AT FIRST glance, this looks like a book with a niche and narrow intended audience. It is a crowdfunded history of a Charismatic new church on the south coast of England, replete with countless names of leaders and church members.
Its wider appeal stems from the part that the New Community Church, Southampton, played in generating some of the most influential Christian youth initiatives of recent decades. The author was the senior leader at the church for two decades, but he, too, has exercised a wider influence in the UK Church, as a president of Churches Together and an ecumenical canon of Winchester Cathedral.
The early chapters offer a deep dive into the Restorationist movement of the 1970s and ’80s, out of which a community church in Southampton was planted. Restorationism was animated by a vision of restoring the life of the New Testament Church, in particular its openness to the Spirit and living in close community. Key figures in this part of the story are the “apostolic” overseers Bryn Jones and Arthur Wallis.
Many of the leaders in early Restorationism came from culturally — and theologically — conservative Plymouth Brethren backgrounds, and Kennedy is open about the tensions involved in rethinking faith in a changing world. Women were expected to wear headscarves as recently as the mid-1980s. At the same time, the church retained a Restorationist emphasis on gifts of the Spirit, and prophetic “words” feature prominently here at various points. The title of the book itself comes from a prophecy spoken over Kennedy: that the main focus of his ministry was to build a multi-generational church.
The narrative pace quickens in the mid-1990s, with the setting up of Cutting Edge, a series of youth events that, at their peak, drew thousands. The Cutting Edge worship band went on to become the rock band Delirious?. It was at a New Community Church event that Pete Greig had the vision for the 24-7 Prayer movement.
Some who experienced the early Restorationist emphasis on authority and submission first-hand now look back on it all as disturbingly cult-like. Such readers will find the author’s brief admission that there was “heavy shepherding” in the movement cursory and euphemistic. But it is hard not to be swept along by the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the narrative. It exudes an excited sense that with God anything is possible, and that thinking big and taking risks should be defining characteristics of any local church.
The Revd Mike Starkey is a London-based writer.
Generations, Generations, Generations: The story of a church and a movement
Billy Kennedy, with Ralph Turner
Malcolm Down Publishing £11.99
978-1-915046-95-6
Church Times Bookshop £10.79
