Local church leaders have welcomed the appointment of Evan Cockshaw as Church of England missionary to West Bromwich.

The Revd Margaret Small, Rural Dean of West Bromwich, said: "The Church in West Bromwich has got hardly anyone in the 16 to 30 age group and we felt very much that we need to have somebody to come and do this work for us.

"I don't see this initiative as being in competition with the existing churches. I very much see it as helping the existing churches to do what they are not able to do. For some reason we are not meeting the younger people at all and we need somebody to go out and be doing that work for us and hopefully showing us what we can be doing in our own areas to get the young people to know about Jesus."

She added that the Church must do more to connect with some people: "The Church, for some reason which I don't totally understand, is becoming so alien to our culture. To expect young people to come and see, particularly in the Anglican Church, men in long dresses and women in long dresses is just not what they are used to. We need to find them.

"This is Gospel - Jesus didn't go to the temple, Jesus went out to the people to find them. He was there amongst the people, he didn't expect them to come to him and I think we are really following his
example. The church, in many ways has lost that idea, we've gone on this model where you must come to us, but we need to go out to them and hopefully bring them into us."

And the Archdeacon of Walsall, the Ven Bob Jackson, who also serves as one of the Bishop of Lichfield's growth officers, denied that the appointment was a sign that traditional churches have failed.

He said: "There is a huge amount of life left in the traditional churches as Jonathan said in the sermon. Actually, church attendance at the traditional churches in West Bromwich last year increased, but they are missing a couple of generations, so they are mainly middle aged and older folk, and they are clearly missing some of the sub cultures.

"So this is a 'both' 'and' thing, we are not giving up on what we used to do - we'll still develop that. But the distinguishing thing about the Church of England is that we're supposed to be here for the whole nation, not just for people who like a certain style of music or church service.

"And this appointment is part of being there for the whole nation. It is looking for new people groups who we aren't really in touch with.

"This is not an admission that traditional church has failed, but rather that the society that has developed over the last 20 to 30 years is multi cultural and we haven't a hope of reaching everybody with one sort of culture. We, the Church of England, have to become absolutely multi cultural in every sort of way because we are here for everybody. And we are trying to learn, but it's not easy. What we are doing here is an experiment. We think and pray that it will work but we don't know yet."

Evan Cockshaw's appointment in West Bromwich is part of a series of similar appointments in the Diocese of Lichfield. It follows the appointments of Mark Berry to Telford in 2005 and the Revd Gordon Crowther to Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-upon-Trent in 2003. A similar post will be advertised shortly for Wolverhampton.

Bob Jackson said: "We are trying, in Lichfield Diocese, to have a pioneer missional leader in each of the main population centres and I am hoping that each one will develop in a different way so that each one will be a slightly different experiment and we will see what work, what's good about each, what needs to be tweaked and so on; so we are learning from these missionary appointments if they work there will be more of them. If they don't we'll concentrate on other ways of reaching people."

And he added: "Can the fuddy-duddy old Church of England really reach young adults out on the streets of West Bromwich? Well, actually the Church of England isn't only middle aged people like me; but here we have got a young clergyman who is streetwise and who knows the cultures and is in the cultures.

"Clergy and church leaders of his generation will reach their own generation and the generation younger than them. I would hope and believe and pray that the expression of church that develops here under Evan will produce next generation leaders as well - people even younger than him who will become church leaders in the future who will do it in new and exciting ways that I don't know and understand yet.

"The Church of England has been around for a very long time and we're here for the long term. We're going to do that by our younger folk reaching their generation as well as people my age group leading more traditional generations."

The Rev Gordon Crowther, Mission Priest for Newcastle and Stoke, also welcomed the appointment and said of the Stoke initiative: "I look at us now and I see that we have a lovely little strong core
community. My prayer is that this community will be multiplied across the city of Stoke on Trent and surrounding region and there will be lots of little communities forming a net of lights across north Staffordshire.

"I've been well supported by the churches. For some of them the jury is out: 'Is this thing some new fangled idea that is just a crackpot scheme which is a distraction from the proper work of parish ministry?'

"But others have really welcomed me and supported me. But none of us really know what the answers are so it's very hard to offer any practical support. I've got some lovely people on a management committee which support me and I'm very grateful for that."

He added: "I feel ambivalent towards the expression 'experiment' because that implies something you try and then give up if it doesn't work. I am committed much more to this as the way God is moving us. We may fail and get it wrong in certain ways of doing it but we have to keep going. We can't retreat now.

"We can't go back to the way we were doing things before. I can't go back to the way I was trying to do ministry before. This is much more exciting and it is definitely reaching out and making ourselves much more accessible to groups of people who would never darken the doors of our regular parish churches."