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Leading Your Church into Growth: Local

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Saturday 8 November saw thirteen of our congregation
gathered together in the worship area for the second in
our three-day LYCIG course, which was once again ably led by
Revd Mary Thomas, one of Wessex Synod’s Development and
Support Officers.

The morning session was entitled ‘Practice Fruitful Evangelism’;
a session that I feel sure not everyone was looking forward to! We
began by briefly sharing our personal spiritual journey with our
neighbour. What was interesting to me was that although we were
all friends and have known each other for many years, we knew
very little about each other’s spiritual journey. We just don’t talk
about it.

The simple, quiet evangelism we discussed, was not knocking on
doors or proclaiming in the street, but it was about relationships -
gradually getting to know individuals, sharing with them, showing
an interest in them, inviting them for coffee, and then subsequently
a church social followed by a suitable service. We were challenged
as to what we should be doing as individuals and as a church.
What should we be offering?

Mary emphasised that bringing people to Christ was one of our
fundamental tasks as Christians. We then discussed targeted
prayer. We were asked to identify five people who we felt might be
searching and start praying for them on a daily basis.

Following lunch, where we enjoyed a good time of fellowship, the
afternoon session was entitled ‘Develop engaging worship’.
Again, we were challenged – are we welcoming to strangers?
If someone came to our church for the first time, with little or no
experience of worship, are our services welcoming and accessible
for all – do we sit next to people that are new; do we use jargon in
our services; do we have an OOS so that people know what is
coming next? Are we offering a good balance between spiritual
content and social? We had a checklist to complete which
contained many things we are good at, but also others which were
a challenge and needed considering further.

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