Planting in Peckham

Richard Perkins
January 9, 2018

Peckham first became a possibility after a speculative text message from a friend, Nigel Styles. Nigel had just become the Director of the Cornhill Training Course in Borough. He and his wife had moved from Nottingham with a couple of their kids who still remained at home. I think the text said something like: “Fancy planting a church in Peckham?” It was not sent entirely in jest.

It planted a seed of thought in my mind. I was beginning to have conversations about my future. I had spent three years as the Director of the Antioch Plan trying to resource pioneer planters as they grew churches towards sustainability. And it was becoming increasingly apparent that it made sense to move into a full-time role within Co-Mission to help initiate Church Planting. I was really struggling to combine the responsibilities of Senior Minister of Christ Church Balham (CCB) and Antioch Director was proving unsustainable. And so with a genuine mixture of excitement and trepidation I peered over the abyss into a world where, after fifteen years, I’d leave the church that I’d helped found. It made sense. But it was an emotional wrench because of who I’d leave behind.

However, there was an upside. And not only for CCB, who would now gain a Senior Minister who’d give them his whole attention. It would free me up to move somewhere else to be part of a new initiative. Nigel and I began to talk more seriously. And I began some exploratory research into the situation on the ground.

Peckham is a changing neighbourhood. Like Brixton is. Like Balham has been over the past two decades. One reformed evangelical black leader described ‘the aggressive gentrification of East Dulwich’ moving into Peckham from the south west. And he’s right. But, for now, Peckham is still recognisably Peckham.What you’ll find in Peckham is two dominant communities. There’s the West Africans (mainly Nigerians and Ghanaians who’ve lived there since they or their parents came to London) and then there’s a young worker crowd with an artistic bent. But while the two communities live alongside each other, they very rarely mix.

We’d love the Lord to grow a church in which there’s a diversity enjoying real unity that can only be explained by the gospel. And so it’s absolutely crucial to our plans to recruit a co-planter/pastor who reflects the diversity of Peckham so that we can be genuinely representative and collaborative from the start of our planning. At the stage of writing we have some encouraging irons in the fire but, to change the metaphor, we’ve not landed anyone yet!

We want to better understand the situation on the ground. We’ve had a hugely instructive conversation with Peckham ministers, past and present. And we’re liaising with evangelical churches in the wider area. Grace Church Dulwich have been a great help in these very early stages, and we’ve consulted with them from the beginning. And it’s been wonderful to be invited to the prayer breakfast by Rye Lane Baptist. We want to enter well.

One of our first ports of call was the two Anglican churches in that neck of the woods – All Saints Peckham in the heart of the town and Christ Church Peckham at the northern end of the area. Both those churches are gospel believing and gospel preaching, but there is no reformed evangelical church in the area. These churches are behind the idea of another church trying to proclaim the gospel to people who’ve never heard it or understood it before.

One senior church leader in Peckham estimated that there are at least fifty churches currently operating around him. Many of them are aimed at specific nationalities, communities and even families. And so many of them are small.

That makes the case for another small church seem somewhat dubious. Those churches seem to be doing a good job of looking after their church members. But they appear to have limited success in reaching those outside their church family. And that’s who we want to have a go at reaching.

It’s not our tag line, but in our heads we’ve been thinking of what we’re hoping to do in terms of ‘win, build, send’. We want to win the unbelieving people of Peckham to personal faith in Christ who will graciously forgive their sins and grant them the gift of his Spirit. We want to build one another up to maturity in the gospel through deliberate ministry training. And we want to do that so that we can send equipped disciples out into their workplaces, their families, the community and, God willing, to plant more churches in South East London.

We’re aware that we come from a particular cultural place and that we’ll likely appeal to a particular culture. But we want to reach beyond that with the gospel. And bringing in a pastor who is local, or from a different background to ourselves, or one that that just gets the culture and the diversity is key. They’ll educate us so that we begin to understand cultures very different to our own. They’ll broaden us so that we do what we can to appeal to a wider cross section of the local community. And they’ll challenge us when we revert to our default settings. And hopefully Nigel and I will be able to provide a place for men like this to get some ministry experience and ‘cut their teeth’ at the coalface of a deliberately diverse church whilst being mentored by experienced pastors, with the backing of the Co-Mission Planting training scheme.

It’s going to be new for us. We’re not entirely sure what lies ahead. There are no givens in church planting. But we’re at least clear on our preferred future – to be building a church in Peckham of such diversity within unity that it can only be explained by the gospel. But, as we’re about to be reminded, it’s one thing to plant a church on paper. It’s quite another thing to do it in practice. And so we’re in the Lord’s hands. Which is, by far, the very best place to be.

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