The single most important key
to understanding the foundation
of the Northumbria Community
can be found in the crisis of faith that was
the common experience of the few who first started out
on the journey.

Like most ordinary folk,
back in 1980
secularization,
new age,
paradigm shift,
new physics and
post modernity
were not part of our vocabulary.

Yet, intuitively, each of us to a
greater or lesser extent
had begun to sense
and experience the momentous
changes and forces that were
redefining our culture.

We felt their impact and influence
in our homes, in the work-place, in the media and arts
and at the shops. With our families and friends,
neighbours and colleagues and in particular within
our church communities and our apparent
ineffectiveness to contribute to the
reconstruction of a society going through
radical transition.

The hope which
The Holy Spirit
had deposited in our
Christian communities
during the renewal movement
of the 70′s many had chosen
to invest in the house church movement
as a response to the inertia of the established Churches.

Unprepared to make
such an investment
and unconvinced this
was the way to move forward
some of us began to confront
those ‘chaotic forces,’
the cause of this
crisis of faith.

In 1985, a new group
of individuals were called together
to arrange Easter workshops.

Alan, John, Terry,
Rob, Andy, Chris,
and others began to meet
and Heartcry was born..

Heartcry represents the formative period
of creativity and thought expressed in art, music,poetry,
dance, drama, storytelling, metaphors and writing,
from which the language and ethos of Northumbria community
was born and is still sustained.

Heartcry
Internal émigré
Landscape of the Heart
Winter’s night
Come away My love
What mean these stones?
Who is it that you seek?
How can I sing the Lord’s song?
How then shall we live?
Set up the way marks
Child’s cry
Break down the walls
Kingdom in the streets
Cry for the desert..

these are themes from Heartcry,
each pregnant with a meaning that gave us
hope, understanding, expression, as we
sought ‘an ethic for Christians and other aliens
in a strange land.’

This was the call
then, this is the call
now,

‘Come away My love’