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Mass Planting

Catholic fresh expressions

Examples of fresh expressions of church inspired by Anglo-Catholic instincts have much to contribute to mission in a society that is increasingly open to the visual, the mysterious and the symbolic.This issue no 16 Mass Planting tells a truly inspiring story of one such fresh expression of church in Preston, Lancashire.

Tasked with planting a church on a new housing estate with no immediately obvious gathering points, Father Damien Feeney and his wife asked themselves which building do most people naturally go to?The answer was a shock – it was Asda.Damien approached the store managers about the possibility of a weekly Sunday morning Mass at 10.00am in the store by the café before the shop opened at 10:30am.Permission was granted and for a year seeds were sown among shoppers and staff as the Eucharist was celebrated, psalm crosses were given out and carols were sung.

Mass at Asda was not a long term sustainable strategy but it did its sowing work.It established a presence and a reputation on the new estate which led to the next stage of establishing a new church from scratch for it.Read this issue to discover how the story developed as well as George's reflection on whether Mass at Asda was a fresh expression of church in itself and how an act of worship, as in this story, can be an effective starting point in mission among the non-churched.