By John Cole

8 - Out of Town Estate

Large sprawling areas of housing with no history, no geographical focus and set on the road to nowhere are among the most barren localities in which to look for a unified community life.

Life here is spent in a kind of backwater cut off from the main stream of society. Partly this is force of circumstances, as the residents feel rejected and out-manoeuvred by more powerful and successful groups: but partly it is also a form of self-imposed exile especially for the menfolk. For in many of these estates a high proportion of the men are long-term unemployed, either because they have no skills or because their skills no longer have value because of economic factors or new technology.

The most enterprising often use church membership as a means of moving back up the social ladder. This makes it doubly difficult for any institutional church to be truly ‘local’ within this community of the ‘left-behind’ - where the rapid turnover of housing is most likely to be a sign of people leaving hurriedly because they haven’t been able to pay the rent!

Despite their difficulties, churches in these areas are among the most evangelistically effective - yet they never seem to grow in size!