Leading our church into growth

Many years ago when I was Vicar of Oakenshaw, a few of us (including then Vicar Paul Ayers) used to beetle off to Parcevall Hall with a few other to talk about evangelism with Robin Gamble who was then the Evangelism Adviser in the Diocese. Those meetings were the very beginnings of what eventually became a course called ‘Leading your church into growth’

Since those days things have moved on a bit. I’m now the Vicar here and the Evangelism Adviser. Robin moved on to Manchester, and more recently to be Vicar of Idle. more importantly, Leading your Church into Growth has developed into a major national teaching program with at least three major courses each year. I’m told that more than one in ten clergy in the whole Church of England have now done the course. Impressive,

Next week, we’re coming full circle with a Diocesan Leading Your Church into Growth course, organised by myself and led by Robin Gamble and the new Diocesan Evangelism Adviser Sue Hope. Most of the clergy in the Diocese including the Bishop, both Archdeacons, the Dean and all the senior staff, will be spending four days at Sneaton Castle taking part in this exciting and challenging course.

Apart from the fact that I’m going to have quite of organising and generally running around sorting stuff out (such is the life of a conference organiser) I am also really looking forward to really being able to think through and strategize for how our own church can really grow.

There’ll be plenty of chance to reflect later on what this might mean for us. I’ll be taking the next two Sundays to give some initial thoughts, plus there will be a follow up day in September that I hope that a group of key leaders from our Church will come with me to.

It’s vital that we engender a culture of growth at St Cuthberts - where evangelism, mission and growth are part of the ‘fabric’ of who we are as a church...