A series on the breadth of church life in the URC. This month, Lawrence Heath-Moore introduces a congregation that exists only online

Yourchurch is a congregation that lives and meets online, with weekly services on Sunday at 6.30pm. It is made up predominantly of URC members: the seven-person leadership team are all URC people, and the congregation is keen to become a recognised URC church. But though it looks like a URC duck, walks like one and quacks like one, it isn’t one (yet), because our polity and structures do not presently allow for a church that lives solely online. In that sense, it is experimental – a congregation on a journey that owes its existence and form to the global pandemic.

The congregation sets out to be and become this: A welcoming space – whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey. A safe space, where you’re protected and free to be who you are. A challenging space to wrestle with what it means to follow Jesus today. An honest space to share questions and issues. A diverse space where difference is celebrated. A space to make a Jesus-shaped difference…

Lawrence Heath-Moore is Mission and Discipleship Mentor for the United Reformed Church North Western Synod

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This is an extract from an article published in the May 2022 edition of Reform

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