Scarborough
Jake and Hannah Madin
revjmadin@gmail.com
February 2024 Update
One of the key things about being a pioneer is the ability to pivot and change what you are doing if it is not working. We faced this choice in a significant way around the summer of 2023.
At that time we were focussing most of our energy on Encounter an afternoon service that met around food and was pitched at families and those from a low income and low educational background. For two years this community had borne much fruit. We had baptised several new Christians. In Feb 2023 we invited the Bishop to come and confirm several members of our community and we had done Alpha with a group of adults from this community.
However, by the summer of 2023 we had hardly had anyone new through the doors for six months, we had had a key couple step down from the team meaning our resources were completely stretched and a key family had moved to another Church as we were failing to provide for kids who reached secondary school age because we also had a number of pre-schoolers to accommodate.
So we took the difficult decision to stop! We tried to find a way to help the regular members of that community transition into something else – midweek meetings and also throwing our effort into making the Sunday morning offering welcoming for families.
This change was painful. But it has opened so many more doors. We are still focussing on the things we were doing around the fringe to meet new people. But now we have the capacity to put more energy into those things. For example, Toddler Group, schools work and seasonal events for families.
Also, committing to the morning service has brought us into contact with a number of new people in their 20’s-40’s who might not have stuck with Church but now have because they have connected with us. We have had the privilege and the capacity to run Alpha several times with different groups of people on the fringe since we stopped Encounter as well as putting more effort in to connecting and preparing people who contact the Church about baptisms.
Moreover, our pattern of working has to fit to some extent with other things that are happening in the parish. The most significant change has been our Vicar leaving in January which means our ministry needs to be a bit more integrated to make it sustainable through the vacancy. In God’s economy, letting go of something that was fruitful for a season but was no longer working was one of the best lessons we could learn.
June 2021 Update
Jake and Hannah Madin are the Multiply ministers at St Mary’s with Holy Apostles, Scarborough. Before moving to the coast, Jake and Hannah were curates in York - Hannah at St Paul’s Church Holgate and Jake at St Hilda’s, Tang Hall. They are working as part of a team at the church led by incumbent, the Revd Richard Walker, and serving in a mixed area which, as well as being a seaside town welcoming many visitors, includes a large amount of deprivation. Their first year and half has included many challenges but also great connections with local people and exciting possibilities for the future….
‘We have been based in Scarborough since November 2019. We spent the first six months in Scarborough getting to know the context, observing what the established Church is already doing (St Mary’s with Holy Apostles) and partnering with the existing Church where they were already doing things that were missional (for example taking baptisms and speaking at Christmas services).
We have sensed the call of God to particularly focus on the old town of Scarborough which is a very deprived part of the town where the Church has done great social action work through a charity it established, but has had little evangelistic reach. Although COVID has disrupted the time in which we would have hoped to have been launching something new, we have managed to form some significant connections with key people who live in the old town. During the summer when the restrictions allowed we ran a couple of one off events which we called ‘Outdoor Church’ and through this we met a couple of families who live in the old town. As a result of that we have managed to stay connected with these families, forming a prayer WhatsApp group with them, stopping by to talk to them on the doorstep and walking alongside them through some very difficult circumstances including conducting an emergency wedding and two funerals.’
As well as developing significant connections, Hannah and Jake also have been growing a vision for the future of the area and the spaces for community which they could open up. As Hannah explains:
‘I was recently reading 2 Kings 4 and was really moved by Elisha's instruction to a woman who was in debt and facing a creditor coming to take her 2 boys as slaves.
Elisha replied to her, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?”
“Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a small jar of olive oil.”
“Go around and ask all your neighbours for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few."
An amazing miracle happens after this and the oil miraculously multiplies to fill all the collected jars. But what struck me was the woman had to collect as many jars as she could. If she'd been half hearted and collected 4 jars then God would have filled them and it would have been amazing. But if she'd collected 1000 I reckon God would have kept the oil going which is incredible. I felt God was telling us strongly to collect our ‘jars’ in this strange COVID season. To prepare and get ready for God to multiply, for his provision to flow into what we offer him as our equivalent 'jars' that need filling.”
One of the ‘jars’ we have sensed God leading us to prepare is a space in the Church offices where we hope to be able to host groups and minister from. The Church building isn’t really suitable because it is so big and cold and our house is so far away from the parish. We noticed too, as we have got to know these families, how disorganised people's lives are and how much they live ‘hand to mouth’ so to arrange to meet someone at a certain time on a certain day just doesn’t work. So we were thinking we need somewhere that is always available where we can invite people to come whatever day or time we happen to run into them. We are not sure of all the things that having this room to use is going to result in. But our initial thoughts are having somewhere to run discipleship groups and the Kintsugi mental health course as well as meeting with people on a more ad hoc basis. We are also planning to run a holiday club with a free lunch over the summer to get to know more local families’.
‘We are aware of how many challenges there are in discipling the kinds of people we have begun to make a connection with. Besides the issues around getting people to come to a regular meeting each week at a regular time, we have also seen how many other challenges many of these people have in their lives which can potentially derail them when we think we are making progress in discipleship with them. Although we have not managed yet to draw our contacts together into a regular worshipping community that is what we hope in the fullness of time to be able to do’.
