Introduction

The inner city is where Christian mission in Britain has been at its most creative over the past two centuries. Many new expressions of church life, evangelism and social action were pioneered here.

People have come to faith in Jesus Christ, communities have been renewed and signs of God's kingdom of justice and peace have been evident.

But church life in many inner city communities is weak. Why?

• Because the social and spiritual needs in the inner city are enormous
• Because the inner city is changing and many churches struggle to adapt
• Because Christians have steadily moved to the suburbs and continue to do so
• Because inappropriate models of church planting are sometimes used in the inner city

So under-churched areas of the inner city continue to challenge Christians to engage in pioneering and creative mission. Urban Expression is one response to this challenge.

The Urban Expression Story

1997
Urban Expression was launched in April 1997 through a partnership between Spurgeon's College and Oasis Trust. These organisations were already working together to run a Church Planting and Evangelism training course. Neither organisation is now directly involved with Urban Expression, which is an independent trust.The director of this course, Stuart Murray Williams, who had planted a church in the inner city in the late 1970s, initiated Urban Expression in order to explore new ways of planting churches in inner city communities.

Juliet Kilpin, a graduate of the training course, was appointed as part-time co-ordinator of Urban Expression and worked with Stuart to establish this new mission agency. She and her husband, Jim, led the first church planting team in Shadwell which began in September 1997. She completed her three-year term as co-ordinator in March 2000 but was reappointed on a one day a week basis in October 2002 with responsibility for promotion and recruitment.

Urban Expression concentrated on church planting in East London in the first few years, deploying four teams in the borough of Tower Hamlets and two in the neighbouring borough of Newham. Our seventh team was deployed just south of the Thames in Kidbrooke.Since then we have deployed a number of church planting teams in Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Stoke and Bristol, as well as London, from which new churches are gradually developing

2004
In response to several requests, Urban Expression Associates was formed as a network of church planters and others involved in urban mission who share our core values and want to participate in a learning community.

2005
In partnership with Workshop and 614UK (The Salvation Army), we launched the Crucible course to equip people involved in urban mission, church planting and emerging churches.

 Because Urban Expression is a church planting agency, with no ambition to oversee churches once they are planted, we anticipate that the churches planted by the teams we deploy will at some stage become independent of us and build relationships with other churches for mutual support. Remaining team members can transfer to our Associates' network or become Mission Partners so that they are still connected to us, or they can be redeployed to plant another church.

In November 2005 we celebrated the first such 'graduation'. One of the teams in Newham decided that the time was right for them to become Associates and for the church that they had planted to find its own way forward.

In 2005 the first team outside London was deployed in the Newton Heath area of Manchester.

2007
In 2007 Urban Expression Netherlands was formed as a sister organisation working in various locations in The Netherlands. www.urbanexpression.nl

The Kidbrooke team ceased operations because of the way in which the community in which it was working had changed: the anticipated regeneration scheme had in effect depopulated the area and changed its demographic make-up.

During this year, three of the teams in Tower Hamlets decided that the churches they were planting should merge and form the E1 Community Church and the 'graduation' of these teams and the emergence of the new church was celebrated the following year.

In 2007 the leaders of the first team in Glasgow were appointed to recruit a team for Possilpark and a second team emerged in Manchester in Levenshulme, in partnership with Levenshulme Baptist Church.

During this year Jim & Juliet Kilpin were appointed jointly as co-ordinators, officially employed for the first time by Urban Expression, supported by a grant from the Baptist Union of Great Britain.

2008
With several of the original teams having graduated this left us with only one team in East London – Hope Asha has grown out of the work on the Ocean Estate in Stepney.

The complete Possilpark team began their work together in this community of Glasgow.

A third team began work in Manchester in Victoria Park.

During this year we introduced Urban Expression Mission Partners, a third way of belonging to Urban Expression (alongside team members and associates).

2009
In the autumn of 2009 a new team was formed to work on an outer housing estate in Harold Hill on the London/Essex border.

Two teams began the work of Urban Expression in Stoke, one in Stoke-on-Trent and the other in Cobridge and a team also began in Shard End in east Birmingham.

Mike Pears began to initiate the work of Urban Expression in Bristol this year, networking with people in the south and east of the city, laying the foundations for teams to emerge.

Urban Expression North America was formed as a sister organisation with plans to work in various locations in the USA and Canada and to initiate a North American version of Crucible called Watershed.

Daniel & Becky Frank were appointed by the Glasgow steering group for a year to do some research and recruitment for Glasgow.

2010
During a year of recession funding surprisingly became available to fund three regional coordinators for one day per week.  Mike Pears, Angie Tunstall and Jo Fitzsimmons were appointed to coordinate work and support teams in Bristol, Manchester and the West Midlands respectively.  Stuart Murray Williams was funded for one day per week for his continuing coordinating work for Urban Expression

Who are we?

TrusteesFran Beckett
Kerry Coke
Andrew Grinnell (Chair)
Chris Horton (Treasurer)
Trevor Hutton
Martin Johnstone
Peter Nielson
Phil Warburton

Coordinators
Stuart Murray Williams
Jim Kilpin
Juliet Kilpin

Regional Coordinators
Mike Pears - Bristol
Angie Tunstall - Manchester

Regional Steering Groups

London
Ruthy Burgess
Steve Calder
Simon Jones
Phyllis Manners
David Shosanya

Glasgow
Peter Neilson
Anne McGreechin
Matt Hall
Andy Scarcliffe
Alan Messer-Hamilton
Doug Gay
Elwyn Harries

Manchester
George Carter
Trevor Hutton
Louise Kenyon
Glen Marshall
Angie Tunstall

West Midlands (interim steering group)
Adrian Argile
Catherine Cowell
Rachel Jay
Chris Horton

Bristol
Var Smallwood
Emma Smallwood
David Moore
Toria Moore
Alister Palmer
Linda Wilson
Phil Lawrence
Trevor Dean
Mike Pears

Get Involved

There are three ways of getting involved in Urban Expression and belonging within this mission community:

• Associates
• Mission Partners
• Teams

Download a summary of the differences in these ways of by clicking here

Teams

 Urban Expression recruits and deploys self-funding teams to plant churches in inner-city communities. Team members and team leaders are selected on the basis of an application and interview process, although usually this follows plenty of informal conversations and visits.

We ask for a three-year minimum commitment from prospective team members, although we hope many will remain with us much longer - church planting in the inner city takes time!

Team members may work to support themselves, receive support from friends and prayer partners, share resources with other team members or some combination of these.

Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about joining a team.

Current Newsletter

You can download our current newsletter below.