the vision
We live today in a time of fragmented lives, families, and communities; where the world around us is changing faster than many of us are able keep up with it. In the midst of this change, many people are seeking something deeper than a day to day existence - there is a longing to belong to and believe in something of worth.
However, the traditional ways of expressing church are becoming more and more alien to those outside of church communities. Even contemporary expressions of church are little more than thinly veiled rebrandings of the traditional ways.
Genesis 26 tells the story of Isaac who pursued the vision passed to him by his father, Abraham. His father had established communities across the land we now know as Israel. Part of his father’s strategy was digging wells, sources of life and prosperity for anyone who chose to live close to them. The Philistine enemy had an equally effective destructive strategy – fill the wells with rocks, block them up, poison them. If there was no fresh water (no well), there would be no community as people were forced to leave, separate, and go elsewhere for their life-source.
The vision of Wells is to continue the legacy of faith in the Church of Ireland, to re-open old wells in old places of faith and to open new wells where there are signs that a new community could be expressed.
These new communities may not be local communities; they could be gathered around age, interest, ethnicity, social need or whatever.
These new communities may not look anything like what we expect "church" to look like; they may not do things the way that we are used to doing them.
These new communities will express the faith of those who belong in ways that they can relate to, in ways that they can own and live out.
These new communities will help people encounter the living, risen Christ.