free.

Building Fund

2019 has been a great second year for the building fund with it rising to £346,802 at 31st December. Sometimes a building campaign can distract churches from the doing all the stuff that they are meant to be doing. Instead, we have all been quietly sacrificing and giving to the building fund, whilst doing the stuff that Jesus did. As we start the third and final year of the building campaign, I want to honour and thank everyone who has donated so sacrificially to the building campaign - you are amazing and Jesus sees and loves your heart to do this - thank you. We expect Jesus to provide facilities that will bring life to our city and we expect to bring this much more to the fore during 2020 - as the campaign concludes at the end of this year. We published a building campaign update in October - a copy of which is on your chair.

Can I just say that it’s such a privilege to present this summary each year. The richness and diversity of our collective action is testament to the willingness to serve and the creativity of you all. Well done! I believe Jesus is saying to you all - well done - you have used your time, energy and money in such creative and fruitful ways. Jesus is always looking for his church to partner with him to bring life to themselves and the wider community and I believe he has done that with us this last year! Wonderful! There’s a question I want to ask you. Hearing all of this, are you glad that you invested your time, energy and money into this? Are you pleased with the return on your investment? Not just for yourself, but for all the other people who have benefited from our collective activity?

I hope so! I hope you feel the satisfaction of being part of a church that is being and doing what a biblical church should be and do.

Last year collectively we gave thousands of hours of time, tens of thousands of calories of energy and hundreds of thousands of pounds of money - £290,000 to be exact. There is a summary of on your chairs and you will be able get a copy of the annual accounts from the website and charities commission at the end of February.

Thank you for making 2019 such a great year, thank you for your time, energy and money. The question is, at the beginning of 2020, do you want to do it again? Do you want to make 2020 even more fruitful than 2019?

Here’s what we do at this time of the year. We make a big ask for your commitment for the year ahead. Together in partnership with the Holy Spirit we can grow spiritually and emotionally this year, bringing health and vitality to our homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods.

So will you commit your time, energy and money to this for another year? Will you commit to your own emotional and spiritual growth? Will you commit to a community group, a monthly team and to helping a vulnerable person? Will you commit money to make this happen?

Now if you’re not familiar with the way churches are funded, the basic idea from the Bible is that everyone is invited to contribute a regular donation to the collective pot to from which we pay for everything that we do together, in the Bible this is called a tithe and is a proportion to your income rather than a fixed amount, which means everyone can afford to give something. Many people give 10% of their income, which might sound unbelievable - and it is very counter-cultural, it is very radical.

One of my favourite people in football - Juan Mata has set up a charity and has encouraged many premiership footballers to give 1% of their income to it and many have which is to be celebrated, but nonetheless it does demonstrate how ridiculously crazy and generous Christians are, but also how willing Christians are to not be controlled by money. Last year Claire and I gave 11.5% of our gross income to Severn, which I think is nuts! Nuts!! I sometimes think of what I would do with that money if I didn’t give it to Severn. But when I hear the stories and the scale of what that money is facilitating, it makes it such a great investment, an investment that will out live us and be a legacy for generations to come and I’m happier with that than a bigger house, a newer car or a road bike, or a trip to Australia!

If you call this your church and you don’t give a portion of your income for the sake of Jesus, can I encourage you to start doing it? You won’t regret it! Start at a percentage that works for you and ask Jesus to help you take that leap of faith. Jesus was clear in his observation of the widow’s mite, no amount is too little as it is an issue of the heart.

You can give it in any way you like, sheep, a cow, but we pay for everything in money, so money would be the most helpful! We’d prefer you to set up a regular donation from your bank account, but you can also give cash and make a donation using your card on our website.

At this special moment in the year though, we want to invite you all to give an additional one off gift in celebration and thanksgiving for all that Jesus has done with us this past year and in anticipation of what he will do with us this year.

Every year you are all incredibly generous and we often end up with around £30,000 extra in one-off gifts. This money is essential for us to collectively fund all that God has called us to do and more. Can I ask you to pray about it and give a one off donation, talk to your spouse if you are married and have a joint account! Between now and the 9th Feb we would be grateful if you would complete a pledge card with your one off gift or if you want to start a new regular donation or if you want to increase your regular donation.

You know, friends, eighteen months ago, we experienced the first year without a growth in income and we had to trim the expenditure, so we reduced the number of hours we pay Dan, Mal, Claire and myself. Liz and Becky have been working voluntarily and we would like to add a member of staff to cover communications.

This year it would be amazing to stop the gradual reduction in the size of the church income and invest for those yet to come. So please give generously one off gifts, new and increased regular donations.

Now for those three emphases for 2020, well it’s the start not just of a new year, but also the start of a new decade and so the three emphases this year are more strategic and will serve us beyond this year. I want to avoid the mess Labour made of their manifesto by focussing on three memorable phrases: Soulcare, empowered leadership and multiplication.

Soulcare

Spiritually healthy people create healthy communities, so we want to further embed a culture of caring for your soul into the life of Severn. We are ambitious that everyone of us would have the opportunity to participate in some of Faithwalking 101/201, Gold, Shape, Immanuel Prayer, Restoring the Foundations. We would like to have a culture where this is normal thing for everyone to do.

Spiritually healthy people can’t help but share the difference Jesus makes to their life with others, and this creates a culture of invitation, extends kingdom culture and grows the family of God.

Empowered Leadership

Spiritually healthy people have more emotional energy for other people and draw out the potential in them. This year we want to start the process of embedding a culture of empowered leadership. By this I mean drawing out the best in people, helping one another fulfil our potential, mining for the gold in each other. All of our staff and leaders will be learning about this at our Annual Leadership day at the end of February with Tom and Beth Camacho, who are experts in doing this.

Multiplication

Empowered leadership leads to multiplication and I spoke in detail about this last Sunday, you can listen to it on our website or Soundcloud account. Multiplication is growing the family of God one person at a time. It’s about us sharing Jesus with our family and friends, it’s about multiplying community groups, neighbourhood groups, it’s about multiplying premises, it’s about multiplying new churches.

In truth you can’t plant a church without having a culture of multiplication, but we want to further embed this culture in Severn this year. Multiplication rather than division, multiplication rather than just addition, and certainly multiplication rather than subtraction. As I said last week, multiplication is the DNA of the Vineyard, and it is the DNA of the church.

Growing the family of God is God’s great plan for humanity and we are part and parcel of that.

So that’s the plan - Soul Care, Empowered Leadership and Multiplication. If you are up for another adventure together with the Holy Spirit this year, please commit your time, energy and money.

Let’s pray together.