Video boost for innovative Norfolk cafe church 

An innovative Fresh Expression of church which has been successfully running in South Norfolk for the past seven years, has just received a boost in its profile with the release of a ten-minute video about the project. Keith Morris reports.


 
Xpressions Café is a form of liquid café church which meets on the first Sunday of each month in the medieval church of All Saints and in the adjacent Church Centre in the village of Chedgrave, near Loddon.
 
Assistant Priest, Rev Richard Seel explains: “There are three ‘zones’, which operate simultaneously throughout the morning: Xpresso, a café  offering extravagant hospitality with unlimited free tea and coffee, cakes and Sunday papers; Xpressions, which focuses on family-oriented activity and worship and Xplore, which tries to explore aspects of faith in a way which will connect with the nonchurched.”
 
ChedgraveXpressionsCF450Rev Alison Ball, OLM Curate, said: “The rural church is said to be dying on its feet and there is a little bit of truth in that in some ways; we know that our regular congregations are becoming smaller as the older people that were the mainstays of them have died off or moved away, sadly, and there are not so many families coming in, younger people, coming into our traditional church.
 
“However, I would challenge very seriously the notion that the rural church is dying. If you find ways to engage with people, perhaps that are culturally appropriate, people are interested. They want to explore, they want to come along, so we've found that a good number of people who wouldn't normally go to traditional church have come along to see what's going on; they're quite excited when you challenge them on their spiritual ideas and where they are. It's good.”

Richard added: "People are always welcome to visit and we are always happy to share ideas with others who are running Fresh Expressions or are thinking about starting one."
 
Read about this project on the Fresh Expressions website

Read about this project on the Emerging Church website
 
Read our previous story about the project