Current members of feig thought it might be an idea to put a few of our stories down in writing.

That way, if you think you might be interested in getting involved, you'll have more of an idea of who others are and how we've come together...

 

Eloise gets to go first...

So, I grew up in Africa, first child of Christian parents who taught at a bible college. I revisited my childhood home a few years ago and the experience totally freaked me out but back then life was good, there were trees to climb and plenty of dirt to play in.

They eventually brought us home as secondary school was approaching and we settled into the local church. Looking back on it, I spent my teenage years trying to work out who God was; desperately searching for authentic expressions of Christianity and sane people to share the journey with.

I couldn’t find any. Even my parents became disillusioned with church. Most expressions of Christianity embarrassed me and drove me further away until I gave up the search. But the deep, simple knowledge that God existed never left me. There was just no way to explore it.

I met the man I was to marry (an anger filled atheist) and this kick started a dialogue about God and Christianity. I couldn’t answer his questions satisfactorily as I had stopped actively learning about God at about the age of 14. We both needed to find a space where we could ask questions and explore.

G had an experience (I’m sure he’ll mention it in his story) which meant that we weren’t arguing from opposite viewpoints anymore. We were both ready to explore things together. We needed a mentor, we needed a space to explore, we needed comrades for the journey and we needed community.

We found Feig.

Eloise

 

Gareth goes next...

There I was, happy, as an angry atheist (thanks Eloise) living out my life as “Godlessly” as possible. I had been brought up mostly without God, seeing the way as being realistic, tangible and faithless; religion was basically a pointless diversion to me. I felt sad for those who had to use faith as a crutch to get through their lives, expecting things to happen when they should have been just getting on with it.

Ok. There was the anger, there was the hatred and confusion with it, and that’s what it was really, a misunderstanding, but one which changed with a dramatic experience.

I was driving back from my parents’ house one day and decided to play some music, which I had recently bought, at an optimum level (basically deafeningly loud). The CD played for a while and then “Talk” by Coldplay began playing. The music and the words all seemed to click like the combination to a safe; suddenly the sky seemed to get much bigger, I felt weightless, a huge calm rushed through my body. I had never experienced anything quite like it, I couldn’t understand what was happening but I completely understood what was doing it. It was time for me to understand, it was time for me to be given the extremely special privilege of being touched by God.

I returned home after driving on air, the anger was melting away and I was calmer than I had ever been, something touched my very core and just took away any baggage I didn’t need any more. I felt like this for days and going to work, in a corporate environment, was so much easier; I was no longer searching to reach the level of success I had been brought up to aspire to. It was an entirely liberating experience. So what was I to do with it?

Church was never something I ever enjoyed; my experience was limited and wholly unsatisfying. I went to church when I was in the cub scouts and all I can remember was some very long waffle, exceedingly dull hymns and praying for Terry Waite every week. I am very glad he’s been freed now, but I’m sure it’s given those working in that church quite a lot of work to find something else to pray about.

Anyway, the journey began; I now needed to know what had happened to me, where I went from there? With church as I knew it out of the question for me, but still having a burning desire to understand faith more, I needed to find out what was out there. Something which could start my journey off; there had to be something to combine everything, a sense of community I had longed for ever since I was a child, a sense of belonging, in this case, with God. It took some time but one day we met Michael, who was charged with starting FEIG and we got on famously, despite my lack of being able to draw the line in certain stories.

It wasn’t easy, embracing something which I had hated for so long, hearing new words and talking in a way that I had never really listened to before. However, with the right people around you helping you, understanding you, everything becomes possible.

So we meet each Wednesday, we have a great time, we eat, we worship, we pray, I am happy that I am comfortable doing this, learning, questioning and the opportunity and support is always there. I wanted to be able to ask questions and I can, I wanted to learn more about God and the Bible and I am.

 

Dan next...

I grew up in a Christian family and experienced various Church traditions, all of which became increasingly alien environments to me in my late teens and early twenties.
I am not disrespecting long-established places of worship, plenty of people that I trust and admire have found homes there but I haven’t.
In 2005 my wife and I spent a year involved with a community called ‘East’ in Melbourne Australia and for a time church began to make sense, in that we weren’t just turning up to sit facing the front each week but we were genuinely participating with and helping to shape a worshipping community.
This gave us encouragement that we weren’t the only people who wanted to explore church while feeling dislocated from our roots in traditional expressions of it.

Unfortunately, on our return to the UK, another period of dissonance resumed. We spent a while outside of church, owing more to a clash of cultures than any kind of faith crisis. During this time I found that my troubles lay more with earthly powers than heavenly doubts. I felt that church-as-we-knew-it often appeared more concerned with empire building than genuinely connecting with our neighbours and our God (that sounds more cynical than I want it to but I can’t think of a better way to put it just now) However, we didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater by ditching the idea of church altogether. We refused to travel in isolation of other voices and influences, people to challenge our worldview, so the search continued.
We considered trying to start something ourselves but didn’t feel like we knew where to begin.

After nine months or so, things came to a head.
In early September 06 I prayed one evening in desperation for a sign of life.
The very next morning a friend dropped around whom I hadn’t seen in almost two years. We talked for a while about church and he offered a few suggestions, one of which was to go and talk to a new curate at the cathedral called Michael, who was somehow involved in starting a church. I was immediately curious and set off to do just that.

On being directed to his house I arrived to discover from his wife that he wasn’t in. She asked me if I wanted to leave my details and as I was doing so, Michael returned.
We talked for a couple of hours and it transpired that we had a great deal in common.
I told him pretty much what I’ve told you here and amongst other things he relayed that he had been commissioned by the Bishop to establish a new church community in our city.
That morning he had just been walking around Gloucester docks, praying for people to join him and Rachel as he had been in the post for a few months and was beginning to wonder how things would get off the ground.
Very soon after this, the four of us began to meet, eat, worship, pray and generally exchange notes on faith and life.
Our church is founded by the Anglican, “fresh expressions” movement.
To be honest I don’t find this label helpful because it immediately puts a strange spin on the outsider’s perception of us.
The casual observer might conclude that we are desperately striving to be different from “normal church” by disregarding the past and endeavouring to deliver something exclusively new but this is not truly representative of our motivation.

Feig is not a negative reaction to the status quo but a positive step for us, beginning with a blank canvas and pursuing together the essential essence of biblical community.
Put simply, we are not seeking to apply any one particular formula or indeed disregard past traditions, we are a bunch of people living in and around Gloucester seeking to love God and to love our neighbour in every way we can.
It’s as easy, or perhaps as tricky as that.

 

Dan is married to Ruth, and she goes next...

I was brought up in a Baptist Church and always went to church, but was reasonably reluctant and struggled to see how my involvement, or lack of, on a Sunday had any impact on my life or others.

Something always kept me there, either a person or a odd sense of duty.

In 2000 I was able to experience mission work in Cyprus for three months that instigated a desire to follow that path with my life. This led to me coming to Redcliffe College in Gloucester with the aim of becoming an overseas missionary.

I met and married Dan by the end of my two-year course and we started married life in Gloucester.

Despite going to a local church we were not happy and I struggled so much that I often wouldn’t go and felt lost where church was concerned. I wasn’t questioning God so much as the established church. We knew that we wanted to be part of a Christian community but didn’t seem to be finding it anywhere.

Circumstances led us to live in Melbourne Australia for 2005 where we encountered what we had been looking for – a group of people genuinely trying to express their faith in the culture of today.

Upon returning at the beginning of 2006 we tried to settle back into life in Gloucester, which included looking for a similar church that we had experienced in Melbourne.

After nine months we were unable to find ourselves any sort of spiritual home and had decided that if we were in the same position in a year’s time (spring 2007) we were booking our flights back to Melbourne.

We respectfully informed God of our feelings and that if He had other plans then that was the time scale we were giving Him! Perhaps not the best way to deal with things, but we were desperate.

Dan’s story gives the finer details of how we came into contact with Michael and Rachel and thus found ourselves with a spiritual home.

Feig has enabled me to settle in Gloucester and be at home here. I have found a group of people who are like-minded yet individual, who challenge and encourage me as we journey together to understand how to love God and love our neighbours in the context of today.

 

Claire was a student at Redcliffe College in Gloucester until June 07 and has moved on, but we figured her story should be heard too...

I was looking for a third year placement as part of my degree course at Redcliffe Mission training College. I knew that God was leading me to do church work, so I wanted a placement that would show me about the realities of church life.

I started back at college in September and by October I still hadn't got a placement!

On 'visiting church leaders day' I ended up sitting next to Michael Volland. He was wearing a dog collar but didn't look like your sterotypical vicar (you know: old, grey, food in the beard etc etc...). I was slightly confused but mostly intrigued, and we ended up in conversation. In that 10 minutes God spoke and moved and I knew that my placement had been found!

A few tutor meetings etc. later I joined the then four feig members and started worshipping with them, eating with them and exploring what it means to be church with them.


In the 8/9 months I was part of feig (my placement was supposed to stop at Christmas but I was hooked and kept going until I graduated!) I learnt so much about being true Christian community, the joys and challenges of growing something from grassroots, the importance of journeying with people and creating expressions of church that connect with people.


All these lessons have been very important, feig has been very important and the friends I have made have been so important as I am now involved in my own 'fresh expression' of church in a nightclub in Weston super Mare!!"

 

Jacob Jan Zwart spent six months with feig in 2007. He has since returned to the Netherlands, and is going to work in Uganda. He hasn't written a story for us, but he was in touch with the following e-mail in february 08...

"Hello my dear Feigians!

How are you doing?

I often think back at the great time I had in England, and at feig. It was great to experience such communion with fellow christians, especially the 'feig-way'. Something I have to miss here in Holland.

I am very curious where you guys are right now. How many people (& one or two meetings each week?), how often do smelly men play X box? how often women with funny voices makin up words, play with babies and stuff? and so on.

I really want to see you guys again. We did share 6 months, and those 6 months where great! (at least, for me).

I do wish you guys God's blessing. Know that I do pray for feig.

So, all the best, many greetings to all of you, and I hope to hear from you guys!"

 

So there you go, you get a flavour for Jacob. We miss him...

 

Daniel Robinson now:

I have been a Christian most of my life. Having had a somewhat peripatetic existence I have been involved with a wide range of expressions of church, and made friends with a Christians from a fairly diverse range of traditions. I would still very much consider myself to be an Anglican and I am proud of that tradition, but I increasingly find that many of the labels and arguments that occupied my thoughts in the past are of seem far less important to me than they used to.

I am a keen amateur theologian, and have long enjoyed reading and talking about faith and the Christian tradition. However, I had an abrupt 'wake up call' in my mid-20's when a series of events left me jobless, penniless and heart-broken. All the clever arguments in the world provided no comfort, and made me realise how unbalanced and arrogant my faith was. Having concluded that God was not living up to his part of the bargain, I had a big strop and tried to find whatever I could to spite a being I said I no longer believed in. It didn't last, but I had received a good crutch-kicking session, and this now set me on a less clear cut, but deeper journey. I'm still trying to work things out - but I know it involves people and a real community. It's not about knock down answers, and cast-iron certainties, but it is about trying to work out what it means to love, what it means to live as community, what it means to hold to hope.

I returned to my home county of Gloucestershire about 3 years ago. I moved to Gloucester itself in the summer of 2007 and became involved with Feig shortly after that. In addition to Feig, I've close connections to two Benedictine monasteries and I'm fascinated by what the ancient monastic traditions have to say to us now in the 21st Century.

 

There are stories still to come...