urHome
A church that meets in homes
and gathers together to celebrate.
Serving Thame and the surrounding area.
Launching February 2025
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Read on to find out about our mission, foundational bible verses & values…
Mission statement (rough draft!)
“To be a spiritual home where everyone can belong and fulfil their potential in Jesus”.
Foundational bible verses
“All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity— all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.” Acts of the Apostles 2:42-47 NLT
Father to the fatherless, defender of widows — this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy. Psalm 68:5-6a NLT
Values
Inherited values
These are values well recognised across many streams of the church :-
• Everyone gets to play – God has a place for everyone to find joy and belonging in serving in church. We will help each person to discover and express their gifting. All roles are open to men and women, and while we favour meritocracy (of skills, experience and most importantly character) as the basis for leadership, we will also seek to ensure that we have gender, cultural and racial diversity as much as we are able to within those parameters. Our Senior Pastors, John and Sarah Hurrell, have equal status but very different gifting, and we hope that this will be a model and example for every level of leadership in church life.
• Naturally supernatural – We will embrace the charismatic gifts of the Spirit, and recognise that as it is only by the Spirit that we can be effective. We will welcome Him into every situation in a way that (1) doesn’t encourage weirdness or hype; (2) recognises the “now and not yet” nature of the Kingdom in the present age and (3) acknowledges that God doing God stuff is the new normal for those in Christ.
• Remember the poor – We recognise that it is not God’s desire for anyone to be in physical, emotional or spiritual poverty, and that it is a distinctive of His church that we seek to engage with all of these types of needs, as He leads us to help. As a startup we will prioritise partnerships with existing organisations in line with our values. We will also look to start our own unique provision over time, especially based around a wide concept of homelessness, addressing loneliness where we find it in the communities we serve.
urHome-Grown values
These are what we want to build our particular church culture around.
• We’re big on the small – Our priority context is Home Church where people will experience fellowship; sharing life; transparency; discipling; application; developing gifts & leadership and pastoral support.
• We are family – Church should feel like the best family ever. We go the extra mile for each other because we’re blood-related.
• Making disciples who make disciples – While conversions are obviously fantastic (and a great excuse for a party), conversion is where the work starts to ensure that each person fulfils their potential in Jesus. We don’t want anyone to feel that they are in a “stuck” place. We mine for gold, and take risks on releasing people into leadership (with coaching support) wherever possible. Every leader’s first responsibility is to be asking the question “Who’s replacing me?” and to start work training those people.
• Prayer is the engine room – We want God ideas not good ideas. Prayer is where everything starts, and maintains momentum and growth. We will engage with materials from 24/7 Prayer to equip us in our prayer journey, and hope to build a multi-use space in the garden of our eventual Thame house which will act as a 24/7 prayer space.
How we roll
These are distinctive practices about the way that we “do church” that support our values.
• Unleash creativity – We want to recognize the transformative effect that all forms of Christian art can have on culture and our own souls. We will seek to gather a creative community and create spaces where we can express creativity as a form of worship.
• Any excuse for a party – Jesus spent a lot of time teaching over food, and we will be a social church who eats together and invites those outside to share our table. We will find reasons to celebrate, feast and connect socially, as this is just as important as the more traditional spiritual elements to the model we want to create.
• Radical hospitality – We welcome everyone, recognising that all are made in God’s image and equally loved by Him. We’re not in the judgement business, that’s above our pay grade, and we don’t expect people who don’t know God to behave like those of us who do.
• “Have a go” heroes – The concept of the culture of “Try” originated with pastor Jordan Seng (Hawaii – tough parish – we’ll look to visit…) We will break through the normal hesitancy to share our faith by creating a culture that celebrates the effort of “having a go”, even when it ends in abject failure (Seng has annual awards including most spectacular fail). The more we try the more likely we are to find the “person of peace”.
• Joyfully or not at all – If there’s no one who can implement a good idea joyfully, then it’s either not a good idea, or its time has not yet come. Serving the church should be a joyous and satisfying experience, not a burden – life is hard enough without creating more heavy yokes for people to bear.
• Telling the story – Everyone will be able to tell God’s great story of redemption, and their story of joining God’s story. We will publicly celebrate the day to day stories, big and small, of God’s goodness at work in our lives.
• If it’s not growing, it’s dying – In nature all living things grow and multiply to stay alive. Jesus used many analogies for the Kingdom, all pointing to growth. We will be continually focused on how any ministry or individual can grow, and what barriers need to be addressed to enable this. We will encourage ministries and people to set themselves spiritual growth goals and be accountable about their development towards them. We will also recognise that some ideas have a shelf life and there is a “time to die” beyond which they will tend to create burden and not joy for those involved.
• Counter-culturally relevant – We will not shy away from the gospel being an offense to modern culture, but will work hard theologically and practically to make the Christian faith relevant to that culture nonetheless.
• Accessible accountability – With the many recent leadership scandals in the news we want to make sure that everyone in positions of influence can be held accountable by anyone in the community through well communicated; easily understood and accessible processes. Best practice in areas relating to legal and regulatory obligations, through trusteeship, will be a priority.