Esker Hills

Shazanne wrote: »

I would be interested to know how you recruit new members to your group and if you engage in calling from house to house to spread your word?
I would also like to know why you consider a highly populated housing development an appropriate place to establish a permanent base for your group.

A good question - thanks. Actually we don't put a terribly high emphasis on recruiting new members. In common with Christians of all backgrounds, we believe that God loved the world and sent his Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish for their sin but have eternal life (see John 3:16 in the Bible, for example). We therefore don't believe that people have to be a special relationship to our church or any other church for them to get to heaven. So our priority is not in recruiting members, but in sharing the great news that God is prepared to forgive our sin forever when we repent of our sin and trust in his Son, Jesus Christ, alone. We're always pleased to see new visitors in our church, but they are not pressurised to join anything. Some of the folk who come on Sunday mornings have been coming for years without becoming members. Others join after coming for a month. No-one is pressurised into anything. We don't even pressurise our children into becoming members. One of the differences between our church and Catholic and protestant churches is that we don't baptise our children, to make them part of the church without their consent. Instead, we wait for people to believe the gospel, and then they will take those decisions about baptism and becoming a member of the church themselves.

So we don't "recruit members," but we do encourage people to consider the good news of forgiveness offered to us in Jesus Christ. How do we do that? Well, we each recognise our responsibility to share the good news as and when we can. I suppose you could say that we do so in indirect and direct ways. In indirect ways, we would recognise our responsiblity to be good neighbours, to live the best kind of life we can to the glory of God. I could imagine this would be the kind of thing that residents in Esker Hills would appreciate. For example, you are taking responsibility for the upkeep of the green area. If we were to become a part of your community, it would be entirely reasonable for you to expect the church to be a good neighbour, and you might also be interested to know that some of our people have ride-on mowers! That's just one example, and I'm sure you could think of other ways in which good neighbours could play a useful part in community life.

But we try to share the good news in direct ways too. Those ways can be informal or formal. Informally, we would hope that we would use whatever opportunities come our way to explain that God promises to forgive us if we commit ourselves to his Son Jesus. And I suppose we do that in all kinds of ways. If you were to ask the members of the church how they came to believe the gospel, they would all have a different story. Some of us were born into families where the Bible was read, or brought up in churches where the gospel was explained. Others of us heard the gospel for the first time as
adults. We might have heard it from friends, or while reading a book, or the Bible. Many of us heard of it first informally.

But, from time to time, we also try to use formal opportunities to share what we believe. Over the last few years, we have been putting magazines through doors around Portlaoise. They're glossy A4 size magazines called "4you" (there's a website you can check out if you haven't seen them and would like to see what they're like: www.4you.ie). Then over the last 3 summers, a handful of people from church have gone door to door for a couple of hours one night per week with the deliberate purpose of encouraging people to think about the message of the Bible. I haven't been myself, so I can't comment on what happens, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly very
positive, and people are often glad to have an opportunity to talk to someone about what they believe. I certainly wouldn't expect our people to be pushy or aggressive, given what we believe! I suppose it's also worth emphasising that they're not selling anything! If anything is given out, it's free. And as it turns out, we've already covered the Esker Hills area: did you miss us ?

So what might this mean for residents of the estate? Well, it's taken our door-to-door team all summer just to get around Kilminchy with magazines and invitations to church. At this rate, it'll take a while to cover the rest of the town, and then there's thr rest of the county after that. You can do the sums, but I'd suggest that it's unlikely we'd knock on your door more than once in any ten year period.

OK, that was the first question. Your second question is about why the Esker Hills location. I'll get to that at my next tea break!

Hope that is helpful.

OK, the second question that was asked is about why we chose the Esker Hills site, and this was repeated by Bicky, who also asked about our ability to maintain the building if we were able to buy it (I’m assuming that’s what she is getting at when she asks about our funding sources). I’m on the building committee, so I can speak with some knowledge about this, though I’m not sure I can remember all the detail. But the gist of it is this:

Our initial goal was to purchase a green field site around the Abbeyleix area. We viewed a number of suitable sites and began negotiations on a couple of them, but with no results. As we were looking around, our architect and planning consultant were also talking to the planning department in the council, and it was their impression that planners would prefer us to look for an existing non-utilised building than to build another. That’s quite reasonable, given the way that the recession has left us with unfinished estates, abandoned building projects, unsold and unused property. The planners would also prefer to see a church community facility located in a town served by footpaths and street lighting. It was at that point that we became aware of the Esker Hills site. The creche facility was for sale, it wasn’t being used, so we talked to the developer, and we’ve submitted for planning, as you know, which we think will both serve our needs as a congregation and enhance the general area for the benefit of the whole community.

You both ask about the suitability of meeting in a residential area. It wasn’t our original plan, as I’ve just explained, but it does correspond to the situation of the other churches in Portlaoise, in that it’s situated within a community. So it’s certainly appropriate, unless we want to say that all the other churches are inappropriately situated. And as I said before, we would be intending to become a contributing part of the community, not a drain upon its goodwill.

Bicky also asks about numbers attending. As I said, we have just under 50 members, plus children and visitors. We have a lot of children, as many and perhaps most of our families have young children – probably 70 children, all counted. And I’m not sure exactly how many visitors there are or will continue to be, as is the nature of the case. There are a stable core who meet with us without becoming members, but as you’d expect there are others who just drop in to see what it’s like, who might stay for a while, and then move on. Last Sunday was unusually large – we had 135 people, including adults and children, for Sunday morning worship. That’s happened a few times in the last couple of months. Residents in Esker Hills might fear that our plan would be to grow and grow, but really that can’t happen. The building has finite space capacity, and if / when it becomes too small we would need to consider how to develop the church community in multiple sites.

As for our ability to maintain the building, that’s not in question. Although we are independent of any of the denominations, we are financially responsible, and would see the proper maintaining of the building as a basic mark of respect for our neighbours – just as I’m sure you would do.

As for the public meeting, I understand that the arrangements are in process on the Esker Hills Facebook page, and I suppose there will be an announcement about this in due course – but we are certainly very willing to meet people and talk through any concerns that folk might raise. I hope that’s useful!

There are two car parks - check out the proposed site plans here: http://www.laois.ie/idocs/listFiles.aspx?catalog=planning&id=10406

The plans have about 36 spaces I think. But you'll notice there is space for more within the boundaries, which is something we're following up on.

We have done surveys of the numbers of cars being used at the moment, and the average was I think in the low 30s. As I said before, many or even most people have young families, so in many instances you should think about cars with 3, 5 or sometimes even 7 people using these spaces.

That should look much more managable, even if you take 135 people - which was I think the most we've ever had in one service - and work out how many cars they would require on that basis.

It's also worth considering that a few of our members live within walking distance of the site - so not everyone who attends would need to drive.