Unite Southampton

Continuing our series of reflections on what we have done over the last few years, hopefully helping us to decide where we are headed. You can read the first in the series here.

At this stage, Unite was a network, and initiative. It wasn't something we created, it just kind of happened. It wasn't just us that wanted to do this kind of thing, we were bumping into others with the same thoughts. A group of lads just out of school decided to start a recording studio where people could come for free and record their tunes. It would build a network in the young, local music scene where people who knew Jesus could get to know those who didn't with a common passion. It was brilliant. Others ended up starting their own StreetLight teams in their area (the much deliberated new name for the minibus project). There was a website where people could post their thoughts, ideas, activities and prayers. Others wanted to get together and pray.

And I think this is where I need to own up to our first big mistake, but one that has taught us a lot about the way the church works in general. Unite was a network full of life and passion. However some of us assumed that to be really successful it needed to be an organisation with a base and lots of resources to get the things done we thought we needed to do. Looking back now, that probably ended up killing the movement.

Why do we assume that we need to be a large, influential organisation to achieve things? Probably because that is the way things get done in our society. It's top down – someone at the top sets vision and direction and people underneath get involved with it to make it happen. I guess it has something to do with wanting power and influence. And it probably has a lot to do with wanting that sense of achieving something that others can see how well you did.

To some extent Unite was different to this at the start – it was a movement of people who wanted to do things and they helped each other to get started. A music based outreach event got started. So did a recording studio. And several detached youth projects. And work in several secondary schools. A website. Some work on the Shirley Warren estate linked initially to the skate park there.

But we were diverted off down the start a big organisation route. Even later, after we realised that this isn't what we were good at and that we wanted to just help people get things off the ground, we seemed to have lost the edge. Unite was about what we did now, not about what you wanted to do. That is a shame.

If we had done things differently, would the movement still have been in action? I'm not sure. Maybe it was just about helping the people we were involved with, and letting them help us. Maybe it would have run its course anyway by now. Who knows?