I am not sure what I think of Back to Church Sunday; at times it feels a little bit more like Backsliders Sunday, with rather negative vibes, and it can excuse us from working at reaching out to the local community throughout the year. However, in this video Archbishop Rowan Williams raises some helpful insights about how we need to ‘galvanise the connection’ with the diminishing, but nevertheless still important, group of people who do have a residual connection with the Church and the Christian faith. I like Rowans phrase ‘we have something significant in the bank’ and we need to make use of it.
Back to church Sunday can be a useful exercise in bringing a community together, particularly if it is taken outside the walls of the church into the community.
ReplyDeleteThe year before last, we held a community event on the School Playing fields, where our village normally holds its fetes etc.
We treated it as a bring and share event, and had some food available. Each church in the benefice put together a different stand, which included details of who they were, where they were and when they meet.
The event attracted many, who never come into church. We didn't do anything special, just offered an opportunity for brief prayer during the course of the event.
A number of friendships were built there, as people could see that those who go to church live alongside them, share their community interests and are actually not that different from themselves, apart from a faith, which sustains them.
Something else flowed from this, ideas and one or two more people attending, even if sporadically.
It takes time to sew and to reap, and we thinking about how we can take this forward this year.
Thanks greatt post
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