Horizon@Hunter's Bar

The following public meetings will be held in the Endcliffe Methodist Church lounge (Ecclesall Road entrance):

Sunday 26 February 2012 at 2.30pm

Tuesday 28 February 2012 at 7.30pm

Saturday 24 March at 11.00am

Tuesday 27 March at 7.30pm

Other meetings can be arranged on request if these times are not convenient.  Contact Chris Sissons, Project Officer for more information: 0771 269 2470 or csissons079@aol.com .

The Horizon Development Team meets on Wednesday evenings at 7.30pm.  Contact Chris Sissons if you would like more information.

The Development Team is currently considering six elements that might contribute to the work at Horizon.  The team would welcome feedback from anyone who has an interest in any of these.  We would also welcome new ideas.

1. A community meeting point.  The lounge area, just inside the front door will be a place to meet friends and find out about events taking place in the area and at Horizon.
2. A Coffee Shop, will have its own access to the side of the church and provide a selection of drinks and snacks.  It will be a child friendly place and accessible for prams, wheelchairs and motorised scooters.
3. There will be a selection of meeting rooms available for use by local businesses and community groups.  Refreshments will be provided from the coffee shop.
4. Horizon will provide support for the local economy.  The exhibition area will be available for commercial use, effectively providing a temporary shop front on Ecclesall Road.  In addition, Horizon will provide meeting spaces and services for local businesses.
5. The exhibition area, the lounge and coffee shop will all be places where artists can display their work.  There will be workshops for those who wish to experiment with art or crafts themselves.
6. Horizon will be the base for a community of people exploring spirituality.  Horizon will be a shopfront for access to workshops and times for prayer or meditation.  Some worship will take place on the premises and Horizon will also promote other places of worship in the area.

Why Creativity and Spirituality?

Endcliffe Methodist Church has agreed Creativity and Spirituality (C&S) will be the core activity of Horizon @ Hunter’s Bar.  The theological background to this was written by the minister, Rachel Downs Lewis in the feasibility study.  Here are some additional points:

• On 1 May 2006, Father Christopher Jamieson (Abbot of Worth Abbey) published ‘Finding Sanctuary’, a book about Benedictine spirituality, through a secular imprint.  It sold out within the week.  The book was written as a result of an earlier BBC TV programme, ‘The Monastery’.  After the programme, Worth Abbey was inundated with requests for retreats (and this was repeated following a similar programme in 2010, ‘The Big Silence’).   This experience demonstrates a desire for spirituality as expressed through guided, silent prayer. 
• Sheffield Diocese has a conference centre at Whirlow Grange, which includes a Christian Spirituality Centre.  This centre potentially offers a resource to communities across the region, the question is how to make what it offers available to the person on the street. 
• Montgomery Arts Centre is an ecumenical venture that aims to bring together Christian artists from across the region.  Again the challenge is how to make what it offers available to the person on the street.
• Fresh expressions have for several years been a new direction for many churches in the mainstream Protestant traditions.  In the Methodist Church, the movement has to some degree marked a significant rapprochement between evangelicals and the mainstream church.  One branch of fresh expressions is a movement called New Monasticism, which can be found all over the world, focusing upon spiritual discipline in everyday life.  (A useful summary can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Monasticism; and information about a UK NM movement here: http://www.newmonasticism.com/  ).
• Sheffield Methodist District in 2009, appointed Revd Ric Stott as a pioneer minister for creative arts.  Ric is a member of the Horizon development team.

Spirituality @ Horizon will seek to:

• Make C&S resources accessible to local people at street level.  It will do this through a combination of worship, exhibitions, meditation, workshops, lectures, mutual support and one to one spiritual direction. 
• Horizon will seek to focus on the whole person (mind, body, spirit and relationships).  Their work is central to many peoples’ lives and so Horizon will engage directly with the local economy.  This will centre on the economy at Hunter’s Bar but also address the wider economy across South Yorkshire.  The recession has potential to challenge many people’s lifestyles and makes development of new enterprises especially difficult.  It is not the church’s role to call people away from the economy but to support them as they make their contribution, through difficulties such as unemployment and to help them remember the call of God to all people, beyond the immediate concerns of generating income.
• The contribution of Whirlow and Montgomery Hall are potentially significant for the region but they need shop fronts, as access to these organisations is primarily through inside knowledge amongst church members.  Horizon will create a space where they can experiment with the means to make their work better known at street level. 
• C&S are not the property of any single Christian tradition.  Many of the C&S resources Horizon will use originated in other traditions.  However, spiritual direction has a long tradition in Methodism, back to the ministry of John Wesley, by way of the classes he established to enable ordinary working people to act as spiritual directors for one another.  In his turn, it is possible to trace the influence of many traditions in Wesley’s teaching, see chapter on ecumenism in Theodore Runyon’s ‘The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today’.  This means it is natural for the work of Horizon to be ecumenical in its conception and execution.