A few months ago Alpha redid there materials into a new 'film series'. These are good - nicely presented, a move away from the lecture style, to something a bit more varied. I've used the clip on the reliability of the new testament (from 6:40 in) and folk found it really helpful.
if you can't view this clip, try https://vimeo.com/183533609
Showing posts with label alpha course. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alpha course. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Why isn't church more like Alpha?
Dave Walker spot on again. If we followed through on the logic of things like the Alpha course, our main meetings would be very different. The good news is that a high percentage of Anglican churches are already small enough to meet round someones dining table, and can easily do away with that big expensive building up the road. So we've got a head start on everyone else. Bring on the pasta!
Dave is putting up several cartoons from 'the exciting world of churchgoing', so it's worth popping over.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Oooops
the Alpha Course site is holding an online poll on God's existence. One or two atheists appear to have got there first. Ht dizzy thinks.
Oh look. A link from the globes most popular atheist website encouraging people to tip the results. Now there's a surprise. If 'Yes' votes were 20% of the total back on Oct 14th, then at a maximum there can only have been 25,000 votes cast when that link was put up. It's now 165k. Make of that what you will. They don't seem to allow repeat voting now on the site, but it's a bit late for that.
Oh look. A link from the globes most popular atheist website encouraging people to tip the results. Now there's a surprise. If 'Yes' votes were 20% of the total back on Oct 14th, then at a maximum there can only have been 25,000 votes cast when that link was put up. It's now 165k. Make of that what you will. They don't seem to allow repeat voting now on the site, but it's a bit late for that.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
New Alpha Advert
interesting approach. What do people think?
Update: other takes from Peter Ould, Nick Baines, whilst both The Maranatha, and My Life as a Wrestler wonder if having a celebrity say 'I did Alpha' will have any effect at all. Meanwhile, interesting post from Crispian Jago 'how Alpha turned me into an atheist'. Link from Phil Ritchie to a Guardian series by a journalist who's doing the course at the moment.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Saturday Roundup
Adam Rutherford at the Guardian is taking the Alpha course, and blogging every Friday about his experiences. He's just survived the first session: "Mostly when I think about religion it's the foolish edicts of preposterous old men in dresses. But sitting down with people who choose to spend a sunny Tuesday evening discussing the meaning of life with strangers seems to be a much more interesting insight into what makes people of faith tick. We shall see." (Ht Andy Dowland)
Dave Walker reports on the Surefish Church Website awards, top blog was Sophia Network, which resources women in youth work and ministry, with Unfinished Christian and Church Mouse both highly commended. Manchester Diocese also picked up an award, which sounds about right. One of their parishes, complete with cartoon vicar on the homepage, picked up the best church website award.
General Synod is underway in York, but without a live broadcast on Anglican TV, unlike FCA (wonder why?) For news follow Thinking Anglicans, or Alastair Cuttings General Synod Blog, or on Twitter using the #synod tag. Tim Chesterton notes that the Canadian General Synod is doing a Cheshire Cat impression .
A couple of significant votes in the Lords: an amendment tabled by Lord Falconer to permit assisted suicide was voted down, whilst a clause which permitted cricitism of homosexual behaviour was retained in the Coroners and Justice Bill. The clause draws a distinction between criticism of homsexual practice and incitement to hatred.
Eddie Arthur notes a study which finds that 75% of us have a Bible but less than 10% know very much about it. (I imagine the same stats would apply to DIY manuals!)
Steve Tilley takes evening prayer out of the building.
Pisteuomen (sounds better in Greek) takes issue with street preachers.
Finally the SWALEC Stadium in Cardiff is no longer the 'unfriendly gulag' it was in March. Though the cricket was disappointing (for an England fan), the stewards and staff made us feel very welcome, the Park and Ride was very well organised, and the steeply racked seating behind short straight boundaries meant you really felt close to the action.
Thanks to the Barmy Army for keeping us entertained yesterday, and no thanks to the umpires who robbed us of 30m+ of play, firstly by announcing a restart with 30 mins notice (the groundstaff were ready after 15), and then taking the players off for no obvious reason and then not telling anyone what was going on. With tickets at £85 a throw, I expected the officials to treat the crowd with a bit more respect, even if some of them were dressed as Smurfs.
Dave Walker reports on the Surefish Church Website awards, top blog was Sophia Network, which resources women in youth work and ministry, with Unfinished Christian and Church Mouse both highly commended. Manchester Diocese also picked up an award, which sounds about right. One of their parishes, complete with cartoon vicar on the homepage, picked up the best church website award.
General Synod is underway in York, but without a live broadcast on Anglican TV, unlike FCA (wonder why?) For news follow Thinking Anglicans, or Alastair Cuttings General Synod Blog, or on Twitter using the #synod tag. Tim Chesterton notes that the Canadian General Synod is doing a Cheshire Cat impression .
A couple of significant votes in the Lords: an amendment tabled by Lord Falconer to permit assisted suicide was voted down, whilst a clause which permitted cricitism of homosexual behaviour was retained in the Coroners and Justice Bill. The clause draws a distinction between criticism of homsexual practice and incitement to hatred.
Eddie Arthur notes a study which finds that 75% of us have a Bible but less than 10% know very much about it. (I imagine the same stats would apply to DIY manuals!)
Steve Tilley takes evening prayer out of the building.
Pisteuomen (sounds better in Greek) takes issue with street preachers.
Finally the SWALEC Stadium in Cardiff is no longer the 'unfriendly gulag' it was in March. Though the cricket was disappointing (for an England fan), the stewards and staff made us feel very welcome, the Park and Ride was very well organised, and the steeply racked seating behind short straight boundaries meant you really felt close to the action.
Thanks to the Barmy Army for keeping us entertained yesterday, and no thanks to the umpires who robbed us of 30m+ of play, firstly by announcing a restart with 30 mins notice (the groundstaff were ready after 15), and then taking the players off for no obvious reason and then not telling anyone what was going on. With tickets at £85 a throw, I expected the officials to treat the crowd with a bit more respect, even if some of them were dressed as Smurfs.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Jon Ronson on Alpha
I linked to this interview in the post below, but large chunks of it merit reposting. I'll confine myself to this:
You seemed to like the people you featured in the film, both those doing the course and those running it. Would that be accurate?
Yeah, I do and I did. And that goes all the way to Nicky Gumbel. However, from a sceptical agnostic point of view, I think that the sort of Evangelical zeal where turning the agnostics to God is the all-important thing, and matters more than anything else, I don’t personally like. So I don’t really like the Evangelical zeal of Alpha. But, then again, they would say that that’s what they believe, that if you don’t find God you don’t get salvation, and it’s crucial. So I see that as a fault, but they don’t. But I wanted to make a film that didn’t focus too much on the negatives. I wanted to make a film that was enquiring and gentle and human. I saw it as a film about people.
The Alpha Course, and therefore the film itself, both take a major, dramatic turn on the weekend away. It comes a little bit out of the blue.
Yeah, that was deliberate on my part. I was worried that, in order to sell the film to the audience, we’d need to put something about that at the top of the film, and I was so glad when it turned out that we didn’t have to. I did it that way because that’s the structure of Alpha – they underplay the weekend away in the first few weeks of the course. So people on the course don’t really know what to expect when they turn up for the weekend. I didn’t want the viewers to know any more than the agnostics we’re following would know.
When the moment arrives where people are asked to speak in tongues, it’s a very polarising experience, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is. And exactly the same thing happened last time I did Alpha. Some people stormed out in disgust, and said “I thought these people were nice, with their biscuits. I didn’t realise they were like some sort of weird cult.” Which I don’t think they are, because a cult is something much more restrictive. If you leave Alpha, no-one’s going to try and press gang you into coming back. But then, for other people, the speaking in tongues is ‘the moment’ – it unlocks something in their hearts. So it’s incredibly polarising, and that’s fascinating. Especially because the rest of Alpha is so un-polarising.
You seemed to like the people you featured in the film, both those doing the course and those running it. Would that be accurate?
Yeah, I do and I did. And that goes all the way to Nicky Gumbel. However, from a sceptical agnostic point of view, I think that the sort of Evangelical zeal where turning the agnostics to God is the all-important thing, and matters more than anything else, I don’t personally like. So I don’t really like the Evangelical zeal of Alpha. But, then again, they would say that that’s what they believe, that if you don’t find God you don’t get salvation, and it’s crucial. So I see that as a fault, but they don’t. But I wanted to make a film that didn’t focus too much on the negatives. I wanted to make a film that was enquiring and gentle and human. I saw it as a film about people.
The Alpha Course, and therefore the film itself, both take a major, dramatic turn on the weekend away. It comes a little bit out of the blue.
Yeah, that was deliberate on my part. I was worried that, in order to sell the film to the audience, we’d need to put something about that at the top of the film, and I was so glad when it turned out that we didn’t have to. I did it that way because that’s the structure of Alpha – they underplay the weekend away in the first few weeks of the course. So people on the course don’t really know what to expect when they turn up for the weekend. I didn’t want the viewers to know any more than the agnostics we’re following would know.
When the moment arrives where people are asked to speak in tongues, it’s a very polarising experience, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is. And exactly the same thing happened last time I did Alpha. Some people stormed out in disgust, and said “I thought these people were nice, with their biscuits. I didn’t realise they were like some sort of weird cult.” Which I don’t think they are, because a cult is something much more restrictive. If you leave Alpha, no-one’s going to try and press gang you into coming back. But then, for other people, the speaking in tongues is ‘the moment’ – it unlocks something in their hearts. So it’s incredibly polarising, and that’s fascinating. Especially because the rest of Alpha is so un-polarising.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Channel 4 Alpha Documentary
Watched Jon Ronsons documentary on an Alpha group in Oxford earlier this evening. Lots of twittering going on during and after, quite a lot of it negative. A few thoughts:
- fair play to Alpha, who are usually seen as quite tight and controlling on their publicity, for giving Channel 4 of all people access to a course. And to the people involved - I'm not sure I'd have been too keen on talking about God with a camera stuffed up my nose.
- It gave a reasonable impression of the course, but then zeroed in (as Alpha does, to be fair) on speaking in tongues, with some wacky footage of the Toronto Vineyard during the 'Toronto Blessing', and Charlie Cleverley (leader of St. Aldates, Oxford) trying to encourage folk to speak in tongues as raucous sports cars zoomed past the window of the hotel.
- The documentary didn't follow the full course, stopping at the 'Holy Spirit weekend', which normally happens just over halfway through. Ronson made an interesting point: he was impressed that Alpha did something as potentially controversial as covering speaking in tongues (most of its alternatives don't). One participant pointed out that if he'd known that was involved at the beginning, he'd not have done the course.
- I was quite uncomfortable watching the part where the Holy Spirit was invited to come, and folk were encouraged to speak in tongues. Partly because I felt the presence of the camera probably inhibited people, but also because there are some things Christians do that aren't supposed to be done in front of a camera. Jesus tells people to pray behind a closed door, and Paul tells the Corinthian church that if they all pray in tongues in worship, newcomers will conclude they are bonkers (cue Dizzee Rascal). I guess a documentary needs to show people what happens on the course, but watching it I felt so uncomfortable at that point that I had to physically restrain myself from switching channels for a couple of minutes.
- the overwhelming impression of the Christians was that they were 'nice people', folk seemed to enjoy the human interaction. It would be interesting to catch up with the participants after a few weeks, rather than in the heat of the moment having walked out of a communion service. I guess the documentary has to play up the drama - whether of conflict or conversion - when the real story may have been a bit more gradual.
Final thought: is it just me, or do other people watch documentaries on Christianity with half a feeling that the documentary makers are giggling behind their hands? I'm quite sure Ronson isn't - from the comments he made during the documentary, and his own reports of doing the Alpha course himself a few years ago - but maybe it's just me.
Update: if you missed it and can't spare an hour to watch it on catchup, Rachel has a blow by blow account of the programme with her own reflections.
Other thoughts from the blogosphere:
Ceridwens cauldron thought it was indoctrination of the gullible
Zoomtard seems to have had the same reaction as me: ok until the Toronto bit.
Simple Pleasures has an interview with Jon Ronson about the programme, which is a fascinating read, and blows away any suspicions you might have about why he did it.
Interesting view from chameleon102, whose vicar is trying to sign him up to an Alpha course.
Missiome also not sure about the way the programme covered speaking in tongues etc., but thought it 'well worth watching'.
- fair play to Alpha, who are usually seen as quite tight and controlling on their publicity, for giving Channel 4 of all people access to a course. And to the people involved - I'm not sure I'd have been too keen on talking about God with a camera stuffed up my nose.
- It gave a reasonable impression of the course, but then zeroed in (as Alpha does, to be fair) on speaking in tongues, with some wacky footage of the Toronto Vineyard during the 'Toronto Blessing', and Charlie Cleverley (leader of St. Aldates, Oxford) trying to encourage folk to speak in tongues as raucous sports cars zoomed past the window of the hotel.
- The documentary didn't follow the full course, stopping at the 'Holy Spirit weekend', which normally happens just over halfway through. Ronson made an interesting point: he was impressed that Alpha did something as potentially controversial as covering speaking in tongues (most of its alternatives don't). One participant pointed out that if he'd known that was involved at the beginning, he'd not have done the course.
- I was quite uncomfortable watching the part where the Holy Spirit was invited to come, and folk were encouraged to speak in tongues. Partly because I felt the presence of the camera probably inhibited people, but also because there are some things Christians do that aren't supposed to be done in front of a camera. Jesus tells people to pray behind a closed door, and Paul tells the Corinthian church that if they all pray in tongues in worship, newcomers will conclude they are bonkers (cue Dizzee Rascal). I guess a documentary needs to show people what happens on the course, but watching it I felt so uncomfortable at that point that I had to physically restrain myself from switching channels for a couple of minutes.
- the overwhelming impression of the Christians was that they were 'nice people', folk seemed to enjoy the human interaction. It would be interesting to catch up with the participants after a few weeks, rather than in the heat of the moment having walked out of a communion service. I guess the documentary has to play up the drama - whether of conflict or conversion - when the real story may have been a bit more gradual.
Final thought: is it just me, or do other people watch documentaries on Christianity with half a feeling that the documentary makers are giggling behind their hands? I'm quite sure Ronson isn't - from the comments he made during the documentary, and his own reports of doing the Alpha course himself a few years ago - but maybe it's just me.
Update: if you missed it and can't spare an hour to watch it on catchup, Rachel has a blow by blow account of the programme with her own reflections.
Other thoughts from the blogosphere:
Ceridwens cauldron thought it was indoctrination of the gullible
Zoomtard seems to have had the same reaction as me: ok until the Toronto bit.
Simple Pleasures has an interview with Jon Ronson about the programme, which is a fascinating read, and blows away any suspicions you might have about why he did it.
Interesting view from chameleon102, whose vicar is trying to sign him up to an Alpha course.
Missiome also not sure about the way the programme covered speaking in tongues etc., but thought it 'well worth watching'.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Alpha Documentary
Channel 4 have a new series, 'Revelations', starting Sunday night at 7pm. The first one follows a group through the Alpha course.
Blurb "A brand new strand of eight films explores the impact religion has on the lives of believers and non-believers in Britain today" Jon Ronson is heading up the Alpha programme (following a course at St. Aldates, Oxford), there don't seem to be details of the other episodes yet.
Blurb "A brand new strand of eight films explores the impact religion has on the lives of believers and non-believers in Britain today" Jon Ronson is heading up the Alpha programme (following a course at St. Aldates, Oxford), there don't seem to be details of the other episodes yet.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Mission and Fresh Expressions Resources by Diocese: Manchester - Rochester
Continuing the survey of 44 diocesan websites for useful resources on mission and fresh expressions that could be useful for anyone. Previous posts covered:
Bath and Wells - Coventry
Derby - London
Sheffield - York to follow next week, all being well.
At the end of the series I'll also be doing a 'top 10 resources' post, and some suggestions about what resources could, pretty easily, be held in common across all diocesan sites.
This time, we start in the land of my birth (almost)
Manchester a pretty comprehensive looking site. Interesting bits:
Mission planning statistics - the Diocese has neighbourhood census and demographic stats organised parish by parish, to help parishes understnad their mission context. There is a pack for each parish with maps and key local stats. Excellent idea.
A very good Parish Audit booklet, taking parishes step by step through the process of thinking about their local context, and how to respond to it. Great tool for thinking through priorities and direction as a parish/church.
Superb communications home page, which helpfully sets out all the main local media in the Diocese, and which area they cover, as well as what communications the Diocese is sending out and who to. Great overview, the kind of thing every diocese should do. Great. The other communications stuff is of a similar standard - there are a cluster of advice pages on publicity, news releases, media contacts, websites and magazines (use links in the sidebar from the Communications home page).
Chunky Evangelism section, which starts with a clear statement of intent: Manchester Diocese has a vision to see the local church growing: growing qualitatively in terms of spirituality, unity, generosity and discipleship. Growing quantitatively as more people are drawn to faith in our great God and his son Jesus. Within this is a page on Experience Easter, with ideas about how to make the most of Easter as an outreach opportunity. To free up time to do outreach at Easter, there's another page with bags of resources for Good Friday meditations, well worth a look (though a bit late for this year!)
If the diocese has a key outreach event, a downloadable poster is put on the site so people can access the publicity themselves. Clever.
Sadly not online, but avaible from the Diocese, are a couple of booklets on outreach with particular age groups. Luv 'em is for work with children and young people, and Silver Service for ministry with the elderly.
Newcastle
Good 'faith and life' section on baptism, weddings, funerals etc., which recognises that many visitors might come with these on the agenda. Lots of stuff here that could be easily replicated in every diocese, or indeed on your own church website.
Norwich: 'Committed to growth' says the top of the sidebar, which is encouraging. This link takes you into a suite of Mission Action Plan ('Growth Plan') resources, with a booklet introducing the idea, which would make a useful PCC resource in its own right for pretty much any church. The MAP resources are well set out, with templates, example plans etc.
Very good Mission Support Fund page, with the guidance notes for applications, a full list of projects funded so far, dates and deadlines for applications over the year. Good example for other dioceses to copy.
A booklist on Welcoming Newcomers, v helpful, with links to 2 examples of church welcome packs, one of which (hoorah!) was from another diocese. There are also simple pages explaining Fresh expressions and alternative worship, with links to local examples.
A page on discipleship courses reproduces the LICC survey of discipleship materials, helpfully adding which parishes are using certain courses for people who want to explore further. This is vital: it's so much better having someone local who can talk you through how they've done it, what's worked and what hasn't.
Helpful page on alternative and creative worship, from all-age to 'liquid', with links to blogs, books and resource sites. Helpful for people wanting to explore some popular alternatives to a standard hymn sandwich.
Easy to use Back to Church Sunday page with downloadable invites and posters, but they need to change it over from 2008 to 2009!
Couple of good case studies of redeveloping churches as community centres.
Oxford Big Back to Church Sunday splash on the home page, sends a clear message about what's important. Their BTCS resource page has some useful case studies of parishes which did it, along with the usual resources, and a 'timeline' of how to prepare.
Oxford is also sponsoring a study of how faith communities 'add value' to their neighbourhoods, the results will be interesting and will contribute to a crucial national policy debate.
The Encouraging Evangelism page has a selection of vid clips on the practicalities of evangelism, of which the most helpful are no's 3 (on running a mens breakfast), 4 (on running an Alpha/nurture course) and 5, which focuses on the Jigsaw fresh expression of church in Witney:
Oxford is one of the pioneer Dioceses in Fresh Expressions , having invested heavily in the Cutting Edge initiative several years ago. Cutting Edge resourced 6 pilot new congregations,
there's a summary of the fruits here, and the full report on the project is well worth a read if you are looking to set up a Fresh Expression within an Anglican diocese, very very helpful. The Diocese has also produce a concise 'Beginning, Nurturing and Sustaining Fresh Expressions' booklet, which is available as a pdf.
Yet another superb link: Nurture Courses - this focuses on the four most popular (START, Alpha, Emmaus, Essence), with a full review of each, and several stories from people who have used them. It also includes a handy list of books and websites on evangelism, and a useful page on how to follow up an evangelistic event so that it helps you make contacts.
There's also a brief list of useful links to sites and blogs on evangelism, and there's also a cluster of documents around 'Living Faith', the diocesan vision for growth and development. There's a clever 'Easter Ingredients' evangelistic leaflet, based around Hot Cross buns - if you can airbrush out the Oxford logo this could be used anywhere, good idea.
I mention just in passing that Oxford diocese also links to three of its bloggers...
Peterborough tough job to follow Oxford, but some very handy niche products. Under Mission downloads, there are some great little booklets on Providing a Welcome, and ministry with the elderly, and some good ideas here on options for outreach, and several documents produced for a 2007 Lent course to get churches to think about mission.
Good Back to Church Sunday section with stories of people who came back to church, a countdown, welcoming children, and ideas for BTCS at Easter and Christmas.
introduction to Parish Nursing, interesting concept: "A parish nurse is a registered nurse with community experience, who works through the church, offering spiritual as well as physical and mental care."
Portsmouth: woo, psychedelic! A site designed by an evangelist: the first 4 sections are on Jesus, stories of people who came to faith, FAQ's and life events (baptisms, weddings etc.). It's only when you get to the penultimate 'Info' panel that there's anything about the Diocese, and you end up at a site within a site with Diocesan information. Love it. They even have pretty much the entire Street Bible online at the site.
Intriguing Evangelism section, buried deep in the bowels of the site, including links on leading someone to Jesus, and this nice gospel illustrations page. Some good material here, but quite tricky to navigate.
Helpful summary of key CofE thinking on mission: Mission Shaped Church, the 5 marks of mission, Lambeth statements etc. , peculiar formatting though. Also an article reproduced from elsewhere "Questions Christians ask about sharing their faith".
The diocese have also mapped the 2001 census data onto parishes, v. helpful.
Ripon & Leeds
interesting policy document on mission and ministry in UPA parishes, of which they have several.
Has a FX section, and great to see that there are 4 video clips of different FX in the diocese, plus an intro from the Bish. Love the Saturday Night Service in particular. Otherwise fairly standard contents (what is FX, training, funding etc.) but at least it's there. Strange that the vids aren't linked from the FX page!
Rochester. The Diocesan Evangelists have their own site, complete with testimonies, FAQ's mission booklist etc. There seem to be plenty of them, which is encouraging! To be honest the navigation is bewildering - I found myself on the same site via 'Mission and Unity', which also seems to have a separate site from the main Diocesan one. Seems odd that 'unity' should be separate, but what do I know?
There may have been other helpful resources on this site but frankly I just gave up, what with new windows popping up all over the place, and bits of the site which didn't do what they said they'd do. PLEASE CAN THE NEXT BISHOP OF ROCHESTER BAN POP-UP WINDOWS.
A real curates egg of sites, though there are at least some mission/evangelism/fx resources on all of them. Just goes to show that the way you communicate is vital to whether or not you'll get your message across, no matter how important that message is.
Best bits:
Manchester communications tips
Norwich on mission funding
Oxford on FX and nurture courses
Peterborough booklets on welcome and ministry with the elderly
Portsmouth gospel illustrations
Ripon & Leeds FX videos.
Bath and Wells - Coventry
Derby - London
Sheffield - York to follow next week, all being well.
At the end of the series I'll also be doing a 'top 10 resources' post, and some suggestions about what resources could, pretty easily, be held in common across all diocesan sites.
This time, we start in the land of my birth (almost)
Manchester a pretty comprehensive looking site. Interesting bits:
Mission planning statistics - the Diocese has neighbourhood census and demographic stats organised parish by parish, to help parishes understnad their mission context. There is a pack for each parish with maps and key local stats. Excellent idea.
A very good Parish Audit booklet, taking parishes step by step through the process of thinking about their local context, and how to respond to it. Great tool for thinking through priorities and direction as a parish/church.
Superb communications home page, which helpfully sets out all the main local media in the Diocese, and which area they cover, as well as what communications the Diocese is sending out and who to. Great overview, the kind of thing every diocese should do. Great. The other communications stuff is of a similar standard - there are a cluster of advice pages on publicity, news releases, media contacts, websites and magazines (use links in the sidebar from the Communications home page).
Chunky Evangelism section, which starts with a clear statement of intent: Manchester Diocese has a vision to see the local church growing: growing qualitatively in terms of spirituality, unity, generosity and discipleship. Growing quantitatively as more people are drawn to faith in our great God and his son Jesus. Within this is a page on Experience Easter, with ideas about how to make the most of Easter as an outreach opportunity. To free up time to do outreach at Easter, there's another page with bags of resources for Good Friday meditations, well worth a look (though a bit late for this year!)
If the diocese has a key outreach event, a downloadable poster is put on the site so people can access the publicity themselves. Clever.
Sadly not online, but avaible from the Diocese, are a couple of booklets on outreach with particular age groups. Luv 'em is for work with children and young people, and Silver Service for ministry with the elderly.
Newcastle
Good 'faith and life' section on baptism, weddings, funerals etc., which recognises that many visitors might come with these on the agenda. Lots of stuff here that could be easily replicated in every diocese, or indeed on your own church website.
Norwich: 'Committed to growth' says the top of the sidebar, which is encouraging. This link takes you into a suite of Mission Action Plan ('Growth Plan') resources, with a booklet introducing the idea, which would make a useful PCC resource in its own right for pretty much any church. The MAP resources are well set out, with templates, example plans etc.
Very good Mission Support Fund page, with the guidance notes for applications, a full list of projects funded so far, dates and deadlines for applications over the year. Good example for other dioceses to copy.
A booklist on Welcoming Newcomers, v helpful, with links to 2 examples of church welcome packs, one of which (hoorah!) was from another diocese. There are also simple pages explaining Fresh expressions and alternative worship, with links to local examples.
A page on discipleship courses reproduces the LICC survey of discipleship materials, helpfully adding which parishes are using certain courses for people who want to explore further. This is vital: it's so much better having someone local who can talk you through how they've done it, what's worked and what hasn't.
Helpful page on alternative and creative worship, from all-age to 'liquid', with links to blogs, books and resource sites. Helpful for people wanting to explore some popular alternatives to a standard hymn sandwich.
Easy to use Back to Church Sunday page with downloadable invites and posters, but they need to change it over from 2008 to 2009!
Couple of good case studies of redeveloping churches as community centres.
Oxford Big Back to Church Sunday splash on the home page, sends a clear message about what's important. Their BTCS resource page has some useful case studies of parishes which did it, along with the usual resources, and a 'timeline' of how to prepare.
Oxford is also sponsoring a study of how faith communities 'add value' to their neighbourhoods, the results will be interesting and will contribute to a crucial national policy debate.
The Encouraging Evangelism page has a selection of vid clips on the practicalities of evangelism, of which the most helpful are no's 3 (on running a mens breakfast), 4 (on running an Alpha/nurture course) and 5, which focuses on the Jigsaw fresh expression of church in Witney:
Oxford is one of the pioneer Dioceses in Fresh Expressions , having invested heavily in the Cutting Edge initiative several years ago. Cutting Edge resourced 6 pilot new congregations,
there's a summary of the fruits here, and the full report on the project is well worth a read if you are looking to set up a Fresh Expression within an Anglican diocese, very very helpful. The Diocese has also produce a concise 'Beginning, Nurturing and Sustaining Fresh Expressions' booklet, which is available as a pdf.
Yet another superb link: Nurture Courses - this focuses on the four most popular (START, Alpha, Emmaus, Essence), with a full review of each, and several stories from people who have used them. It also includes a handy list of books and websites on evangelism, and a useful page on how to follow up an evangelistic event so that it helps you make contacts.
There's also a brief list of useful links to sites and blogs on evangelism, and there's also a cluster of documents around 'Living Faith', the diocesan vision for growth and development. There's a clever 'Easter Ingredients' evangelistic leaflet, based around Hot Cross buns - if you can airbrush out the Oxford logo this could be used anywhere, good idea.
I mention just in passing that Oxford diocese also links to three of its bloggers...
Peterborough tough job to follow Oxford, but some very handy niche products. Under Mission downloads, there are some great little booklets on Providing a Welcome, and ministry with the elderly, and some good ideas here on options for outreach, and several documents produced for a 2007 Lent course to get churches to think about mission.
Good Back to Church Sunday section with stories of people who came back to church, a countdown, welcoming children, and ideas for BTCS at Easter and Christmas.
introduction to Parish Nursing, interesting concept: "A parish nurse is a registered nurse with community experience, who works through the church, offering spiritual as well as physical and mental care."
Portsmouth: woo, psychedelic! A site designed by an evangelist: the first 4 sections are on Jesus, stories of people who came to faith, FAQ's and life events (baptisms, weddings etc.). It's only when you get to the penultimate 'Info' panel that there's anything about the Diocese, and you end up at a site within a site with Diocesan information. Love it. They even have pretty much the entire Street Bible online at the site.
Intriguing Evangelism section, buried deep in the bowels of the site, including links on leading someone to Jesus, and this nice gospel illustrations page. Some good material here, but quite tricky to navigate.
Helpful summary of key CofE thinking on mission: Mission Shaped Church, the 5 marks of mission, Lambeth statements etc. , peculiar formatting though. Also an article reproduced from elsewhere "Questions Christians ask about sharing their faith".
The diocese have also mapped the 2001 census data onto parishes, v. helpful.
Ripon & Leeds
interesting policy document on mission and ministry in UPA parishes, of which they have several.
Has a FX section, and great to see that there are 4 video clips of different FX in the diocese, plus an intro from the Bish. Love the Saturday Night Service in particular. Otherwise fairly standard contents (what is FX, training, funding etc.) but at least it's there. Strange that the vids aren't linked from the FX page!
Rochester. The Diocesan Evangelists have their own site, complete with testimonies, FAQ's mission booklist etc. There seem to be plenty of them, which is encouraging! To be honest the navigation is bewildering - I found myself on the same site via 'Mission and Unity', which also seems to have a separate site from the main Diocesan one. Seems odd that 'unity' should be separate, but what do I know?
There may have been other helpful resources on this site but frankly I just gave up, what with new windows popping up all over the place, and bits of the site which didn't do what they said they'd do. PLEASE CAN THE NEXT BISHOP OF ROCHESTER BAN POP-UP WINDOWS.
A real curates egg of sites, though there are at least some mission/evangelism/fx resources on all of them. Just goes to show that the way you communicate is vital to whether or not you'll get your message across, no matter how important that message is.
Best bits:
Manchester communications tips
Norwich on mission funding
Oxford on FX and nurture courses
Peterborough booklets on welcome and ministry with the elderly
Portsmouth gospel illustrations
Ripon & Leeds FX videos.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Nurture Courses
Start the Week have a fascinating bit of research on the use of nurture and enquirers courses around the CofE.
43% of parishes/churches responsed 'yes' to the question "In 2006 did your parish/church provide an enquirers course or group for those seeking to know more about the Christian faith?" Among these nearly 6,000 parishes, Alpha was the favourite (over 1/3 using it), closely followed by home-grown materials, 'other published material' (it would have been interesting to see how well used were Christianity Explored and Journeys), just under 20% used Emmaus, and 6% used START.
I would guess the high number of home-grown things may be that they are confirmation courses, which would just about qualify as a 'yes' to the question.
The figures are broken down by Diocese, so in my own (Bath and Wells) 174 parishes/churches (out of a total of 570 churches in 490 parishes), so about 1 in 3. That still means that 2/3 of our churches have no provision for people exploring the Christian faith: is this because there are no new people joining them, for lack of resources, or some other reason?
It's hard to know how to interpret the figures without knowing the total number of churches in each Diocese. If only 42 churches are using these courses in Bradford, is that a decent proportion? One of Bob Jacksons findings was that regular use of a Christian basics/nurture course seemed to correlate with a growing church, though I wonder which came first - any church worth it's salt which gets new members would probably set a course up in response.
Another thought on the Diocesan figures: there is a bit of a Robin Gamble effect with the START course, in that 3 dioceses (Liverpool, Manchester and Lichfield) make up over 1/3 of the users, with it nearly outstripping Alpha in Manchester Diocese. Personally I think it's a great course, 6 weeks, very interactive and down to earth, and works well if you use Alpha or Emmaus to follow it up. Funnily enough, I've had 2 local enquiries about it in the last fortnight.
If you find the brand names all a bit confusing, then help is at hand. Tucked away on Southwell Diocese website is a real gem: On Course: Resources to Encourage Mission is a 20-page summary of courses in Christian nurture, faith sharing, and discipleship, with a brief description of each one, what's involved in running them, and who they'd be suitable for. It's free to download, and the kind of thing that makes me think there should be a central bank of CofE resources like this, shared by all Dioceses, to prevent them all reinventing the wheel and duplicating one another's work.
43% of parishes/churches responsed 'yes' to the question "In 2006 did your parish/church provide an enquirers course or group for those seeking to know more about the Christian faith?" Among these nearly 6,000 parishes, Alpha was the favourite (over 1/3 using it), closely followed by home-grown materials, 'other published material' (it would have been interesting to see how well used were Christianity Explored and Journeys), just under 20% used Emmaus, and 6% used START.
I would guess the high number of home-grown things may be that they are confirmation courses, which would just about qualify as a 'yes' to the question.
The figures are broken down by Diocese, so in my own (Bath and Wells) 174 parishes/churches (out of a total of 570 churches in 490 parishes), so about 1 in 3. That still means that 2/3 of our churches have no provision for people exploring the Christian faith: is this because there are no new people joining them, for lack of resources, or some other reason?
It's hard to know how to interpret the figures without knowing the total number of churches in each Diocese. If only 42 churches are using these courses in Bradford, is that a decent proportion? One of Bob Jacksons findings was that regular use of a Christian basics/nurture course seemed to correlate with a growing church, though I wonder which came first - any church worth it's salt which gets new members would probably set a course up in response.
Another thought on the Diocesan figures: there is a bit of a Robin Gamble effect with the START course, in that 3 dioceses (Liverpool, Manchester and Lichfield) make up over 1/3 of the users, with it nearly outstripping Alpha in Manchester Diocese. Personally I think it's a great course, 6 weeks, very interactive and down to earth, and works well if you use Alpha or Emmaus to follow it up. Funnily enough, I've had 2 local enquiries about it in the last fortnight.
If you find the brand names all a bit confusing, then help is at hand. Tucked away on Southwell Diocese website is a real gem: On Course: Resources to Encourage Mission is a 20-page summary of courses in Christian nurture, faith sharing, and discipleship, with a brief description of each one, what's involved in running them, and who they'd be suitable for. It's free to download, and the kind of thing that makes me think there should be a central bank of CofE resources like this, shared by all Dioceses, to prevent them all reinventing the wheel and duplicating one another's work.
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