Living Room | Fresh Expressions

Wednesday, 27 April, 2011

Zoe Hart, student worker, reports the work of the living room.

At Highfield Church, Southampton, we have a history of welcoming students to worship with us. But over the last few years God has been stirring us up to much more as we have increasingly felt the reality of the mission field.

Across the campuses of the two Universities in Southampton are over 40,000 students – away from home, looking for life and most of them about as far away from church as you can get.

No longer are we in an age where students are coming away to study with a basic knowledge of Christianity and some past involvement in church. Most don't even really know who Jesus is and many have never been inside a church building. The reality is that the culture among students today is pagan and with less than two percent of them going to church – the mission field is huge.

The exciting thing is that the Gospel is totally dynamic and powerful in this context. Students today are looking for something tangible and authentic – something that will show them Jesus.

Our vision at the living room is to create a place into which students without a church background can come to know the transforming power of Jesus. the living room is church for people who never normally go to church.

Our values are 'loving God, loving each other and loving the lost', quite simple really: The Greatest Commandments and The Great Commission. These values shape everything we do.

What we do on a Sunday evening isn't rocket science either. We meet at 8pm in the building next door to the main church which we set-up to be as relaxed and welcoming an environment as possible.

We have a café with steaming hot chocolate and great food every week – essential in building community. It is open all evening for people to sit and chat or opt out of the worship.

After the main food is served, we aim provide an environment – through worship, teaching and ministry – into which the Holy Spirit can work. This is integral to our original vision to be an authentic community of worshippers. Although we use language that people will understand, we believe that true worship and loving community speak volumes into the post-modern culture of self.

These are exciting times. the living room has grown dramatically over the last two years from around 40 students about 140. The original vision seems to actually be happening. I say 'actually' because we can often put a lot of effort into ministries, having limited faith in the fact that God is powerfully at work and is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.

It is an incredible privilege to be part of something where God is bringing along people who don’t yet believe. And these students, through chatting with team members on a Sunday, as well as fortnightly socials and weekly cell groups, are really becoming part of the living room community.

We regularly have a number of students on the fringes of faith as well as a handful of determined atheists who have had their worlds shaken.

One previously cynical student emailed me recently saying this about his experience of the living room, 'I must say, I found it really emotional, but I'm not quite sure why. I was really choked up. I'm hopeless at describing emotions; but it just felt like there was something else there, something more than a collection of people. And I felt a connection.'

Our prayer continues to be that what we do will be much more than just a gathering of people in a cosy environment. We long to see people making commitments and beginning a path of discipleship.

We want to be a place where, as it says in Isaiah 41, the thirsty who search for water will find it.

We have always been conscious that what is happening is part of a much bigger journey. It was an incredible encouragement to have that confirmed by a previous vicar of Highfield who, 28 years ago, had a vision of a large number of students meeting in the hall next door to our church at 9 o'clock on a Sunday evening. When he came to visit and saw that original vision happening he was thrilled!

Of course as with everything we do – the living room is just a part of God's much bigger story – not a new story but an ancient unchanging one – and it is our role to express that story, as Jesus did, in a way that is fresh and dynamic to the culture we find ourselves in.

Recent Updates

Update: 2010-08-20

Students used to flock to the Living Room at Southampton but time, and the initiative's leader, has moved on since then. Nick Hutchinson, youth and student pastor at Highfield Church in the city, explains more.

When I arrived The Living Room had been going for a couple of years and, for a while, it was still very powerful with lots of interesting things going on. Its leader Zoe Hart had the original vision for it but - as so often happens - when the leader goes, that vision and enthusiasm can begin to decline.

Also we have to remember that student stuff moves on so quickly; if you keep on doing the same thing for two or three years, you start to lose it connection with the people you're trying to reach.

We employed another student worker and he soon realised that a lot of those coming to the Living Room by that stage were people he recognised from Christian Union and other churches in the area. To find out more, he put together a survey for everyone who came along over a three to four week period. He was proved right when about 80% of those attending completed it and we found that the vast majority, up to 70/80% of them were Christians.

We were meeting at 8pm on Sundays, immediately after the evening service times of many churches. So The Living Room had simply become another place for Christians to hang out on a Sunday. Those not really connected to church at all were very few in number.

A further student worker, after a year or so with us, suggested changing the meeting time specifically to attract non church people. We moved it to 7pm and tried it for two university terms. The impact on numbers was immediate. The Living Room attracted 140 at its peak; we had been running at about 80 to 100 on average but after the time change it dropped to 20 or 30 maximum.

In all honesty we didn't really have a problem with that. Having a smaller number of definitely 'non churchy' people getting together during the 6.30 service time meant you could build some genuine friendship and relationship but - in the end - it lagged. It needed a critical mass of people to be there to give it some energy.

From April 2010 we started to hold our Midweek Student Gathering on Wednesday evenings in the lounge at the church centre but I wouldn't say there was anything of fresh expressions about it now. As we had lost momentum with it so much it felt like we were starting from scratch but what has been good is that we are building friendships with students who are Christians. We usually get between 10 and 15 people from 5pm to 7pm for a meal and to pray, worship and have a Bible study together.

This gathering is much more of a pastorate thing and the smaller the group, the better the interaction. Of course our vision is for growth but if we get to about 30 we want to multiply and create two midweek student gatherings to run in parallel.

There are lots of challenges along the way. For instance, it is very difficult to get commitment and steadfastness from many of the students; we call it the 'flaky syndrome'. We have actually lost a lot of our team and have been trying to recruit new members but it's really a struggle. Maybe one of the side-effects of providing something that's really good, like Living Room was, is that people expect everything to be done for them without realising that it is because of student volunteers that it happens and will continue to happen. How do we encourage people between the ages of 18 and 35 to commit themselves to something and help to make it happen? All too often they may say they're going to come and be part of an event but then ring up at the last minute - they can't make it because they’re at a concert/going out/whatever it may be.

I'm sad about the fact that what The Living Room did in its original form was to draw in people who were not engaging with church in any other way, whereas now we are only connecting with people already connected with church. However we are doing a year of mission at Highfield Church and all the new projects that have sprung up are happening outside of the church building.

I think that God is saying to us:

do fewer things on Sunday;
do fewer things in the church itself.

One of the things that these new groups have shown us again is that we have to get away from the model of 'come to us'; we have to go to them.

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