Help us to build our Monastic Centre
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Living Word Church was planted out of an existing Portsmouth based church in 2010. Since then we have planted a number of congregations within Hampshire. The network is headed up by Reverend Chris and his wife Tracey Wickland.
Pre-pandemic our main congregation met in a school but currently meets in Titchfield sharing the building in Titchfield village with the Living Word Titchfield congregation. Our main congregation is too big for the 100 seater premises there and spreads across two services on a Sunday.
As a network of churches, in addition to Sunday worship, we run courses in prayer ministry, leadership training, basic discipleship and run a weekly half day prayer school. We have weekly Bible studies, prayer meetings, home groups, youth groups, sewing mornings and coffee mornings across our congregations within the local community. We serve the community with marriages, funerals and baptisms, warm spaces, BBQs, quiz nights, food parcels and food vouchers. We actively participate in the life of the communities in which we are planted with practical and spiritual offerings.
We first met Eric and Jean in early 2020 when looking for land to rent in the local area to enable the congregations to meet outside during the covid lockdowns. We did this legally under a risk assessment for the course of the lockdowns. Weekly meetings were held outside on the field drawing hundreds of people from far and wide.
In 2020 we also began the allotment/prayer farm project on the land. An acre was ploughed, the poly tunnel and external sheds erected and a team of volunteers from within the congregations began working the land.
Since then the vision has developed with the project supplying all of its congregations with vegetables, four local food banks and our own food bank from the church steps in Titchfield. We also supply a local farm on Titchfield Lane with vegetables grown locally without pesticides.
The Prayer Farm has an organised and advertised large communal weekly work gathering where all hands are on deck. We begin the day with prayer and disperse in groups to learn, teach and work together. There is often chatting, singing and praying going on amidst the rows of vegetables.
We have provided Muddy Church/Forest School sessions from the site which we would like to expand once we have better facilities to include education on the land for young and old in growing your own, food sacarcity, permaculture, stewardship and climate change, composting, food miles and nutrition etc.
The expanded vision is for a modern day monastic retreat. Monasteries were historically set up in the countryside to provide spiritual, mental and practical support to the community. Community cohesion saw life organically revolving around prayer, hospitality, working the land and social enterprise. The church would gather for Sunday services and smaller prayer sessions throughout the week whilst working together physically as a community. Today we know and better understand the exceptional benefits of exercise, social interaction and building skills for mental health.
The current site holds significant religious attachment, running as it does along the edge of St Wilfred Pilgrim’s Trail.
Our proposed building seeks to bring a monastic church community into the every day life of the modern day church.
The plans allow for residential hospitality, where visitors can stay and pray, learn the rhythms and take a Liturgy of Life back to their own communities. There are plans for a prayer garden and community food production via the current productive allotment. Our vision is both spiritual and practical. We envisage opportunities for consistent prayer and fellowship incorporating monastic ideals such as praying the hours, working the land, praying for our land, hospitality and enterprise. We are excited to re-ignite within the body of Christ a passion for community, prayer and the simple gospel of Jesus.
We want the facilities to offer the church an opportunity to re-instate long lost rhythms of life and prayer. To fill the skies and our land once again with an offering and a ministering of prayer and praise to the Lord. Where all our work comes from a place of rest. Where our endeavours and enterprises are first and foremost prayer-soaked pleas.
We humbly want to offer a set apart place dedicated to God where He might settle His Presence.
We’ve already seen how a simple (rather large!) vegetable garden has effected lives, developed organic community, friendships and fellowship.
I’ve personally had the joy of walking past people praising God in song, praying together, sharing the gospel or simply chatting at they weeded amongst the beetroot. The current project has produced so much more than just the vegetables we share and our hope is to see God’s vision of a praying community be a reality in modern day Hampshire.
There’s a long planning road ahead of us and prayers for favour and success are very much appreciated.
Organizer
Christopher Wickland
Organizer