Urban Expression: East London
Urban Expression has concentrated on church planting in East London, deploying four teams in the borough of Tower Hamlets and two in the neighbouring borough of Newham. Our seventh team is just south of the Thames in Kidbrooke.
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 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'. The team in Newham decided that the time was right for them to become Associates and for the church that they have planted to find its own way forward. Early in 2006 we celebrated the second 'graduation' as Harvest Rock Community Church in Plaistow launched out on its own.
Our hope and intention is to deploy further teams in London as we are able to recruit further team members.
In this section the team leaders introduce their context and activities.