The Story of the Yurt Missional Community
The story of how The Yurt Missional Community grew out of a traditional and rural market town parish, St Mary’s & St Peter’s in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire.
The beginnings...
My husband, Jason, in early in the Covid Pandemic, made a cross from an ash tree, and put it outside our home beside the road. During Covid, when every church, was closed, we offered a place for people to write prayers on a tag, hang them on the tree and know that God would somehow see them, and that there would be someone praying on their behalf.
It has been so beautiful and humbling. Walkers, cyclists or even people driving past, stop and write something on a tag and hang it on the tree cross. These are their deepest heart cries to God, and we have the privilege of praying for them.
When the pandemic had passed, and following several unusual and fruitful conversations, with walkers, or people that had just turned up at church, we decided to offer an “Alpha” course in the yurt. It was a small group of 13 to 15 people, and we met weekly for 6 weeks, needing to finish for the summer holidays.
The yurties
With the help of the Holy Spirit, we were able to listen, love and build community in a short time and this group of “pilgrims” were more than keen to continue meeting. One of the members lovingly named us “the yurties” which has stuck with us, and everyone at the “mother” church.
We have continued to meet weekly and have explored the spiritual disciplines to enable us to grow as disciples to Jesus. We are a neurodiverse group, and our worship always reflects us as a community. Each group member is encouraged and supported to lead the weekly worship and offer hospitality.
The invitation is to lead this special time together, from our own authentic place of worship with God. Worship may look like drawing pictures together; lying on the floor in silence; making with paper and glue, listening to music, singing; listening to the rain fall on the canvas and we are blessed through the richness of our individuality in worship, as we are made in the image of a loving creator God.
At St Mary’s, we are growing a church that reaches beyond Sunday gatherings—communities that meet in homes, gardens, and halls to live out the love of Jesus in everyday life. Our Missional Communities are spaces where people can explore faith, build meaningful friendships, pray together, and follow Jesus in ways that are authentic and rooted in daily life. Everyone is welcome—whether you’re curious about faith or have been journeying with God for years.
The Yurt Missional Community
The Yurt Missional Community meets every Wednesday evening at 7.30pm in a garden yurt—a warm, prayerful, and welcoming space where faith is explored in community. It’s a place of laughter, prayer, shared life, and deep discipleship. Alongside this weekly gathering, we also meet for Morning Prayer on Mondays and Fridays at 7.30am, creating a rhythm of prayerful presence and encouragement throughout the week.
This community is open to all who are seeking to go deeper in their walk with God or simply want a place to belong while exploring faith. With space for honest questions and shared stories, the Yurt is a sacred and grounded place to listen to the Holy Spirit and grow together.
Maker & Fixer Community
Born out of the Yurt Missional Community, the Maker & Fixer Community is a monthly gathering that brings people together around creativity, sustainability, and community. We meet at Culverton Farm, in the characterful space of an old dairy, for a time to learn new skills together—such as chair restoration, making planters, birdboxes, or simply enjoying conversation over tea and biscuits.
This is a community continuing its journey of discipleship through creative rhythms and shared life. Ukrainian friends and others from the wider local area have become an important part of this growing community, bringing richness, hospitality, and joy. Together, we make a creative space for prayer and reflection as we work, trusting that God meets us in the everyday—in the making, the mending, and the mess.
A communal practice of prayer
We have developed a communal practice of prayer, formed out of a week of prayer and hospitality which led to a permanent prayer rhythm, early morning before people head off to work. This has shaped and fueled who we are and birthed a new missional community.
We have “yurt sailors” who lead sessions and have pastoral oversight. Our job description being: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
There has been an equal journey with St Mary’s & St Peter’s PCC, to introduce the idea of mission looking like developing new worshipping communities and looking to a landscape of a “mixed ecology.” This has involved report writing and updates to the PCC regularly on each step and involving them in being advocates to the congregations.
The Birth of the Maker and Fixer Community
Maker & Fixer Community launched in April 2024.
Maker & Fixer Missional Community vision is to: “Create belonging, confidence, and community collaboration at the Culverton Barns using sustainability and ‘maker & fixer’ skills to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom”
Our Story is that we have a God who can repair, restore, and make all things new!
The scripture below, from Isaiah, has been a word that God has been teaching us over this past couple of years, to learn to trust God’s calling upon us to reach people in our communities who do not yet come to church and who would not attend a normal Sunday service. We have learnt to pray and dream for what we could not yet see!
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:19
We were therefore delighted as a Yurt Community to receive PCC approval for the start of a new missional community called “Maker & Fixer” which has come from prayer, relationship building and discernment amongst a repair barn community and a Ukrainian community.
A Missional Community is a flexible term to describe a committed group of Christian disciples who form community with a particular missionary purpose. A common commitment to prayer and living out the Christian faith together are the basis for their mission as a community.
Mission can be to a particular place, a particular age group or subculture, or around a one or more of the five marks of Mission as identified by the Anglican Communion below:
- To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers.
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and
- to pursue peace and reconciliation.
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.
Groups meet anything from several times a week to once or twice a month, attending to the four dimensions of Christian life.
- With God directly in prayer, worship, and study,
- With the wider Church
- With the outside world
- Within the community itself
Church is also a missional community. Take away the church building, and what are we? A group of people bound by love, sharing in Christ’s mission for the world. That is a missional community!
Why Missional Communities at St Mary’s
A priority in the Church of England's vision and strategy for the 2020s is to become a church where mixed ecology is the norm. Mixed ecology is a description of the Church where new communities of faith complement existing churches in their diocese or region.
St Mary’s longs to reach people who are either on the edge of church or not going to church and desires to connect with our local communities lovingly and creatively with the Good News of Jesus. Missional communities will help us to do this, and they will therefore look different in every place, where they will reflect the diversity of their context.
the Church has always grown by establishing new congregations in different places and our parish has new housing estates being built as our local population expands and we see that there is a wide gap between the culture of the church and the culture of society.
Anglican parish churches have always been a collection of different congregations.
- Link to the Yurt Missional Community Story
- Link to the Maker & Fixer Missional Community Story
How can I get involved?
Please contact our Pioneer Curate, Sue Hughes who can connect you with the latest information about missional communities, and she will be able to help you discern where you might get involved.
The Missional opportunity
The opportunity is to engage with families and individuals of all ages and to offer activities that can be undertaken together, making simple things, or doing basic repairs to bikes or other common items and reflecting on those activities as a parallel story of humans as spiritual beings, made in the image of God, yet often in need to repair, restoration and made new!
Who are our intended target participants?
Hugh & Lizzie Thomas Davies, both yurt members, have spent the last 2 years loving, serving, and building community at the repair barn, and amongst the Chilterns Ukrainian Community which has inspired the Yurt Community who have joined in with prayer and shared activities.
It is from this process of prayer discernment, that the yurt community began to “perceive” a new story for a worshipping community, whose focus is repair and remaking. Theologically, there are very strong links with the Mission of God, who comes to set us free, repair and restore us by his Holy Spirit and in encounter with Jesus Christ.
Why & How?
Why?
The joy and excitement that we can bring something about God to people that would never
usually come to church, that we could tell them God is always making and fixing, restoring all
things because that is what he does in His Kingdom and there is an invitation for everyone to be
included.
How?
We meet monthly, in an old milking parlour, to remake new things out of old used items and
repair simple items together.
What would a 2-hour session look like?
Gather together for a welcome and introduction to a faith theme.
Engage with an activity of which there will be a choice for children and adults.
Gather all together for a short Reflection.(This will be an opportunity to link the
activity we are taking part in, to the Bible, to our Faith, to being a disciple)
Response by continuing Activity
Regroup Together (brief share and prayer)
Hospitality with Food and Drink & Music
Regular Giving
Aiming to support God's work through the Church by giving of our Time, using our Skills and giving our Money.
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