Oaks of Righteousness

Published. 04/01/2012
Author. Owen Hylton

Photo credits: Ritzy Cinema, Brixton By D G

You don’t have to spend long at Beacon Church before you begin to feel that this is somewhere quite unusual – in a good way. Jennie Pollock interviewed its leader, Owen Hylton, towards the end of last year to find out what makes it tick.

Visit Beacon on a Sunday and someone will soon come and sit with you, welcome you in, and help you feel at home. Watch in the ministry time and you’ll see people from diverse backgrounds praying for and extending love to one another. Chat to people over coffee after the service, and you’ll notice that many of them are deeply committed to caring for their neighbours, their community and their world.

The church is a plant from Kings Church, London, and is currently based in Brixton. It will be appointing its first elders in January. I asked Owen to explain something of the vision of the church:
 
“Our mission is to serve the community through building the local church to the glory of Jesus,” Owen told me. “What we mean by that is that the best way we can serve our community is to build a healthy, Bible-based, Spirit-filled church that glorifies Jesus.”
 
This word ‘community’ cropped up time and time again throughout our conversation. Owen told me that the church had moved several times before reaching its current location, but each meeting place had been in the heart of a diverse community:

Where I came from in Catford [Owen attended Kings Church in Catford for most of his life, and had been an elder there for a few years before moving to Beacon] there were high levels of diversity but it was predominantly ethnic diversity. In Herne Hill, West Norwood and Brixton, however, there was ethnic diversity but more apparent economic and educational diversity. Those parts of London are quite mixed in that there are some very wealthy parts but they are literally next door to some quite large deprived estates. We feel called to be a church which reaches into every part of our community. We’re not interested in what I would call superficial diversity; we’re not interested in the church looking diverse - we are interested in relationships which are genuinely diverse.

 
Like many Newfrontiers churches, Beacon doesn’t own its own building but rents space each Sunday. Its first two meeting places were schools, both central to their communities, but which were somewhat hidden away. Then, in December 2009, Julian Adams visited the church and prophesied that God would give them a place to meet that would be ‘a gem in the city’. It was not until about six months later that Owen first came across The Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, and this prophecy began to be fulfilled.

“We went to visit the cinema which is in a really prominent location and is well-known in the area. As we drove down the long road approaching it, I could see The Ritzy in the distance. It was a sunny day and the square in front of the cinema was absolutely rammed with people. My first reaction was ‘I can’t do church there!’ As I analysed that, I realised that I had come to quite like being hidden.”

 
Owen faced the challenge though – perhaps having a name like ‘Beacon’ suggested that a more prominent position would be appropriate – and approached The Ritzy management. After some initial hesitation, the cinema allowed the church to begin worshipping there in July 2010.
 
The Ritzy staff and the church quickly built good working relationships. Owen and the team are committed to being authentic witnesses within the cinema, just as much as outside its walls.

“We began to pray quite specifically about our relationship with The Ritzy when we realised that this was not just a venue to meet in, but part of the community we were trying to reach.”

 
In March of last year Owen and his wife, Pauline, were invited to The Ritzy’s centenary celebrations. Owen is keen that his meetings with the Ritzy management don’t just include updates on their hire contract but also include discussions on how the church and cinema can work together for the benefit of the local area. 
 
Whether it’s ministering to the area where the church is located, meeting needs in the areas where the church members live and work, or helping those inside the church to find and grow in faith, Owen has a very positive vision drawn from Isaiah 61:1-4. While many people focus on the first part, carrying out God’s mandate to preach the gospel, minister to the poor and serve those in prisons, Owen’s attention was caught by the second part:

They will be called oaks of righteousness,
  a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendour.
They will rebuild the ancient ruins
  and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
  that have been devastated for generations.

 
He explained:

“The outcome of this is that they will - the people that you have ministered to will become oaks of righteousness. They will become restorers and rebuilders of the city. Part of what God has called us to do is to help restore people who will themselves become restorers; to help see transformation in people’s lives that will help them become transformers; to help rebuild people who will then become rebuilders.”

The effect of this broader vision is powerful, meaning that people whose paths cross that of Beacon church are seen not in the need they currently face, but in the light of the effective men and women they could become. The goal is not only to help them find a way out of their current problems, but to help them get to a place where they are able to help others.
 
This attitude is surely at least a partial contributor to the sense of acceptance people feel when they come into the church. Whoever you are, whatever your background, whatever struggles you are facing, Beacon is a place of safety:

“I was speaking to someone recently who has had a really difficult past, and is struggling to break out, but he said to me, ‘I trust you, I trust you’. People come to us who are broken. They’re not broken because they are necessarily unbelievers; they are just broken. But they feel accepted by us because they know that many of us have also felt damaged and broken at times in our lives!”

With the appointment of elders in January, the church feels it has got to the end of the first phase in becoming established. It also launches a new leadership structure - the leadership pod:

In the 21st century church leadership ought to have slightly more flexible models that allow for the complexities and changes in the world in which we live. We have developed three guiding principles to help us:
 
• Faithful to scripture (hence the importance of elders);
• Awareness of the world around us (acknowledges the increasingly important role trustees have in churches);
• Embracing diversity (creating a model that allows ethnic and gender diversity to have a seat at the leadership table).
 
Our leadership pod enables us to achieve these things.

When you’re following a big vision, the road is guaranteed to be fraught with challenges, but a church which doesn’t face such challenges regularly is most likely not engaging with the reality of the world in which it lives. As Owen puts it: “the reality is that the world is not full of sorted believers, it’s full of broken people who, through Christ, can be transformed into oaks of righteousness.”
 
 
To learn more, find out meeting times, and listen to past sermons, visit the Beacon Church website.

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• beacon church
• church planting
• diversity
• isaiah 61