Cook @ Chapel

This project of one of my churches, Hanslope Methodist Chapel, was just featured in a Methodist Connexional resource designed to share what exciting new things are happening in our churches.  My hat is off to Katherine who has spearheaded this project and provides such good leadership for it.- Mindy  EVANGELISM – Cook @ Chapel From: Hanslope Methodist Chapel, Buckinghamshire

Credit: Katharine Crowsley A Fresh Expressions vision day inspired teacher Katharine Crowsley to ask a lot of questions about what God wanted her to do in her area. She tells the story of what happened next. My church is Hanslope Methodist Chapel in Buckinghamshire; it’s very family friendly but I wondered if we were reaching young people – not only our own young people but other young people in the wider community? One thing that really stood out for me from that vision day was the story of a ‘bread-making’ church in Liverpool. Although this was established in a very different geographical and social context to ours, I really liked the idea of praying and worshipping, talking about Jesus when cooking, and then eating a meal together. A lot of teenagers don’t want to sit around and talk to you but many will have a conversation while they are doing something else. When I went to the Church Council for support, they asked me to first test the idea. I linked up with a community food worker and we did a six-week trial before I applied for a grant. We drew up different menus and asked if we could do it for those aged 12 to 16. We got the go-ahead to run it for the academic year from September to July, and we’re now into our second year. The Methodist Church gave us a fresh expressions grant with our chapel and local community having to match-fund it. We run Cook @ Chapel on Friday evenings for two hours and about 7-9 young people come along; we couldn’t accommodate any more than that. Jamie Oliver has fired a lot of interest in cookery among young people but it is our volunteers who have been the experts. We generally have one main volunteer and two more on standby. Young people don’t do much cookery at school now so they tell us what they would like to learn and we do it – things like cheese sauce, chilli con carne, tortillas and lemon drizzle cake. After we’ve made the food we sit down and eat together; it’s very informal – they really like that. They also like to take it in turns to say grace using our grace dice. Conversations around the table and while cooking can be about all sorts of things. Originally, I thought I would need young volunteers to link to these young people but I was wrong. The older people have been ideal, they relate to our ‘cooks’ in a different way and sometimes they can talk to them very much more comfortably about faith issues. The young people who come to Cook @ Chapel don’t necessarily come to our church, in fact only two or three of them do, but questions about faith and spirituality come up quite naturally again and again. Following on from this initiative I became involved in a youth service called Cross Purposes that takes place every month in nearby Newport Pagnell. It’s a joint Anglican, Methodist, URC and Baptist project at Newport Pagnell United Reformed Church but a lot of its planning and delivery is done by the young people themselves. My vision is to link Cook @ Chapel to Cross Purposes – it’s not too difficult a leap when it’s young people inviting young people to go along and find out more. As we look into 2011 and beyond, we pray that will happen.

E-mail contact: Kath Crowsley Website: Fresh Expressions