Is an interdependant network of several household churches in Sheffield. They began in 1996 with an intentional gospel/mission focus to pioneer home based congregations, seeing these as the most effective way of reaching their community. This has now grown into a network of 5 household churches plus a number of other church plants including a larger congregation which meets in a church building on Sundays (One of the leaders was approached 18 months ago by a dwindling congregation of 15 to rebuild it. It has since grown to around 90 and the aim is to transition it gradually towards household congregations), also a number of couples and teams have been trained and sent to other parts of Sheffield, France and Africa.
With help from the Crowded House (TCH) other similar works have been started in Loughborough and Liverpool and the founding leaders seem to be spending increasing time teaching & training further afield. At the heart of their ethos lies the Gospel and people are left in no doubt about this from the outset when they join TCH. Core to this is intentional discipling which happens in the context of the community. There are no passengers in this set up, so there has to be a strong level of buy in to the Gospel vision. The age profile tends to be below 30, they work in an area full of students, and the majority would be previously non-churched. Some arrive having become disillusioned with 'big' church and others are 'sent' from existing churches because they share the missional vision.
Their strap line is "Mission through community and community through mission."
They see both these elements as fundamental to what they are doing. They have a strong commitment to training and releasing leaders who will plant more churches and long term their vision is to see a church planting movement established.
To read some more about TCH check out the article by Steve Timmis on the 'Articles' page.
