Hull, Marfleet

Kia Macpherson

kiamacpherson@gmail.com

Since last September, Kia has been leading a new worshipping community in Bilton Grange in Marfleet Team Parish. Kia has been building her team across this year and with them adapting her original vision for the New Worshipping Community (NWC) amidst challenging circumstances. Kia was grant funded by Multiply to grow her NWC and we caught up with her to hear how it all began, how the NWC has been transforming local life and what her hopes are for its future…

’When I first came to this parish in 2017 God was doing a lot in Hull with and through Churches engaging with City of Culture. I had been really blessed to go deeper in my own faith through learning about what God could do with creativity, that, being the image of God, we all had capacity for creativity which opened doors to God working in and healing and ministering to us. I became aware that the East Hull Estate of Bilton Grange had largely not engaged with Hull as City of Culture and I set about listening to find out why that was. I spearheaded a two-year project of listening on this basis and equipped the church to facilitate engagement with various arts which were free to the public. We had exhibitions and worked with schools, hosted workshops and made all sorts of arts opportunities available. With the help of a City of Culture Volunteer team we knocked doors to ask people who they were, what was important to them and find out whether and how they had engaged with City of Culture’.

‘I also spent some time embedding myself in what God was already up to in this community. The park over the road from the church has a significant community of dog-walkers, which I joined, and an active Friends group who were grieved at how the park was being allowed to dilapidate. I joined the group and, with them, reimagined a pre-existing community fun day which served the locality and gave them an identity and a voice. 2700 people came. God was doing something. I also then became the choir director in the local high school, giving the school the resources to run its own choir, but also work with students to build their confidence through singing. Through all of this God was extending the bounds of my own imagination as to what was possible in this closed-doored community’.

‘Fast forward to 2020 and we’re still listening. Having started training as an Evangelist with Church Army in September 2019 I felt God call me into new things. Shortly afterwards I met Ben and the Multiply concept and was immediately interested. I went to Wydale in February to a Multiply exploration day and God gave me a picture of a choir for people who think they can’t. … can’t whatever. This rang true of so many of the people I had met from this place, that people here believe that they can’t… meet the mortgage, parent their children, leave their home, get better, sing, whatever it happens to be. I will always recall an 11-year-old girl I met in school who told me that she couldn’t possibly join the choir. When I asked her why that was, she said that her dad would make fun of her. Her statement, and so many other statements of “I can’t” I have heard here, break my heart for people. The truth of Jesus is that he has a plan for us, and it is a plan of love and acceptance, of healing, freedom and a new name: “Can’t” will be replaced with “Confidence”’.

‘I also met the first member of my team at that Wydale event. She was in a church where there weren’t the resources to set up a project, but she had a longing to reach out and learn, so she agreed to join me so that we could work together also making my project possible. Then my third and fourth team members God brought into the light and suddenly we, who really didn’t know each other very well, became church. The plan for a choir fresh expression on the estate was approved by the diocese just in time for us to lockdown in March 2020. Singing was off the table’.

‘So we faced what turned out to be unexpected blessing. Lockdown slowed our processing dramatically and by June the team were meeting together weekly online or in person as lockdown allowed, working out our theology and how to be church.’

‘In a prayer meeting, we were given Psalm 107 by God which led us to the idea of focusing on particular groups of people within our community: the wanderers (those previously in church who had fallen away), those living in deepest gloom (which we interpreted as those with poor mental health), those who, because of their iniquity despised all food (we think maybe the substance-using community) and the seafarers (some of the estate’s first residents were relocated from Hull’s “Hessle Road slum clearances” in the 1950s because of mass unemployment). We also were struck by Keith White, a Christian Theological Psychologist who, in his study of Child Development talks about the relationship between creativity and security’.

‘We were to be a secure space which freed local people to be creative’.

‘Lockdown also inspired the food bank at St Philips, which has become tied in nature to the New Worshipping Community and has grown beyond all expectations. This has become our gateway to the people of Psalm 107. As horrendous for so many as Covid-19 has been, God has moved all things for the good of those who love Him’.

’We have learned to spot the opportunity in adversity’.

‘In September we met for the first time for public worship. Far from the imagined choir, we investigated how we could serve this community faithfully and creatively in a way that made us known and approachable. And the Poppy Field Project was born. With a handful of local people we met outside from September to November where we made giant poppies from willow and paper which we then displayed with reflection resources outside St Philips. Our invitation was for people to help, giving them chance to engage actively with church’.

‘While we crafted we told stories, and particularly we told a Bible narrative each week, creatively expounded to implant the contextual information and the theology into the story of the text. This has become our hallmark. The Poppy Field was in situ for 2 weeks and drew significant local attention. I was on Radio Humberside and the notorious Deep Business Centre in Hull adopted our online act of Remembrance as their own. Although inviting is the hardest part of this when people don’t believe they have need of what we so, this has given us a platform that local people are grateful for, if at a distance. Our long term vision is certainly engaged in serving the whole community in a way which is very visible’.

‘We presently meet online every week and are a Facebook chat community where we doodle our way through bible narrative stories, meeting the people of God in our imaginations and learning their lessons. I am constantly amazed at how God opens the door for people to explore their real selves through this, the self that God sees and nurtures as his image in each person’.

‘We have seen healing and encouragement and I am unexpectedly blessed by the discipleship within the group, which is open and constantly fluid. One person has discovered an untapped ability to write creatively themselves, another a love of being in community, and another friends in unexpected places’.

‘We are still very small and are excited about the huge distance to be yet travelled with God as he shapes this community. We can’t wait for the next opportunity we have for public, collective, visual creativity’.