Victoria Park
New church plant in Manchester ...
Victoria Park is an exciting, socio-economically diverse inner city residential area, some two miles south of Manchester city centre.
Identified as an area in decline some fifty years ago, Victoria Park is now regenerating. Within a 15 minute stroll of the hub of the church plant are a purpose built university halls of residence, a Job Centre Plus, a public library, an adults’ day centre, a Probation Service pre-placement training centre, a youth centre, two primary schools, two pre-schools, a cosmetic surgery clinic, a public library, and a busy shopping centre.
In recent years, the community has evolved into a rich tapestry of predominantly unskilled and semi-skilled, but also professional and managerial people - as well as hosting a large student population - from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.
God is already meeting a number of spiritual, emotional, and practical needs in Victoria Park through the established churches. But there remains a need for a fresh expression that’s focused exclusively on reaching those who can’t relate to conventional church - a Christian community that isn’t ‘church-building-based’ - to complement and build on what God is already doing in the area.
Urban Expression already has two fresh expressions of church just outside Victoria Park, in Newton Heath and Levenshulme; the new Victoria Park plant completes a triangle of fresh, Urban Expression-associated, churches within a 20 minute drive of each other.
Urban Expression Victoria Park is a new Baptist Church. We’re totally reliant on God, and we’re totally committed to prayer. Central to the church will be relationship, and we’ll develop relationships with people where they are - geographically, spiritually, and behaviourally. Our priorities will be belonging, believing, and behaving - in that order. We’ll be a church without barriers around age, disability, gender, sexuality, finance, education, or ethnicity. We acknowledge the Biblical precedent and universal relevance of hospitality as a medium for developing relationships, so . . . no eating - no meeting. We believe that if we worship, love, serve, teach, and reach out, in the name of Jesus . . . we’re church.
We aim to complement what God is already doing through the other churches in Victoria Park. How will we do that? We’ll provide a weekly opportunity for devotion, centred around a meal; monthly social events; a series of Coping with Bereavement programmes, alternating with a series of customised introduction to Christianity programmes; a quarterly Movie Club; 1-2-1 coaching opportunities; and supported Open Learning opportunities.
As people join UEVP we’ll provide more and diverse opportunities for worship in a way that’s relevant to them. All of this will take place in the homes of participants (e.g. the weekly devotion), in a local pub (e.g. the Movie Club), and out in the community (e.g. social events).
That’s what we’re doing in the beginning; who knows what we’ll be doing after our first six-month review!
If you want to be part of an urban church planting team right from the start, contact Gary on garysdm@hotmail.co.uk, or ‘phone or txt 07780 927743.