Dear Friends
Harvest is upon us!
I can’t believe Harvest was today in church! A time of reaping the benefits of hard labour!
For me I have just started a small group for young Mums to help them deepen their faith. Two of these Mums have just finished Alpha and all three are leaders of the future. Alpha was just brilliant but loads of hard work for a small team from both churches, supported by a wider team of people providing delicious food. But now seeing the results makes all the hard work worthwhile.
Ignite
Did you know that churches with Youth Groups tend to grow faster than churches without? Why? Because parents give financial and personal support to projects that support the welfare of their children! And because children challenge us, they bring ideas, vitality and enthusiasm.
Last year one of our younger Dads from St John’s put together a great a proposal to the PCC to test out launching a youth group at St Paul’s. The safeguarding, risk assessments and costs had all been considered and there was even a small team willing to help run it. But despite our best efforts it did not happen.
Over the summer I heard that Blackburn diocese had secured funding from the church of England for children and youth ministers in parishes. The diocese has not just passed on the funding to churches, but they have created a great project to ensure people taking on these new roles will be mentored, well trained & supported too!
So, we are hoping to apply for funding to employ a Children or Youth Minister. Check out this link: https://www.bdeducation.org.uk/ignite-project-2/. Funding for the role will be on a sliding scale over five years, so we will have to think carefully about whether we can afford this. And we also have to prove that there will be support for this within the parish. Please pray with us as we consider this at the October PCC.
Hope for Accrington
Just last Monday in the Town Hall we launched a new project called ‘Hope for Accrington’. The aim of the project is to understand the needs within Accrington churches and prepare a proposal to the Church of England to provide us with funds to meet the needs we identify. I am one of the five vicars involved and we had our first project meeting last week.
The funding that has allowed the creation of the Ignite project, has also provided funding for a local curate, who will project manage the work with us over the next year.
But we cannot do this without your involvement. We will be talking to key stakeholders across the town including our PCCs, our councillors, our MP, local charities, other churches and Accrington Christians Together. And a team will also be considering how to use our church buildings more effectively. We would love to hear your thoughts.
Do also join us for prayer; we are meeting weekly on Mondays at St Andrew’s, Accrington at 5pm!
Church Mapping
Last week I also attended a breakfast meeting at Brave Church. Over 60 people representing charities, council employees and churches, came to hear the results of a mapping project organised by a Christian organisation called ‘Gather Movement’. Church leaders met with Gather researchers and talked about all the great things we are doing to support our communities: Food banks, Street Angels, Mums and Tots, Warm Spaces, Family friendly activities.
At the presentation all those activities were mapped across the town and we also found out what other non-church organisations were doing and where there were gaps in our provision or even overlaps.
Roger Sutton, CEO of Gather Movement, commenting about the Gather Exercise in Coventry, writes “Generally society appreciates the work of churches, but it’s often viewed as a bit small scale and amateur. These findings in Coventry, alongside other in-depth mapping of several other cities we have supported, show that the church is vital to the life of our communities. The church has 40 times the outlets of McDonalds. It is in every city, town, village and island. It is the second health and social service in this country. However, these findings are not primarily about patting ourselves on the back, but they are about how we can be more strategic and coordinated in the future. How we can then partner much more effectively with civic life and provide even better outcomes for all the residents of our places.”
To find out more about the Gather Movement, click here https://gathermovement.org/
So what?
This is a fair question? Why should the church support our youth, offer toddler groups, food banks, warm spaces?
My answer is simple…WWJD? What would Jesus do? If you come to church, you will have heard me quote from what we call the Nazareth Manifesto from Luke 4.18 and 19.
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour!
Anecdotally someone once said to me about the work of United Mission to Nepal. ‘We were never able to preach the gospel openly as missionaries in Nepal. But wherever one of our projects was established (hospitals, health centres, rural development projects, schools) people came to faith, churches grew.’
Tear Fund recently sent me an Impact report. In the report they observed that churches that expressed the love of Christ in action within their communities were 40% more likely to grow than churches that did not.
The mandate came from Jesus Christ himself, it is still our mandate today!
May God bless you this Autumn with evidence of the fruit of your labours in your children, in your families, in your work, in our churches and in our communities.
Amanda and the team at JohnPaul!