Trainee Youth Worker role in Yeovil

If you know anyone who is thinking about training in youth work and church leadership then please point them towards this. It's the outline role description for a youth work trainee based in our parish, starting in September 2019. We provide a local placement and accommodation, training is done through South West Youth Ministries, a well established Christian training agency which oversees dozens of placements around the SW every year.

Big changes at my old vicar college

St Johns Nottingham, where I studied in the 1990s, has just announced some radical changes. Basically, they will stop taking in full time residential ordinands from 2016. Here's part of the statement.

The Church of England is currently reviewing its patterns of ministerial education, and St John’s recognises the call of this review to match the needs of the church with available resources. After many months of prayerful consideration, the college Council and Directorate are ready to take the bold step of remodelling the college to meet the future training needs of the church. This plan will see an end to the admission of any new full-time residential students at the Nottingham campus from September 2015, and the development of new models of ministerial formation and training for discipleship. Recruitment of new full and part-time students on all Midlands CYM and Extension Studies programmes will continue as normal. 

Sarum college in Salisbury did something similar a few years back, with the closure of the old Salisbury and Wells theological college, it's still the regional base for part-time training of ordinands, but runs a host of other training courses too.

It's sad to see the 'old' St Johns go fewer residential training centres means fewer choices for potential ordinands, but full-time training is costly, and a lot of training is much more effective when done in context. Probably the best bit of vicar training I did was the Arrow Leadership programme run by CPAS, which is designed for people in full-time Christian leadership already, and is designed to be done whilst 'in context'.

There's also something to be said for many of the trainers to be contextually based themselves. Academic faculties can be good and creative places, but they can also get detached from the realities of church leadership which they were intended to serve.

It's a courageous move, and I imagine there's been a lot of prayer and agonising. Fresh expressions of training?

Ian Paul, former tutor at St. Johns, has written on this in much more depth, and looks at the wider issues of theological training. Well worth a read.

Make Lunch - Training in and around Yeovil

Make Lunch is a national network based on the simple idea of providing free meals during school holidays for the families who qualify for it in term-time. There are dozens of centres around the country, and we're hoping to get it established in Yeovil.

Make Lunch run 'discovery' sessions for people who want to know what it's all about, and training sessions for people ready to get started. These are running locally on 18-19th October, details are here.

New CofE Internship Scheme

The Church of England is going national with an internship progamme already running in pilot form in some dioceses. Here's one example, in Stepney.

The framework looks like a good one: "The scheme.....is a one year programme of theological teaching, practical experience and personal development  for young people aged 18-30 who are considering future ministry in the church. The scheme was set up to encourage more young people to consider being involved in ministry and focus on the nine criteria used in the selection of clergy."

So there's a clear focus - testing a calling to ordained ministry - based on actual selection criteria. The details of the Stepney project sound like a standard gap year: accomodation and subsistence provided, with the bonus that all the theological and practical training is provided for free.

15 more dioceses are interested in the the scheme, and the intention is for it to run nationally. Looks good - at the moment there's a gap in the market. Young people with a sense of calling may not be the finished article, but can get frustrated with a long vocations process that keeps them hanging on in uncertainty. Having something to get stuck into will be helpful.

One other thought is whether dots can be joined with things like the Arrow Leadership Programme, run by CPAS for younger leaders in Christian settings, including clergy. It would be good to see a consistent track of personal, spiritual and leadership development worked into the vocations and training process.

update: for people who looked at the CofE link before Tues lunchtime, they've now added a couple of case studies.

It took us 2,000 years, but we made it

The Church of England has just published a new discipleship resource, roughly 2 millennia after Jesus made discipleship the top priority for his followers after his resurrection. This is, apparently, the first discipleship course ever commissioned by the bishops of the CofE. It's a recognition, perhaps, that the standard Anglican practices of attending worship and hearing the same 3-year cycle of readings repeatedly preached doesn't do the job of making disciples.

I've ordered the introductory pack and it'll be interesting to see what approaches it uses. Having something which both forms and informs is vital - I've experienced 'discipleship' courses which fill the head with knowledge and assume the heart will follow.

Here's an overview of the 8 sections of the course, there's some good quality people involved, and it looks to be booklet based (rather than presentation or DVD based). That's a plus in places without the computer literacy or hardware, but a minus in other ways. There are some audio and video files to go with the sessions, which hopefully come on a DVD with the booklets.. More when my parcel arrives! In the meantime there are some pdf sample sessions. I do like the way the session is set up, good mixture of input, reflection, discussion and spiritual exercises.

Your SHAPE For God's Service: superb course on spiritual gifts and calling

Last year we used an excellent course for Lent, 'Your SHAPE for God's Service', designed to help people discern their own gifts and calling. 

The course is based on material from the Purpose-Driven Life, that personal gifts and call can be found at the intersection of 5 factors:

Spiritual Gifts

Heart (what you're passionate about)

Abilities ('natural' abilities)

Personality

Experience (the key experiences that have shaped you)

The course involved a certain amount of 'homework', - e.g. handing 2 other people a list of common natural abilities and asking them to tick the ones they think you've got. For a few people this was a bit threatening, for others it was incredibly affirming - Brits aren't brilliant at giving feedback, or saying 'you're really good at x', and for some this was the first time they'd had any kind of affirmation in certain gifts and skills. 

One result of the course was a number of people enthusiastically getting stuck in to new areas of ministry: from pastoral work to youth and children, to making cups of tea and coffee. For others, you could see the lights going on as they realised that what they did in their workplace day to day was using a God-given talent and could be done in His service. 

The course has been rewritten and improved, and is now available as a free download courtesy of the lovely people at the Arthur Rank Centre. It's the kind of things we're likely to run again, and I know of one other church which uses it as a follow-up to Alpha. Highly recommended. 

Church Checklists: Is Everybody Welcome? Are You Sure?

How welcoming is your church? How welcoming is the building? How good is your publicity? Nice, general, impossible to answer questions, guaranteed to induce guilt and impede action.

Help is at hand. The excellent Everybody Welcome course has a series of checklists, full of specific questions on the quality of publicity, buildings, people and integration/nurture, which are really easy to use. Get a group together from your church, score yourself against each question, and work out what you're going to do about it.

Our Deanery (local group of Anglican churches) is going to start using them, highlighting one a term, asking churches to go away and fill them in, then feed back to the next meeting what they discovered and what they're going to do about it. It'll be interesting to see if building in the accountability works.

We've a recent history of Deanery meetings where we hear speakers on various important topics, but not a great deal happens as a result, so we're trying to gear the meetings up more to resource mission and ministry on the ground. Speaking personally, my goal would be that at every CofE church in the Yeovil area, any visitor will find a high quality of care and welcome, and have a positive experience of the people and the building.

There are even some resources on having your own Mystery Worshipper, including an introduction on how to set up the visit, and a very user-friendly questionnaire for the MW to use. If you'd like to have a go at being a Mystery Worshipper, and live somewhere near Yeovil (but not in it, everyone will know who you are), then please get in touch, would love to see (I think) how our churches came out of it!

Church Planting 101

Delighted to see that this training day with Stuart Murray Williams is being repeated in Bristol in October. Details at http://incarnate-network.eu/training-and-events/church-planting-101-bristol-1st-october A few of us from Yeovil went to this event last year and it really was excellent. £20 well spent.

Baptist's Mission Newsletter Just Out

I've a lot of time for the Baptist Union mission department. Not only do they have some excellent and concise resources online, but their bimonthly mission newsletter is great, a swathe of events, training, ideas, resources for Fathers Day, world cup, children, small churches, etc. etc. all in one document.

I must confess that I find this much more helpful than the piecemeal CofE system of having a mission department in 43 separate dioceses, plus one in Church House, with a real mixture of quality across the board. I noted last year that there were plenty of resources produced by one Diocese that could easily be linked to from another, to save duplicated effort. If I get round to revisiting that survey of Dicoesan websites this summer, we'll see if any of the ecclesiastical iron curtains that surround Dioceses have been broken through. What are the chances?

LICC events, and free book giveaway

Just had the latest events listing from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC) which includes 5000 library books being given away in London this Wednesday, and some conferences on Generation Y, discipleship, youth, leadership etc. Most are based in London and Manchester, with a Graham Cray event on 21st century discipleship in Glasgow.

If I lived a bit nearer to London, you might see me camped outside the door of St. Peters, Vere Street on Wednesday morning armed with a range of sturdy carrier bags. Anyone in the London area thinking about setting up a church library, here's your chance to stock up.....

Events: Christian Vision for Men in Yeovil, Transform Work UK

Christian Vision for Men (CVM) are having an event in Yeovil next month, here's some blurb:

Saturday 14th November 2009
9.30am - 4.30pm
Venue: The Gateway, Yeovil Community Church, Addlewell Lane, Yeovil BA20 1QN

Men's Conference in Somerset & Dorset

Carl Beech a Baptist Minister, became a follower of Jesus at the age of 18. Having had a burning ambition to join the armed forces, he distinctly heard God call him to fight a different sort of battle. After studying a degree in engineering he worked variously as a financial consultant, church planter, youth worker, and senior pastor of a large multi-congregational church. He now heads up CVM, a national movement focused on introducing men to Jesus and equipping the church for the task.

Andy Drake was born and raised in Australia and has worked as a dustman, labourer, computer programmer, airstrip builder, evangelist and Baptist Minister. He planted a youth congregation at the age of 18 and has helped lead three churches over the last 15 years. Married to Sophie, who is training as a Clinical Psychologist, Andy now works for CVM as their Director of Evangelism.

Seminars on:
Gearing Church up for Men
Winning Men
Living it out

On the same day Transform Work UK hold their national 1-day conference in Brum

Has the 21st century workplace become a no-God area, populated by cynics, with Christians often feeling under siege? Or are you passionate about your work and feel you can make a difference?
Whatever your experience, we promise that this Conference will help to envision, encourage and energise you. Speakers and workshops will give you practical tools and tips, drawing on real success stories. This event is a must for anyone wanting to be more effective and fulfilled at work.

Keynote Addresses:
● Chan Abraham, Chief Executive Luminus Group and Founder of Leadership International
● David L’Herroux, Executive Director UCB
● Caroline Spelman MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

Workshop choices include: Alpha for your Workplace, Chaplaincy, Work / Life Balance, The Effective Christian Workplace Group, The multi-faith workplace, Diversity & Equality, Christian Spirituality, Leadership & Mentoring, Recruitment & Retention for Professional Groups, Christian Groups – The Law, and Redundancy.

For Church of England Types there's a morning in Wells the same day (14th Nov) with Paul Bayes, national Mission and Evangelism Adviser, looking at Fresh Expressions and ecumenical mission. Details not on the website yet, but just ring 01749 670777 if you're interested, or drop me a comment.

And finally, there are still spaces on the Mission 21 church planting conference the following week in Bath. November is clearly a good time to have conferences: grim weather, too early to Christmas shop, all the best TV being saved for the Christmas schedules. Anyone planning to go to any of these?

Mission & Leadership Training Events

Trying to pull various things together into 1 place:

Mission 21 church planting conference in Bath, November 17-19th

Christians Together in a Spiritual Age Churches Together in Somerset day conference with Steve Hollinghurst, Locking Castle (Weston super Mare) at 17th October

Mission Action Planning study day, run by the national Anglican MAP boys (Mike Chew, Tim Ireland, Peter Hill) in Telford. They have a book on 'how to do Mission Action Planning' in November.

Vision to Action conference on management and leadership skills, run by Holy Trinity Brompton

Lead Where You Are videocast of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit from earlier this year, at 16 venues around the UK in October/November. Most of this stuff is pretty high quality, and if you sign up for a year you get a discount for the conference, and on their teaching DVD's, which are normally very good.

Youthwork, the Conference at Eastbourne, 20-22nd November.

Growing Leaders, Youth Edition: Growing Leaders is an excellent lay leadership development course, developed by CPAS. They've just developed a parallel version for developing young leaders. Well worth a look, if this is a challenge in your church.

Fresh Expressions training days, including a day on Mission Shaped Church for Older People (29th Oct in London), something we're starting to look at in our church.

Christians in a Spiritual Age - event in October.

SOMERSET CHURCHES TOGETHER AUTUMN FORUM 2009

Christians Together in a Spiritual Age

Saturday, 17 October 2009
10.00 am – 3.45 pm (Registration from 9.30 am)

Locking Castle Church, Weston Super Mare

Keynote Speakers:-
Revd. David Grosch-Miller,
Moderator, South Western Synod, United Reformed Church

Steve Hollinghurst, Church Army Evangelist

Presentations, Workshops, Displays and Resources.

For more information and booking form contact:
Robin Dixon, sctog at blueyonder.co.uk

some blurb:
This year our theme is Christians Together in a Spiritual Age and we are delighted to welcome as key speakers Revd David Grosch-Miller (Moderator, South Western Synod, United Reformed Church) and Steve Hollinghurst (Researcher in Evangelism for the Church Army). Steve is a leading national speaker and author on how, as Christians, we can engage with contemporary culture and new age spirituality.

The day offers lots of opportunities for networking and encouragement. We will set the scene of what is happening ecumenically across Somerset. We will hear stories from groups of local churches seeking to bring the gospel to people in their communities. In smaller workshops we will explore practical ideas for mission in our context. Coffee and lunch (both provided) will create welcome space to chat and meet old friends and new.

If you're in the SW and can get along, Steve Hollinghurst is well worth hearing, should be a good event.

Mission 21 Church Planting Conference

Just in....

The Churches Coordinating Group for Evangelisation (GfE) is a sponsor of the forthcoming Mission 21 conference which will bring together a wide cross section of Pioneer people planting new churches.

Mission 21 will be held in Bath 17th -19th November. The current cost is £75 for those Pioneers and network people who book early. The dedicated new website with further information and online booking is: http://www.mission21.info/home/

Speakers include Martin Atkins (Methodist Gen Sec) Graham Cray (head of Fresh Expressions team), Agu Irukwu (Senior Pastor of Jesus House, a fast-growing Pentecostal church), Billy Kennedy (24-7 Prayer/New Community Church Southampton), and a whole swathe of church planting bods from Church Army, Salvation Army, NFI, etc.

There are a mixture of 'workshops' and 'streams' which to be honest just looked like 2 different ways of giving titles to things! Quite a few different topics on church planting in different settings, issues at different stages of church planting, discipleship, cross-cultural planting etc. There's also the chance to meet with people in small groups for consultations with more experienced church planters.

Most church streams are represented, which is excellent. I went to Mission 21: Sheffield in 2005 and it was very worthwhile, and this is all the better for being just up the road. By happy 'coincidence', I first heard Jonny Bakers 'hand grenade' talk (see post below) at the Sheffield event.

I would say that it's a slightly plusher setting than Sheffield was, but last time I looked there was a major construction project just across the road from the venue! 5 mins walk from the train station, Park and Ride on the southern edge of the town drops you outside the door.

Mission Study Days at Trinity Bristol

Eddie Gibbs is coming to Bristol to do a couple of mission study days:

The Morphing of the Church 10.00am—5.15pm 24th June
How megatrends are reshaping Christian communities; how leadership styles are changing
£15 inc lunch

Making All Things New 10.00am—3.00pm 26th June
Traditional churches in transition—reaching theunreached; how the gospel makes all things new— living as Christ's representatives in a broken world
£15 inc lunch

In between the two, George Carey is doing an evening lecture on June 25th about 'Leadership in a World of Flux'.

Poster for the event, with more details and how to book here. Trinity Bristol details here, including a booking form. Booking is essential and the deadline is June 7th.

Training Events in the South West

10-12 March ’09 A Practical Introduction to Rural Ministy, Dulverton, Devon. Run by the SW Churches Rural Officers. More information from Fr Robert Miller 01398 324217

Mission Shaped Ministry After a well supported course in Taunton in 2008, the Diocese are hoping to run Mission Shaped Ministry in Wells and Bath during 2009. If you’d like to know more, or to register your interest, please contact me or Roger Medley, the Diocesan missioner (01749 670777)

Transforming Worship, Sat 28th Feb, 10am – 4pm, St. Johns Highbridge with Rev Peter Moger (Anglican national worship development officer). Details from Gill Davey on 01749 670777.

Spring Harvest 4-19th April, Minehead. You can get day and evening tickets on the door for this popular Christian festival, there is a good selection of seminars and displays, and it’s just an encouragement to be surrounded by thousands of fellow believers worshipping God. There’s usually a good selection of seminars on leadership, pastoral issues, children’s ministry, outreach and social issues.

SWYM training days. Southwest Youth Ministries do regular training days at Hill House near Bridgwater, aimed at youth and childrens workers, but open and relevant to all. Tel 01392 273560 or email admin@swym.org.uk for more details. Coming up:
- Mon 23rd Feb: Families and Schools, with a team from Scripture Union
- Mon 20th April: Dealing with Conflict, with Steve Clifford (new Evangelical Alliance director)

(this post is an excerpt from 'Biscuit Tin', a local mission newsletter)

Resources on Debt, Families, Relationships

Resources from Care for the Family:

a good leaflet on debt and families, available free to download here.

Events listing, including national tours of
Teenagers! What Every Parent Has To Know
Motherhood - a Roller Coaster Ride
The 1-2-1 Challenge (activity weekends for 1 parent & 1 child)
Breaks for single parent famlies
Living With Loss (for bereaved parents)
A Different Journey (for those who have lost a partner at a young age)

facilitator training days
How to Drug Proof your Kids
Quidz In - raising financially confident children

The CFF website also has sections for bereaved families, stepfamilies, sigle parents, dads, marriage, parent and toddler group leaders and several other family-focused areas.

South-West Christian Resources Exhibition 29-31 Jan

The South-West CRE happens near Exeter on 29-31st January, summary details here, and you can view the full event brochure too.

Seminars include: Messy Church, childrens work, environment, debt, worship, fresh expressions, leadership, all-age worship, mission to 20's & 30s, and plenty of others.

there's also Book Aid, who collect used Christian books and deliver them to churches in the developing world - great idea, so now's the chance to have a look through your shelves for those duplicate copies of 'Questions of Life'.

About 80-90 of the exhibitors are listed on the brochure, and a further 50+ are expected to show up.

Local Mission Opportunities: Bath & Wells job, Mission Shaped Ministry

1. New Mission Enabler job in Bath & Wells Diocese, advert on Start the Week, brief job spec. here. Given that we're involved in ecumenical mission here in Yeovil, you may have the blessing (well disguised) of working with me, but don't be put off by that!

2. The MA in Missional Leadership, a highly regarded course will be running a local network soon:

"From December onwards there will be a Dorchester network, based at the Dorford Centre, for an accredited Missional Leadership course. On the 4rd of December, Martin Robinson will be presenting the ethos and structure of the course to let church leaders know about it (at 3.30) and on the 5th there is a free taster day - where Martin will teach on Missional History."

venue details to follow.

Some blurb on the course itself (or for a good overview download the leaflet - gives an overview of the 6 modules, and some commendations).

"The Missional Leadership course was created by Together in Mission and is aimed at leaders at all levels including:
* Local church leadership team including clergy
* Church planters
* Emerging church leaders
* Youth church leaders
* Small group leaders

The course was prepared by people with hands-on experience of mission in the UK. It aims to enable leaders and potential leaders to re-think ministry and church, so that mission is at the centre of all that is done, and is effective in our 21st century context."Leadership is one of the key issues facing the church in the 21st Century, so training leadership has to be a high priority in Parish life. This course is a must!" (The Rt Revd Mike Hill, Bishop of Bristol.)

The course is delivered as distance learning through Birmingham Christian College, and is validated by the University of Wales.

For more information on the course go to Together in Mission at www.togetherinmission.org. For information on the University of Wales and validation arrangements go to www.wales.ac.uk or email validation at wales.ac.uk " or go here.

If you've done the Fresh Expressions 'Mission Shaped Ministry' course, this would look like a natural step on for further study. The MA is also less obviously Anglican, so will have some fresh perspectives where there is common ground with MSM.

Update: have amended the text above (see first comment).

'Ancient-Future Worship' event in Keynsham

In my inbox today, looks like a good training event on worship, and a good quality line-up:


A major worship event in the Southwest...
Ancient-Future Worship
Saturday 22nd November at St John's Church, Keynsham, Bristol BS31 2BL

3pm - 6pm Workshops (see prices below) for music leaders, worship leaders, singers, instrumentalists, all involved in creative arts, all who value creative broad worship; topics include: Ancient-Future Worship, Gospel, multisensory worship, Celtic worship, folk music, choral music

7pm - 9pm Evening Celebration - free! (with collection) - all welcome - come and experience a glorious integration of these and other worship styles and streams!

Leaders - Geraldine Latty, Rev John Leach, Richard Hubbard, Tim Martin, Rev Simon Howell, Roger Peach, Gill Trueman

Please visit the mwf website www.mwf.org.uk for full details, including on-line boooking, or follow this link http://www.mwf.org.uk/ancientfutureworship-southwest.html

Early booking deadline for workshops expires on Wed 22nd October. Prices: £10 Full price, £9 if booked by 22 October, £8 mwf friends / Associates, £6 full-time students / unwaged. For every five people booked from one church a sixth comes free.

Please help to spread the word about this by forwarding this email to anyone who might be interested. We hope you can come and join us for this very special event; early booking for workshops recommended. Thank you.