Starting Anew in Manchester

Solomon’s temple in Brazil, re-purposing churches into gyms in Quebec, and starting afresh in Manchester England.

Anthony Delaney is a retired policeman. Now aged 49, he grew up on a council estate in a rough part of Manchester and joined the Police Cadets at 16, which was “all about outdoor pursuits and the pursuit of girls”.

Today, Delaney is “above all” a Follower of Jesus: a self-proclaimed man of the people who has successfully utilised his gruff voice and engaging, measured manner to grow Manchester’s Ivy Church – a community of Born Again Christians now with more than 1,000 members meeting on a weekly basis – to more than four times its size since he joined as leader five years ago. So significant today is the congregation, that events are now held several times a week at venues across the city, including Cineworld, a warehouse and even a pub.

When the last census was taken in 2011, the number of Christians across the UK had fallen to 33.2 million – that was 59 per cent of the usual resident population at the time and a 12 per cent decrease from 37.2 million, 10 years earlier. The most recent self-evaluating research from the Church of England, found in the Church Growth Research Programme published in 2007, showed a sharp decline in numbers, with just 2 per cent of attendees of CoE churches in the UK at last count being between the ages of 18 and 24 – with a whopping 47 per cent aged 65 and over. In this context, the rise of the Born Agains in this largely white suburb on the north bank of the River Mersey is all the more striking.

The trick to overcoming perceptions of Christianity as irrelevant to contemporary Britain, says Delaney, is to “build a church that people who don’t go to church feel comfortable in: I dress normally and talk about spiritual issues in a way normal people get… We have children and young people galore, the only problem we have is trying to fit everyone in!”

It is all about spreading the word to the next generation, he says, and to this effect, Delaney has just produced a leaflet called ‘OMG’: “The old style would be to say ‘OMG [a shortening of the expression ‘Oh my God’] is blasphemy’; what I say to young people is take the word OMG, then ask yourself, ‘If he was listening, what would you ask him?’. It’s a different way of engaging people for the 21st century.”