In Milton Damerel, a collection of hamlets in north Devon, the parish church was ‘non-operational.’ It had no PCC, no Church Warden and no regular worship. The Rector of the Benefice, Mark James, and some lay people planned a re-launch on Palm Sunday 2025. They discovered Soulspace and thought it might work better than the celebration service they had in mind.
At 4.30 pm they welcomed 14 people, five churchgoers, five who didn’t attend church, and four who came on special occasions. With Soulspace as a framework,
- they sat at cafe-style tables at the back of church,
- opened with some gentle music and a prayer,
- used a few images and questions to spark conversation about community and the church’s role in connecting people,
- heard the story of the lost sheep,
- reflected on questions about the story (eg ‘What draws your attention in this story?’),
- connected with the world through a table activity focused on: Who or what do you care about deeply right now? Where is the world hurting and how might light reach that place?), and
- gathered their thoughts up in a prayer.
Afterwards, they had tea and continued talking. They decided to repeat Soulspace once a month, and restart a monthly Evensong alternating with Holy Communion on another Sunday – a ‘mixed ecology’ of church!
Within a couple of months, after the second Soulspace, there were notable spin offs – a ‘Friends [of the church]’ group, the beginnings of a gardening group, the core of a PCC, offers of help.
But life is not straightforward. In a busy collection of churches, Mark found that he couldn’t sustain his work at Milton Damerel. So instead he started Soulspace on the fifth Sunday of the month in another village, where people stayed almost 90 mins afterwards, ‘which was a first for me. One person offered to help who has only just started coming.’
Then Mark’s wife became ill, so Soulspace was paused. But, with light now at the end of the tunnel, Mark is planning to restart Soulspace at two churches once or twice a month on Sunday.