The church must be at the heart of the mishmash of local life
What are the challenges and opportunities in your neighbourhood? And where does your church fit in?
Those are two of the questions that people at the Dandelion Community church have been pondering and acting on in recent weeks, as they try to build one another up, and make change happen.
In February, the church hosted a Vision Day. Church leaders were there; so too were the various organisations that use the building through the week; so too were other local groups; and so too were wider partners.
Dandelion: A hope-filled, bustling day
It was a hope-filled, upbeat day, bustling with conversation and bubbling with possibilities and ideas. It was a reminder of how much energy and ingenuity there is in communities, and how much power there is in bringing people together.
Revd Kate Gray, minister at Dandelion, says: “Feedback has been that it was a really positive and creative day, because of the opportunities to connect with all sorts of different organisations that might not have met each other before. It felt very creative and constructive.”
She highlights two particular areas of work that have grown from the day:
- An exciting collaboration around using green energy to reduce local bills
- A women’s leadership programme
Green energy
“One strand is looking at community-owned renewable energy – a collection of local residents and local groups, including some from Dandelion, are working together on that with a charity partner and a university, and we’ve had the first community workshop.
“We are hoping, particularly with local residents who live immediately around the building, to develop some short and long term responses to poverty by lowering bills. We want Dandelion to become a zero-carbon church and hub, and we have a feasibility study looking at things like ground pumps or a form of hydro-power, and we want solar panels on the roof.
“That would reduce our bills and respond to climate change in the next few years. There’s lots of interest in that in churches and community groups in Wythenshawe and across the wider area of east, central and south Manchester. We would lower our bills but also produce enough surplus energy so that can go to local households, local schools, or other buildings.”
Women's leadership
“Another piece of work is around women’s leadership, and how women want to organise themselves to respond to poverty through collective action, through families, households, social enterprises etc.
“There’s a stream of work with three women-led organisations at Dandelion developing around that. One of those is called Wythenshawe Central and is now a wider network for people and organisations across Wythenshawe. That’s responding specifically to Wythenshawe town centre redevelopment – what do local people need to be in that development?”
Church's role in the community
Dandelion is in a low-income neighbourhood in Wythenshawe, right beside Manchester Airport, and is eager to play a positive role across a wide range of issues.
Kate says “We are developing a church and community hub with a range of partnerships. There are independent partners who are charities, CICs, local enterprises, and we share some values together.
“We want to explore more seriously a small governance-based organisation that includes the Dandelion church, includes the URC more widely, and also includes and has clear representation from community organisations that are based in and around Dandelion. We could develop a locally led, locally steered partnership together (with faith and non-faith groups), where we act together and make bids for pieces of work we want to make happen, and that we have identified together.
“Our role as a church here is to be in the mix. Our role is to be part of conversations with a range of other people and – where those conversations don’t yet exist – to look at creating opportunities to host or facilitate or encourage or generate those. Our role is to have a diverse mish-mash of partnerships and also to do that in a way that’s sensitive to all partners and not necessarily church-led.
“Also, our role is to ensure that Christians who are involved in the life of Wythenshawe are not separate from that. The role of faith is made clear through the practice of faith. In our context that looks like this; in other contexts it might look different.
“There are a lot of churches with buildings in Wythenshawe and we want to encourage collective action to support the use of public space and to value public space for communities to come together to act together. We can do things like encourage people to access support for their mental health, or other services. Church has a role to play and to be an acknowledgement to God.
“I would say it’s clear to me that the Holy Spirit has made it quite easy for us to do this work, because we are open to change and able to adapt our building, our worship, our language, format and style of being church. If we want to keep everything the same, it’s harder for God to act.”
Dandelion in partnership
The Dandelion Community church is a URC church in Wythenshawe. Church Action on Poverty has partnered with the church for many years, and it was a central partner in the Church on the Margins programme.
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