Based in the city centre, Vitalise has a Sunday evening gathering, various discipleship groups that meet through out the week, regular prayer and bible study at a city centre coffee shop and also is involved in various outreach activities.
The original brief was of course to address the 18-30 age group and this is still the aim today, but it is not an exclusive group - 4% of the regular community are over 40 and in fact 53% are aged 16-18. Tim explains that pitching their stuff at the 18-30 age group doesn't exclusively draw in that age bracket and it's certainly not worth creating unnecessary barriers. The community does have a mix in terms of church background as well, a large number have no church background and amongst those who have some link with a local church there is a real mix of denominations represented.
It is interesting that the ties with the local churches are so important. Many people will go along to their local church on a Sunday morning, but join in with everything Vitalise throughout the week. Furthermore, Tim tells me there are a number of examples of people who, having felt like they wanted to leave church, since being involved in Vitalise have felt inspired and encouraged to go back to serve in their local church. Tim notes that whilst there is lots that their community brings that institutional church cannot offer, there is also a lot that the established local church has which his community needs. For example, the need for older role models and mentors, something a church of largely young adults is missing.
We talked about why young people, disenfranchised with regular church, find something they want to be a part of in Vitalise. It seems that the kind of issues he has found young people talk about are not anything new: finding church dull, boring, too much religion, legalism and hypocrisy. Vitalise's emphasis on real committed community building, the value of grace, welcome and real love shown to outsiders, and also the element of adventure and risk in mission seem to be a lot of the common ground found in pioneering and fresh expressions.
As part of through life discipleship, we are interested to see how churches can intentionally equip and encourage discipleship for young people (as well as all stages of life). Fresh expressions and more pioneering models of church pose lots of interesting questions regarding this. Do our structures hold us back from how to do more effective mission and discipleship? Are more pioneering models of church just for the young? If different forms of church have different qualities necessary for well-rounded disciples, how can churches better share and partner with each other?