This website is evolving from one that is primarily concerned about resources for congregations on housing estates to one which is concerned about their mission and continued future. It still contains resources for appropriate working class liturgy, in fact these have been expanded. Also resources for Christian basics, whether used as a course or in different ways. There are still pieces to help Ministers think through the pressures to engage their vulnerable congregations with community ventures. What is new is the resources that describe how a local congregation can develop indigenous working class ministry, lay and ordained. Estate Ministry in Lockleaze is a section devoted to how a local ministry team has been developed in the parish of Lockleaze Bristol, and trained in ways consistent with working class culture and constant with the inheritance of the Anglican Church. Also a package launched in the Diocese of Bristol called Go Local - Grow Local is featured here. It seeks to widen the Lockleaze experience to other parishes. Linking to another website called The Northern Ark is also important in this respect.

The resources here are aimed particularly at estate churches. How you adapt them for your own needs will be of interest to me. I hope you will use the contact page to let me know about this, or any gaps you experience in the resources available to mission and ministry in our localities.
The key phrases are

• Mission and Working class culture
• Housing Estate churches
• Enculturation and Liturgy
• Community Development

Joe Hasler

In 1972 I found myself living in an ex–Methodist manse on a council housing estate in Birmingham. In a household of young Christians, I found myself back amongst the surrounding white working class culture of my childhood, although it took me many years to be able to put words to that cultural awareness. I was employed as a community development worker on this housing estate at a time when most of such work was being done in the inner-city housing action areas. From then on I worked among, and mostly lived in, the council built homes of Birmingham, Essex, Liverpool and Bristol. With the on-set of my mid-life crises, one response to the many personal questions that arose was to be ordained as a deacon, and then a priest, in the Church of England. Since then I have lived in council house areas and worked as a parish priest.