Sheppey Update: New horizons for Matt and Helene
In July 2018 we left Canterbury and moved our family of four to Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. This month we celebrate five years since we made the move and five years of getting to know and love the local community.
We have made some significant connections and friendships in that time and we’ve enjoyed the adventure of making it our goal to be Good News to everyone we meet, everywhere we go. We have journeyed from being just a family of four in our living room to having others come to faith and join us, to now gathering with 20-30 others in a local community space. Many of those who have joined the Good News Church gospel plant are from an unchurched background or have had painful experiences of church in the past. We are a wonderfully ragtag bunch who are learning how to do life with Jesus and how to do life together; growing in love for Jesus, for one another, and for those around us in our community.
Old friends, new friends
A highlight of our adventure so far is that we have been able to meet so many people. We came to Sheerness with a passion to be ordinary, everyday people; all the while making ourselves available to be used by an extraordinary God. A personal cost to pioneering is geographically leaving behind church family; those who have just been around the corner, who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us, who have discipled, challenged and encouraged us.
One of the unexpected but significant friendships we’ve made in Sheerness is with an unchurched couple who we met right at the beginning of this journey, through our kids being at the same school. This peer friendship is an enormous blessing to us as individuals, a couple and as a family; not only has it blessed us, it has been pivotal for them because God has started a work there which has enabled extraordinary conversations, an ‘Xbox’ ministry (!), opening the Bible, hard questions, prayer, making memories and family fun together - all from a deep genuine love for one another that is mutual, and a gift.
Despite the difficult days and hard graft, it amazes us to see what God is doing here on the Island. In particular, seeing Matt’s mum give her life to Jesus towards the end of the Covid-19 lockdown (after praying for her for 13 years!) was monumental. We got to baptise her in the sea in September 2022 and we have witnessed her life change from one filled with fear to one filled with peace, with a new approach to life from a place of hope and assurance that comes from knowing God.
Matt’s mum, along with others who have also been baptised, have all brought others along to our Sunday times together and they are all simply and wonderfully sharing what they know to be true of God with those around them, which makes for even more exciting encounters.
Seeds and harvest
“Seeing Matt’s mum give her life to Jesus towards the end of the Covid-19 lockdown (after praying for her for 13 years!) was monumental. We got to baptise her in the sea in September 2022 and we have witnessed her life change from one filled with fear to one filled with peace!”
It feels like we’ve been here forever and yet feels like we haven’t been here any time at all. I can only describe it as a ‘Narnia wardrobe’ experience! It certainly hasn’t all been peachy though.
Pioneering really helps you appreciate all the analogies in the Bible about agriculture…Pioneering can be both hard and slow. It takes time to truly get to know a place and the people in it - and it takes time for people to get to know (and trust) you. It really has shown us how impatient we can be - but it’s also shown us just how patient and faithful God is. It’s been surprising that most often, it is just about being consistent and showing up faithfully in people’s lives; for all the quick moments we have had with people there have been countless slow moments where it hasn’t felt like we’ve made much impact or much has changed. In some instances it has taken months and even years to see some buds of new life come from seeds we’ve planted and in some cases we haven’t seen any yet. It’s the long game.
Giving time to God’s priorities
“We have discovered that by giving people our time - being present around the high street, holding our plans lightly in order to respond quickly to opportunities to meet up, regularly being in the same places - we meet with those folk and then God enters into the situation.”
We’ve been surprised at how many people are willing to allow us to pray for them! They aren’t against it, they aren’t even against the notion of Jesus - their problems most often stem from the church and past experience or poor representation. Part of the way we’re building, in taking our time to get to know the community and be known by the community, means people are learning that we aren’t nutters and that we are real in the way we care about them and what’s going on in their lives. We’ve found that people then actually approach us, and feel comfortable asking difficult questions because they trust us to give them a genuine answer. Time is the greatest currency around here - people are cash poor but time rich. We have discovered that by giving people our time - being present around the high street, holding our plans lightly in order to respond quickly to opportunities to meet up, regularly being in the same places - we meet with those folk and then God enters into the situation. The more we have stepped out, the more God has stepped in.
Gathering together: Good News Church gospel plant
Courage of a new generation
Two of the biggest heroes of ours on this journey have undoubtedly been our sweet girls, Martha (10) and Edie (soon to be 8). Moving to a new place was a real challenge for them both in different ways. They went from having lots of friends in a big vibrant kids work in Canterbury to being part of a Gospel Plant with no other kids. To be honest, it has made us more aware and intentional with discipleship in the home. We live in a community where following Jesus puts you in a very small minority and so the girls daily contend with the battle between the world’s ways and God’s way…but the brilliant thing is, they aren’t shy in asking us questions and commenting on what they experience and it has given us many opportunities to discuss some deep topics for such young minds and hearts. Seeing them then apply kingdom values to things going on at school has been beautiful. Martha in particular was feeling the loss of none of her friends being in church, so we encouraged her to ask God and we prayed that we’d see them come along. Since then, 3 kids from her class have joined us on a Sunday and another 8 kids from school have been at one time or another!
“Two of the biggest heroes of ours on this journey have undoubtedly been our sweet girls.”
Wherever we can we like to give the girls opportunities to serve others - whether that is through serving hot chocolates with all the trimmings from our light and bright, glitter-covered, lit-up driveway on Halloween as a way to joyfully bless kids in the neighbourhood, or it could be offering a cuppa and a cake to the staff that are on shift at the place we meet on Sundays. If we are preparing something for the kids to do on Sundays we will often ask for their input and they always get creative in helping us come up with ideas. On the hardest days we stop to consider what wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t been obedient in the call to go; and the girls are always able to recount the wonderful things that God has done, whether they are big or small.
Eyes on the horizon
As we come to the end of our first five years here, we begin a new season; one that we feel is as faith-filled yet as daunting as when we first moved. Shortly after moving to the Island we were employed together to run a community outreach project called Ignite. It gave us an incredible opportunity to get to know many people, specifically on the margins of society, and to build relationships with many different organisations and charities that aim to support people in our local community. As part of this we have run two events every week for 4 years for those on the fringes of our local community. Sadly the funding for this project has come to an end and has left us with the burning question of “Lord, what’s next for us?”. Last year Helene began a part-time job alongside our Ignite work for a charity called “The Princess Project” which supports disadvantaged mums in Kent; she was tasked with getting their initiatives currently in other locations up and running on the Island - which will be an amazing blessing to many here. The charity has committed to doubling Helene’s hours and she will be doing this for 20hrs a week as of August 2023.
Stand with us
Having prayed, listened, prayed some more and sought wisdom we have decided to take the faith step of my (Matt) not rushing into a new job so that I can give my time to supporting the plant over the next season. In doing so we hope that it will give us an opportunity to lay down some foundations for the plant so that it can grow to be a sustained and multiplying plant.
Time will be spent pastoring the flock, raising up leaders and helping our people grow in their gifts, starting some outreach initiatives as a plant to bless the local community, being an ongoing presence in the local community, having time for the admin and prep involved for Sunday gatherings, and being able to serve our RM Community and wider RM family in different ways.
To be able to do this we are trusting that the Lord would provide an income stream for us through our Stewardship personal account. Pioneering in a largely deprived area means many of our flock are not cash rich, although rich in many other ways, and so we are looking to this to be a sustainable income source to enable all of the above, and to allow us to use any money tithed to serve the local community.
Give
The figure we are looking to raise through Stewardship is £1700 per month, which is just £17 per month from 100 givers.
Please consider whether you could support us; either financially through one-off or regular giving, or through prayer, resourcing or practical support. Thank you!
Pray
We are grateful to God for the little flock we have here on Sheppey. But as we know, church planting isn't about bums on chairs but rather people becoming disciples of Jesus and growing in their relationship with Him.
Please pray that Good News Church will be a community that grows in love for Jesus: that we would grow in being His ambassadors, that we would grow in compassion and boldness and that our lives would be marked by His grace.
Please pray that as we grow as disciple-making disciples that we would make new connections with people in our local community, that we'd see more salvations and get to baptise more people.
Please pray for God's provision as we take the step of fundraising through Stewardship.