Janet Sutton is the United Reformed Church's first pioneer minister. The former minister of Alkrington & Providence URC in Middleton, Greater Manchester, took up the post with South Western synod in late 2009.
Janet is now based in Bristol. She is currently researching where to go to plant a fresh expression of church, saying,
The whole idea is to reach out to those people who wouldn’t normally go to church but have all these questions about who is God, who is Jesus, what life’s about.
David Grosch-Miller, moderator of South Western synod, sees the minister's brief as being part theological, part practical.
We said to her, 'You go off and do it, and we will deal with all the institutional questions as they come up. There are no constraints.' The Church has to find new ways of engaging people with what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in the 21st century.
Part of our problem is that our understanding of God and our style of worship are all shaped by the institutional Church. We need to step outside the institution and take a fresh look at what we have to offer to contemporary culture.
RSS
Podcast feed