For twenty years, Johnny Sertin has practiced a kind of place-based ministry built on staying put. He and four other families started the Earlsfield Friary in southwest London, committing to live within one square mile of each other while each working ordinary jobs. Along the way, a Franciscan friar became a close friend and encouraged them to find the places in their own lives where they felt most alive. Meg Fry joined the community a bit later, drawn in by her own dissatisfaction with church as usual. That same posture eventually led the group to a stretch of land next to a prison, where they raised pigs, and to a cafe Meg opened inside the sanctuary of St. Andrew's Church, one that's welcomed everyone from young professionals to asylum seekers to parents with young kids for the better part of a decade.

In this episode, Johnny and Meg talk with hosts Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm about what it takes to build trust in a neighborhood before ever bringing up faith. Meg describes waiting years, sometimes five or six, before someone asks her why she does what she does. Johnny reflects on a woman who told him that after a week of feeding the pigs at dawn and dusk, she'd come home to herself again. Together, they offer a picture of urban ministry, rooted in one specific place, that doesn't rush toward results and trusts that presence, patience, and genuine relationship do the deeper work.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join Us for Stepping Up to Supervision 2026

others we could mention who mentored and shaped and were kind of we would call them the kind of elders of our journey and and remain so and I think that idea of wisdom being shared and passed on and living in in good relationship with people who are who've traveled beyond us and have life experience has

Has massively helped us

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Alicia Grantholm.

And I'm Dwight Zscheile This season we're exploring how churches can make ancient patterns and practices of Christian faith new for today. We're joined by two leaders who have been indwelling their local place in Covenant Community and loving their neighbors holistically for years. Johnny Sertin is Vicar of St. Andrew's Church in Earlsfield, a neighborhood in southwest London. Meg Fry is founder and director of Home Community Cafe, which is located

within the sanctuary of St. Andrew's Parish Church. They, their families, and several other Christian families formed the Earlsfield Friary many years ago, which has spawned multiple creative incarnational ministries in their context. Johnny and Meg, welcome to pivot.

Thank you.

Thank

Johnny, can you take us back to the beginning of the Earlsfield Friary? What is it and how did it emerge?

Yes, sure. the the Earlsfield Friary began twenty years ago. and it's its kind of origin story, if you like, was my wife and I sort of migrating up from the coast in the UK to London. and we the context of us doing that was that we were particularly bored.

And disenchanted with where our own lives had arrived at and and what our faith looked like. And it it felt as if, in many ways, it had sort of become somewhat transactional, and the way that we were seeking to be formed was more transmissional than transformational. so we thought we just needed to.

To shake things up and move to the to the city of London. We came here with an Anglo-Syrian friend, and along the way we picked up a Franciscan friar. and over the course of about two and a half, three years, we lived intentionally in this one home. And really through particularly the help of the Franciscan.

who became a a dear friend of ours began to think about what faith and formation and flourishing look I gave you three F's like a good Anglican you know what all those what are what all those meant in this new landscape we were in. And over time that became five founding families who chose to live intentionally in one place

and those were kind of the conditions that we set each other, that we would live within one square mile of each other. So we'd begin to think about what does organic liturgy look like? What does it mean to find our way in the geography of a place? And we also all agreed to live in separate homes and to work in some kind of professional capacity so that whatever spiritual practice and life.

emerged for us was held in the creative tension of those two things. and that really is the the beginning story. And so the Frari is a nod. I mean we don't actually like our name very much, but it it's it's helpful because it allow the first time you say it to anyone, people go, what's that? And it it's really the Frari is a nod to our Franciscan friend who's no longer with us actually.

and then Earlsfield because place matters and and place has been somewhere that we have come to realise has deeply formed us.

So, Meg, what was your experience as part of that journey?

Where do you start? We had some mutual friends who joined the friary right at the very beginning and we were living near them and they then moved to Earlsfield to be part of this thing called the Earlsfield Friary and we were absolutely just so intrigued by what they were doing there and really wanted to know more and this coincided with us being a little bit dissatisfied with the church experience that we were having.

without really telling anyone, decided to move to Earl's Field and kind of really foisted ourselves upon the Earl's Field Friary without really, I don't think they'd had anyone joined in that way before, but we decided that we wanted to join and get involved. I hope Johnny agrees that's good thing now. It was, yeah, very powerful kind of being involved with a group of people who we were still getting to know at the time.

but also really getting to discover Jesus and place and what a place-based ministry looked like. They were in part deeply rewarding, deeply challenging, deeply, deeply formative and really affected every aspect of my life, including vocationally what I thought I was called to do in the world. So, yeah, it's been a phenomenal experience both personally but also in learning how to serve the world.

Johnny, when you first arrived, what did it look like to listen to a place and dwell deeply there as neighbors before discerning what God was calling you to start? And was there anything that surprised you about what Earlsfield was teaching you in that time?

Yeah, thanks. I th I think in the very early stages when that when those five families had kind of found each other and were trying to think about what story was ahead of us. we we had we we knew we had two things between us that we weren't gonna shake off. One was this encounter with a living God, and for us that had always been

An experience through our own either Christian upbringing, missional heritage, but really around who Jesus is. And then the second one was that we'd had some experience of community that was captivating and somehow had created a fuller sense of who we were in being in it as an individual. And so we wanted to hold on to those two things.

and we read a book together, the title roughly of which was called Maybe the Life You Save in the End Is Your Own. And we we'd been good evangelical kids, so we'd been trying to get a lot of people into heaven up to that point, and we had sort of felt like Is this transactional way the fullness of what salvation and healing and

The the sort of reconciliation of all creation looks like and means. And I think we realized that whilst the work that we'd been doing we felt was good, that somehow our own lives were no longer part of the inquiry. We were so busy trying to help other people find what that meant that we had lost touch with that in the first person.

And so we took that seriously in terms of not in a narcissistic way, not in a self-help way, but as a spiritual discipline to essentially ask the question: how do I live in such a way that the the life I save first is mine, that I might be able to understand who Christ has formed me to be, that I might be that gift in the world. And so that really our our sort of

Our pedagogy for that, if you like, was to throw things, to throw, we have a phrase, I don't know if it translates, throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. And so we threw a lot of mud at the wall. we had a lot of fun just serving and doing all sorts of things. And then our Franciscan brother said to us, reflect on that. Find where the liminal places are, find where the places you feel alive are, find these different

landscapes in the interior of your own life and explore them. And that's basically what we did.

So one of those expressions of ministry is the home community cafe, which I've had the opportunity to visit twice now. and it's amazing. Meg, you started that. Tell us a little bit about that story and where is it? Like paint the picture for our listeners or viewers, because it's it's really amazing how it functions with literally within the church, but also within the neighborhood context.

thank you. I'm glad you billeted it and you can kind of imagine it when you're when we're talking. So, yeah, the cafe was a long-standing kind of dream of mine. And when I joined the friary, I had a lot of conversations with Jonny about what it meant to be the guest that you were meant to be in the world. And I was working at IKEA at the time.

when we were having these conversations and really enjoyed my work, but really felt that it was very disconnected from who I was as a person and what was happening in Oldfield. And also, I think what my gifting really were. I love people. I love being around people. And I was kind of going over here and meeting people and it's very transactional. Anyway, so Johnny, we went on a walk in a cemetery in Oldfield, which is a beautiful place to walk. And he said, what are you going to do about this?

and really challenged me to think bit more deeply about this. And another friend of ours, Mark Dampson, put it on the calendar at the beginning of the year and said, is the year you need to make the dream come true. yeah, was wonderful to be able to have the conversation. So I left my work at IKEA really with an idea to see what would happen and put this dream, make it a reality.

Anyway, so we came up with the idea of a cafe and the original idea was for it to be a space of welcome where everybody was welcome, not just one type of person, but literally everybody. And then Johnny had this incredible idea as he was the assistant vicar at St. Andrew's at the time of actually asking the church if we could put the cafe into the church. Which at the time I was like, wow, that wasn't even on my radar.

But I'm so glad that the compilation that we had, here we are now. Yeah, so if you can imagine a big church and you've got the altar at the front and then at the back, when you walk through the main doors, you come into this amazing welcoming space that is the cafe. And we've got lots of soft furnishings. All of the tables and chairs have been made out of old materials that we had in the church out of the old pew, recycled timber.

It's just a lovely welcoming place to come into. So that was the first thing we wanted to do is we wanted to make it not only an incredible cafe, so come and have a cup of coffee in your neighborhood, but also really when you walk into the church, you're immediately struck by welcome. Because all churches should speak of welcome, shouldn't they? And we also felt that a lot of people have mixed views about churches, don't we? Some of us love them, some of us it's a place of real pain.

Some people actually find them quite threatening. So we wanted to make it as an accessible space as possible for everybody to come into. And yeah, so I think we've been open for nine years now and really we've managed to kind of hold onto that original vision of welcome, hospitality and getting to know our neighbor. So we have, yeah, really thriving kind of day-to-day.

Monday to Friday kind of set up in the cafe where we operate as a cafe, but also we use our profit to then filter back into doing social action, kind of ministries and social prescribing projects that the community in Earlsfield are asking for or want or we see that there's a real need.

So s so in my experience being there, you know, there's all sorts and types of people gathering in the space. you have a a monthly, you know, community meal that's just open. you've got like mums groups going on. Like so say a little bit more about how it it feels like in the living room for the neighborhood, you know, and and it kind of the accessibility for people who, you know, who aren't maybe

participating certainly in the congregation or see themselves as part of the congregation or even Christian, and yet somehow they are feel very comfortable in dwelling. I mean, this is in the sanctuary of the church, right? It's within the church building.

Yeah. So, yeah, so we very early on realized that we were attracting one type of person that we started doing and they were your average cafe user. So white middle-class, possibly a mom with a baby because we've got lots of space. So we tried to start introducing activities, events that would draw in lots and lots of different people from, you know, young professional coworkers.

to refugees and asylum seekers, midgling, to everybody in our community, and also low-income families. So really we wanted to be a space where everybody came and felt welcome. So we have a lot of mums and babies that come in, like I said, because we've got this big space. So we were like, what would it look like to work with a charity who work with mums who are struggling with poor mental health or post-natal depression?

that we now run a lunch club for them on a Wednesday, which is wonderful. And we do that side by side to our regular cafe customer so that we see each other. Because I think the other disconnect we have in our community these days is that we don't really see the other. We can kind of be siloed off and do our own thing. And then we're unaware of our neighbor next to us who might be struggling. So we try and do projects and reach out to people to encourage absolutely everybody to come in.

And the community meal is a part of that, which is in collaboration with St. Andrew. This is a real lovely example, not just the living room in the house, but the dining room in the house. The whole family comes to sit at the table. So we have seed bank guests that come to that. We have people who come from the social prescribing project, cafe customers, church goes. And that's the one space where everybody gets together and we break bread around the table.

It's a constant challenge trying to make the space as diverse as possible and reach out to all of the different kind of groups and people in our community. And I think we're managing to do that.

Is truly amazing. I've also been privileged to be able to visit. And in America, I think we have when we think about like a cafe, we we a lot of our churches, especially, you know, well, actually just a lot of them will serve coffee. And so I think that's our imagination of a cafe. So I want to paint the picture that this is a like a legitimate, like you can buy a meal here, right? So there's a a big kitchen. yes, you can get coffee, tea.

and amazing things to also eat. And so I'd love if you could share about the actual business model for the cafe and how you balance accessibility, right, for the whole community with sustainability because money doesn't grow on trees.

Yeah, absolutely. So we, the business model is we're a community interest company. So we're like a hybrid business charity. So we're allowed to receive grants, but we're also allowed to operate as you know, as an authentic business and make profitable decisions. So you don't make a lot of money in coffee shops. So we, and also we have the other challenge of we try and keep our prices as low as possible so that we can be as accessible as possible for everyone who comes in.

There's a variety of ways that we do that. We work a lot with volunteers and we work a lot with asylum seekers and refugees. So in exchange for them working for free, we train them so that then when they were seized indefinitely to remain, they've also got skills, English is better. So that's one thing that really helped. We have a wonderful chef and he trains off a lot of women to learn how to cook in the kitchen and to get chefing skills, which is brilliant.

And we also partner with another local community and trash business called Paradise Cooperative. So they grow, they're an urban growing charity and they provide us with free vegetables, which is amazing. They've literally also grown about a mile away from, or less than a mile away from where we are. When we talk about having a really low carbon footprint for our food, we genuinely mean that because it's literally been walks down the hill to us from.

you know, half a mile up the road, which is lovely. We receive a lot of donations of feed as well. So it is, our menu is ever-changing depending on what we, what we have available to us or what has been donated or what has been bought in. And then, you know, we do, we charge a decent price for our food. It's not, we're not the most expensive on the high street, but we're not the cheapest. And then we invite our customers who do have mean to

buy a meal or buy a coffee or a cake for somebody who can't afford it. And that's one way that we keep our free food offer accessible to everybody. So a couple of times a day, someone from our food bank or someone that we know who'll be struggling will come in and be able to eat for free.

So Johnny, I'd love to hear a little bit more about Paradise Co-op, right? And that community garden ministry and how that emerged next to across the street from a prison, right? Tell us a bit about more about that story.

Sure. well, I think we've been we've been expanding our horizons and our imagination around what community meant at that time. And over the years we've had a number of kind of I suppose people that we would think of as elders in our community who have helped shape our thinking, our theology, our practice. And one such person at that time

was a man called Alistair McIntosh, who's a Scottish Quaker and a very wonderful man's written a number of books, one he's particularly well known for called Soil and Soul and he sort of had presented to us this idea of this triune part idea of community. and some of what he was saying

I suppose theologically was we don't only have this invitation for a relationship with the divine soul, but we also have an invitation to the sacredness of the soil and in the soil and to the the sort of social, socioeconomic, civic fabric of our society. And so

and I guess this is where we started using systems thinking language a little bit in interwoven with our theology. And really he was trying to hold up to us. I think what here is quite easy to connect with, maybe because of our Celtic roots around this idea of creation being the first incarnation, as as the Celts would say.

And that there is this kind of imprimatur in the soil of a place. And so we got curious about that, and that's the context for for paradise. one of our members of the community is is a woman from Michigan, so your part of the world or your side of the the pond, as we say. and she had heard during, I think, the kind of

Apocalyptic collapse of the motor industry in Detroit, about this guerrilla farming that had been sort of going on. People trying to regenerate places that had been, you know, very destructed and desecrated, and sort of consecrating them back as sacred places. And so we thought, and this is typical of us, you know, someone gets high.

wind of an idea and we go off and think, let's have a let's have a crack at that. And so we we actually found a a strip of land which is l literally directly behind me here. it's the South Garden of St Andrews. And at that time it was covered and overgrown and was what we would call a brownfield site. And that was where

Paradise Co-op began because we started caring for that land. I met someone who wanted to keep had he was very keen on the biodiversity of of of the landscape and wanted to keep bees, non industrial bees on that side. And a very long story short, we ended up going to look at this piece of land that was, as you say, Dwight, opposite the prism.

And we got into a conversation with the the governor of the prison to ask if we could again try and consecrate this desecrated brownfield site and do something good with it that could benefit the prison but could also benefit the whole neighborhood and community. And when was that, Meg? Twelve, thirteen years ago, something like that. So it's slightly predated.

the cafe, we we began to look after this field. And in fact, in the early years we had rare breed British pigs on the field because they're a great way non industrially to turn the soil and to get rid of the waste. They're great they're great hoovers. and s so we learnt a lot

through this kind of way of working and all the pigs were in syndicates which were then responsible each week a different syndicate for caring for the pigs. So people were getting this experience of this land that was so desecrated becoming consecrated and sacred. And and actually extraordinary stories of people with n with no religious background either.

you know, having these, you know, incredible experiences of healing and I guess becoming grounded in themselves again. I I remember a woman giving me back the keys at the end of a week of her syndicate and she was very sad and didn't want to give them to me. And we got into a conversation. She said last week I was sitting round a table with Hillary Clinton

And various other members of state from different parts of the world. And if you'd asked me, I couldn't have told you what my name was. She said, I've spent the week coming here twice a day in the dawn and the dusk, feeding these pigs. And she said, I I've somehow become grounded and come home to myself again. And I I don't want to give you the keys in case I lose that again. So these sorts of experiences were going on.

We had a Michelin star chef come and offer to butcher one of our pigs for us and then teach us, you know, animal husbandry properly. And bless him, we went to his restaurant, which incidentally was called Trinity, which is go figure. and he it's still called Trinity. and he not only taught us, you know, the sort of technology of butchery, but to our astonishment.

He had cooked this incredible meal for us, and we sat again at the table and shared this extraordinary moment. And we were doing this just with ordinary people from different walks of life. So Paradise became this place that was about finding this relationship with nature and food through community, and community putting their hands in the soil and being not only on the land, but

It's amazing. I love it. It's the first time I've heard that story. And it's incredible. It just gives me chills. So one of the striking things about St. Andrews is that many people probably experience the church, right? The body of Christ in other ways long before they might ever attend a Sunday service. So through the cafe, the food bank, the community meals, or other neighborhood partnerships, like the Paradise Co-op as well.

Has that changed how you understand evangelism and what does witness look like when trust comes before proclamation?

We we probably haven't used the word evangelism for a long time, though I I I I think probably for reasons that we've said, because I think there are certain presuppositions or even hidden assumptions about what that word means now that we might be more uncomfortable with. But what we do feel firmly rooted in, and we're we're very proud to be followers of Jesus. We're very

Comfortable sharing our faith. But I think what we're trying to do is make ourselves the centre of how that works and live our lives accordingly. Again, you you won't be surprised, but you know, Francis, St. Francis, I'm speaking of here, was had this lovely quote: preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.

Really like Kuiper's idea, which I think Stefan Pars has also kind of added to, around these ideas of like common grace and salvific grace. And I think I think the church maybe has has got overly focused on salvific grace rather than see how that salvific sort of ointment, if you will, can run through all of the common grace that we find in the world. And so

For us, we have found that if we are curating space that is in some ways trying to reconcile something that's desecrated to becoming sacred again, that in the midst of that, the Spirit of God woos and speaks and acts in ways that we may or may not get to participate in, but helps to kind of

lure people or bring people further on in their own journey. And I think we're not unprogrammatic about what we do as a church, but we also just want to be faithful even to some of those horticultural or farming principles that we learnt in the early years and we learnt for our our own lives.

And so I probably would use words more like faithful presence, if you'll be familiar with that term. That's not a new idea in terms of witness. And as I say, c being curators of space. and that for us has, if you like, created a sense of community that transcends belief systems, but still can hold within it a confessional body.

And they don't seem to be in conflict with each other when that's done well.

So it's a question that I got asked a lot in the early days. When we first set up the cafe, lot of the local churches wanted to come and see what we were doing. And a question that I was repeatedly asked was, how are you evangelizing and how are you getting people to transition from using the cafe to come into the church? And I said, well, we're not. And they were like, well, why not? And I was like, because I believe that in building relationships, you build trust.

and through your actions. Actions speak louder than words sometimes, don't they? So, in essence, what we're doing every day in the Kappa is breaking bread with people, we're getting to know people, we're learning how to love people, we're offering support, practical assistance, but above all, we're offering relationships. I feel that that's what Christ did in the world. And we're also creating a place where people can encounter God. It's an unbelievably spiritual

space that we're in, we're in the church, but we're all day creating an environment where that thought does encounter. And that might be through me, but nine times 10, it's not. It's through something else that happens. And that feels very, very exciting being able to do that. And, you know, after I've known someone for five or six years, quite often, you know, through this long relationship I've had with them over the years, they'll say, there's always a question they ask of why do you do what you do?

And then I can stop talking about the other bit and my motivation and my faith. But that's come after building a trust in the person who's ready to then have the encounter. And it's not always through me. Sometimes it's through someone else. it's a real privilege being able to, yeah, what's the word I'm looking for? To be able to hold that space, I think of what I'm saying. And also faith where God moved.

You know, if God doesn't need me to do it, he's got, I just like being able to participate in what he's doing.

Yeah, and I think also maybe we we're very conscious of what gets measured in the church. And I think it was a quote that was something like, when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric. And I think we're very conscious not to get into the kind of world of targets like who are we saving? How are our numbers growing?

We obviously have to be as as you were saying earlier, Alicia, financially sustainable, but we don't want our targets to be informed by what we think we should measure because of what we value. So we try and value these things and hope that in the midst of that, you know, transformation takes place, whether that's in a a heart, a place, a community, a family, you know.

So

w one of the things that strikes me about what you're doing is, you know, if you think about the parish concept going back in Christendom where the assumption was everyone was a Christian and they belonged to a particular parish church. And of course in the UK now, you know, that's very different in terms of the reality of people, you know, mostly not being Christian. But you're you've reclaimed that in and renewed that.

in a very kind of powerful missional way. So I'm just wondering as we as we bring the conversation to a close, what are some words of counsel you might offer to leaders in a variety of contexts who might be wanting to take some first steps or deeper steps in indwelling their own neighborhood context incarnationally?

Over to you, Meg.

No,

I mean, for me, it's look at yourself first. What's your guess that you bring to the world? What's your guess that you bring to the neighbourhood? Find your people. Find your people to date with because you can't date by yourself. And then throw the mud on the wall.

Yeah, I mean I would I would echo that. I think it was it was it was incredibly saving for us to pay attention to our own lives. And in doing so, and the contemplative tradition was very helpful for us in that. to also have these wonderful people like our Franciscan brother.

like Alistair McIntosh and there are others we could mention who mentored and shaped and were kind of we would call them the kind of elders of our journey, and and remain so. And I think that idea of wisdom being shared and passed on and living in in good relationship with people who are who've traveled beyond us and

Have life experience has has massively helped us. And we we had to find that because we didn't belong to any formal structure. so I but I would thoroughly recommend that. And you've you have a sense of being held, I think Meg said earlier, challenged, inspired beyond your I mean your imagination expansion, you know, goes through the roof. so I think that's been a a

A key of many keys. I th I love what Meg said. We we used to often say, you know, trying to echo the feeling of the little boy and the feeling of the 5,000, you know, what have you got in your hands? That it's not about what you don't have, it's about what you do. Excuse me. It's about what you do have. And I think it's very easy,

Particularly in today's world, to live in a scarcity mindset. And so I think part part of the the secret is I suppose in the cultivating of your own interior life and the geography of your own life, finding that place of abundance, not not prosperity, I'm not talking about that, but abundance in both your paradigm and in your spirit and heart.

for as a way to live. And that that creates huge resilience, sustainability and joy. And that has definitely been, you know, a lot of what has held us to. So, you know, a few things along the road that maybe we've we've we've picked up.

one other thing, I think sometimes in life, we try and do everything ourselves. When the cafe first opened, we were like, we want to do this, we want to do this, we want to do this. And we would have found out very quickly. And instead, what we started doing was going, there's that person who's already doing this over here. So how can I get to know them? How can we work together? So I think if you start scratching the surface of your neighborhood and your parish, the place that you live,

There's lots of things already going on. So I think we're stronger when we come together. That would be another thing that I'd like to add.

Well, Meg and Johnny, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and for the beautiful ministry that you're leading there.

And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. We always love to hear from you. Please send us an email at pivot at faithlead.org with your thoughts and questions. And to help spread the word about pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review on your podcast platform, or share pivot with a friend. We'll see you next week.

The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith Lead. FaithLead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at Faithlead.org.