Churches Together activity

Churches Together (and its predecessor, Fleet Council of Churches) has been active for at least 20 years. Ecumenical relations are strong in the town. Our main activities are:

• Living Stones bookshop which is run by an independent trust but has volunteers drawn from all Fleet churches. Fleet is one of the smallest town to have a Christian bookshop so it’s a privilege to have a shop with the vision of being a "Light on the High Street"
• The Local Ecumenical Partnership on the new and growing Elvetham Heath estate. The partnership is between Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and UR churches and the church was founded in 2000. This estate was in the news as having the highest household income in the country and is indicative of the challenge in bringing the gospel to able, middle class, self sufficient people.
• Sponsoring a schools worker allied to Scripture Union. This is run by a separate trust, FACCTS, under the oversight of all the churches.

We currently have an annual cycle of joint meetings that covers:

• The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
• Women’s World Day of Prayer
• Ecumenical Lent groups
• Good Friday Walk of Witness down the High Street
• Christian Aid week
• Songs of Praise at Fleet Carnival
• Bi-monthly prayer meetings
• A monthly ministers’ lunch with fellowship and prayer

In addition, we have a Prayer Wall. This is a chain of prayer for the town with approximately 70 people taking half hour or hour slots to pray for the town. There’s room for more people to join but numbers are quite good for a town of this size. There have been some major answers to prayer.

In 2000, we held a major celebration around Pentecost when we put on the Rob Frost musical Hopes and Dreams for three nights, had a family funday on the Saturday and a joint service on the Sunday. We held a joint celebration on Pentecost Sunday this year followed by a barbeque.

Direction

There is agreement that the time has come for Churches Together to move from meeting together to build fellowship to share the gospel with the town. The purpose of our unity is to engage in mission around the 5 marks of mission agreed by Churches Together in Britain & Ireland and various international Christian gatherings:

1. To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom
2. To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
3. To respond to human need by loving service
4. To seek to transform unjust structures of society
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation

Here’s a prayer from a prayer meeting written by a Roman Catholic which sums up this thinking:

"Dear Father

We thank you for all the opportunities we have been given to work together as "one body in Christ" in our service and witness in this town. We ask forgiveness for the times we have chosen to go our own way and ask you Lord to open our hearts and our minds - and the hearts and minds of all Christians in Fleet and Church Crookham - to a greater urgency to work together to spread the Good News. Lord in your mercy

Hear our Prayer."

First fruits of this have been:

• a Tent Event, an outreach from a tent owned by the Kings Church evangelist, in 2003 and 2004.
• Shared Alpha suppers
• Participating in Fleet’s annual Gala Night and taking a stall in Hart Shopping Centre.