Across a network of eight local churches in Nottingham, Woven is seeing new life emerge in communities once marked by church decline. After taking part in the CCX Become course, local people are growing in confidence, discovering their gifts and beginning to see themselves as leaders.
‘It’s slow and fast all at the same time,’ says Rich Atkinson, leader of St Margaret’s, Aspley, and the Woven network it’s part of – 15 services, eight local churches, one big church family.
For nearly eight years, Rich and the Woven team have been serving churches across low-income areas in Nottingham. There have been long seasons of patient work, punctuated by moments when growth and change gather pace.
Now, Rich believes the network is beginning to see the first fruits of something for which its churches have long been praying.
‘We set our vision strapline as “Contending for Revival”, and I genuinely think we’re seeing the first fruits of revival bubbling up,’ he says. ‘We’ve had more baptisms in the last year than in any year before. The baptism pool is getting plenty of use.
‘It feels really encouraging. God is at work, and we can feel momentum building.’
Each of Woven’s eight churches has its own worshipping community, mission initiatives, leadership team and PCC, while sharing children’s and youth work, operations, staff and a Joint Church Council. The model allows each congregation to remain deeply rooted in its neighbourhood while drawing strength, encouragement and resources from the wider network. It’s a balance that matters to Rich.
‘Local churches reaching local people is unbelievably powerful,’ he says. ‘In everything we’ve done, we’ve tried not to rip the local church out of the local area, but to release its power to be the local church in its community.
‘At the same time, unity and scale bring resources and encouragement that you just can’t get as a lone church on an estate. If you can combine those two things, it’s really dynamic.’
Woven’s journey began when the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham identified a part of the city where churches were declining or facing possible closure. Rather than give up, the diocese invited a team to try something new across the eight churches.
‘At that point, the churches were basically clinging on,’ Rich recalls. ‘They were trying to work out how long they could eke out their existence before an inevitable closure.
‘Now, seven of our eight churches are no longer in that space. One of the biggest shifts is that our churches are beginning to expect growth.’
That renewal has not come from simply joining churches together. Rich is clear that a shared structure cannot replace the patient work of building relationships, developing common values and creating a genuine sense of belonging.
‘I don’t think you can just lump churches together and expect them to thrive,’ he says. ‘There are difficult things to work through with PCCs, unifying culture and establishing what you are going to be together.
‘The powerful part of our model is that each church still feels like a local church, while also being part of this broader Woven community.’
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As Woven enters its next chapter, there’s growing clarity that sustainable renewal cannot depend on leadership being brought into these communities from elsewhere. They have gathered a cohort drawn from local churches to take part in Become – an accessible theology and leadership course from CCX, designed for people from low-income communities who may not fit traditional training pathways.
‘It used to feel like we were importing people into the community to bring transformation and change,’ Rich says. ‘Now, it feels like it’s bubbling up from within our communities. There are the most astonishing leaders coming through.’
Some 20 people from ten churches took part in the course, with sessions hosted in a different church for each gathering. It was this shared cohort that became an important part of the experience.
‘Most churches sent only one or two people, so doing it together meant we had a group where cross-learning could happen,’ explains Lizzie Osborne, Woven Lead Associate and leader of St John’s, Bilborough. ‘Moving the location was fruitful too. People could see another church that looked similar to theirs, or very different, and hear about its struggles, challenges and joys.’
Become is designed to help people living on estates recognise their gifts and grow as Christian leaders. For Woven, it offered participants more than information, creating a space for people to be heard, encouraged and begin seeing themselves differently.
‘It has been this beautiful thing of empowering people as leaders and saying, “We see you”,’ says Lizzie. ‘People have been growing in confidence. Become has enabled sparks of conversation to happen.’
One participant is a children’s worker who grew up locally and was relatively new to church when Woven invited her to take on the role.
‘We thought she would be a great children’s worker, so we put her straight onto Become,’ Lizzie says. ‘At first, even sitting in a group and sharing an opinion was terrifying for her.
‘But we’ve seen her grow so much. She’s now praying out loud in staff meetings. It has been really encouraging to see her journey.’
Another set of participants felt inspired to start something new and improve their church’s social media presence. They returned to their church leader with a plan for reaching more people online.
At St Margaret’s, a member of the community has also begun stepping into new areas of leadership.
‘If you went back two or three years, there is no way he would have put himself forward to be leader,’ says Rich. ‘I don’t think he had ever seen himself in that kind of role.
‘He recently said to me, “I think I wouldn’t mind helping to do some things in the services.” I thought, where has this come from?
‘I love seeing younger participants excited by what the course is encouraging in them. But I also love seeing someone who, for much of their life, would never have considered themselves a leader beginning to step up.’
This growth is taking place in communities where life can often feel fragile and the challenges are constant. Woven’s leaders carry a significant pastoral and safeguarding responsibility, supporting people facing mental health challenges, poor health, complex family situations and a lack of stable support.
Rich speaks openly about his own experience of burnout and needing time away from ministry.
‘We’ve seen God do some amazing things, but it has not been without an exhausting battle,’ he says. ‘At times, it has been heartbreaking.
‘One of the things I’ve really realised about our context is that, in some ways, reaching people for Jesus is relatively easy! I don’t mean that glibly, but I think we’ve seen people come into church readily and come around faith. But disciplining people can be particularly challenging; we’ve had a lot of people come in and God starts moving in their life and it’s amazing. And then suddenly they disappear, and then they come back, six months later and they’re in a mess.
‘The journey of discipleship is one of the most wonderful and brilliant aspects of church,’ says Rich, ‘but it’s probably also our greatest area of frustration. We’ve had false starts and made mistakes, but we’re beginning to get some traction on how we resource discipleship across Woven.’
Woven’s ‘Inside Out Discipleship’ programme, alongside the signs of emerging leadership through Become, leave Rich and Lizzie feeling excited for what’s coming. These breakthroughs are not the result of a simple model or a quick solution, but of years of prayer, perseverance and investment in local people.
For Rich, the growing confidence of Woven’s churches is beginning to reshape how they see themselves. Communities that once wondered whether they could survive are recognising that they have something to contribute beyond their own neighbourhoods.
‘There’s something profound about churches in low-income contexts setting out to be something together,’ he says. ‘We don’t need to assume we can’t manage without somebody from a middle-class area supporting us. Churches in this context are a resource for the city.
‘We’ve sent leaders to other churches and seen people go forward for ordination. We don’t just want to flourish as churches. We want to be a blessing beyond ourselves.’
For Lizzie, raising local leaders is also vital to Woven’s long-term sustainability. External funding will not last forever, but people who live in these communities, love Jesus and are committed to their neighbours will remain.
‘We definitely have a way to go,’ she says. ‘But if we have people who live on these estates and love Jesus, some aspects of our ministry like youth work and children’s work will continue because local people will be living it. We have to grow local leaders to ensure the long-term sustainability of this.’
That is the hope taking shape across Woven: local churches reaching local people, rooted in their neighbourhoods, strengthened by one another and increasingly led by the people who call those communities home.
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