Diocesan Church Growth Strategies 6 - Mission Action Planning & Growth

Mike Chew on Mission Action Planning:
Experience in management at Philips electronics was very similar to his experience of the Diocese of Blackburn: a culture resistant to change, internal conflict, suspicion of top-down initiatives, intuitive rather than strategic leadership, falling performance, losing customers and best employees.

Change in both Philips and in the Diocese involved finding a common strategy process (not a strategy but a strategy process - Mission Action Planning is a process for discerning strategy, which looks different at each local level)

“the most important element of any strategy is actually desire…if someone doesn’t want to do it, it’s not going to happen, or it’s going to be done very poorly.” How do we generate the desire for change and growth within the church?

Training leaders and training them to train others "was probably the most powerful thing we did"

2 reviews, in 2007 (after 2 years) and 2010. On both occasions, showed that churches which had engaged most fully with MAPping had grown, those which didn't shrank. 

Of the 20 Diocese registering growth 2010-11, 15 are using Mission Action Planning in some form (the national total was 19 at the time, so of the 23 which were flat or declined, only 4 were using MAPs)

Bob Jackson on the national stats:

'it's a little bit early to relax and rejoice' - there's a 100 year long downward trend before the latest minor levelling out. 2000-10 is better than the 1990s, but it's still all negative numbers. 

CofE is looking at new membership measures: "church is not an attendance event, its an ongoing community" so things which measure belonging to the community, rather than attendance at events, are closer to the heart of what it is to be the church. 

Trialled in Lichfield: usual Sunday attendance of 26,000, worshipping participants 47,000 - on the new measure the Diocese is 75% bigger than the Sunday snapshot would suggest.

Joiners and leavers data: parishes in Lichfield asked to register membership, numbers joining (and why) and leaving (and why). This showed a net increase of 1300-1400 per year, with 50% of the joiners (roughly 4,000 in total) having no previous church background. Also helped the diocese to see how many were joining/leaving through transfers, births & deaths etc. 'Much more useful, richer statistics.'

There are now 1800 registered Messy Churches as of Feb 2013, the number is almost doubling every year, and there are many unregistered Messy Churches too, Jackson estimated 2 for every registered congregation. Average attendance is 55. That's 100,000 people in the registered ones, but membership will be more than attendance because people don't come every week. So there could be up to 400,000 people involved across the UK. 

Comment: it's a mixed picture. Part of the energy for growth is coming from a dread of decline, rather than a positive theology of growth as the normal business of the church. Will more positive stats and good news lull us back into complacency? Can we find an engine for growth and change that isn't the prospect of imminent death (not a great motivator) but that is more to do with the love of God and the gospel of Jesus?

On a personal level, this thing about being trained to train others well keeps coming up. I'm not, and I know I need to be. 

Diocesan Church Growth Strategies 4: Case Study - Exeter

Part of the Church Growth Strategies conference is an invitation to participating dioceses to talk about what is and isn't going on in their county. Here's a bit about Exeter, which was really encouraging:

Very rural diocese, had first round of Diocesan strategy in 2003, trying to draw 500 parishes & 613 buildings (!) into 150 'mission communities' - clusters of local churches with a mission priority and plan.

2008 set a target of 25% growth in weekly attendance by 2013. There was quite a bit of harrumphing around the Diocese at the time. In the end growth 2008-12 has been 11%, which is short of the target (but, Exeter are the 2nd fastest growing diocese in recent years. Setting a target may have poked the diocesan culture with a sharp stick, but it seems to have been a catalyst for growth)

A Million for Mission: the diocese chose to give away £1m of its historic reserves to churches to use in mission. Grants from £1,000 - £100,000 were offered, in two waves over the course of 9 months in 2011-12. Nearly 200 bids came in, and 87 grants to mission projects were made. "there's nothing like throwing some money at Anglicans to arouse interest"

The projects are currently being reviewed, 12 months in. The first 26 have been looked at: these are engaging with 2,146 brand new people, as a direct result of the projects the money has enabled, that the church had no contact with before. Half of these are children (the majority of the projects were aiming at children or all ages) with roughly 500 youth and 500 adults. Already 60 have made a clear profession of faith (e.g. confirmation, a decision to follow Christ following a course) - considering the time that the process of coming to faith takes, that's a very encouraging start.

Giving money away from the Diocese was a "hugely impacting p.r. exercise". Parishes are so used to the  diocese taking money away from them, the idea that they were being offered money and asked to come up with ideas was a real novelty, and communicated powerfully that the Diocese was on their side. It also got churches thinking about mission that had previously been asleep.

"being cautious with money is not something the Bible exhorts us to do" (Chair of Finance at Exeter. That's the spirit!)

The biggest impact is with families. The Diocese now has 63 Messy Churches.

What next? A new set of priorities from 2013:
 - "create and develop pathways into deeper discipleship and sacramental membership of the church for all those reached through new missional initiatives" i.e. the whole diocese is now addressing the question of discipleship in fresh expressions of church. There's work being done to find the right resources for people on the fringe of faith, Alpha is too far away from the starting point for many.
 - leadership training, including asking CPAS to run the leadership training programme (great call)
 - developing ministry teams in the mission communities, this can't all be done and run by clergy.

The Million for Mission video is an excellent bit of diocesan communication, and an encouraging 6 minutes viewing!

use the diocesan church growth strategies tag below for other posts from the conference, including the ABofC on evangelism and renewal.

PhD in Messy Church

I kid you not.

This project will examine a rapidly-growing phenomenon called 'Messy Church', that is part of the wider movement called 'Fresh Expressions' within the Church of England. The aim is to explore the how Messy Church operates, how it is understood by those who run it, who it attracts, and how it can be understood theologically in terms of accepted models of ecclesiology.....

...Messy Church is an idea conceived by Lucy Moore in 2004 as a way of enabling the church to reach young people and their families more effectively. Children and their parents meet once or twice a month to engage in various creative activities, which often get rather messy… hence the name. There is usually a time of worship and some teaching about the Christian faith. It has grown rapidly, and is now run as part of the Bible Reading Fellowship ministries with over 800 churches registered in the UK alone (see  http://www.messychurch.org.uk/).

and the key line: Messy Church is not new in what it does (it mirrors what many churches do during holiday clubs) but it does represent a sustained effort to change the way that ‘church is done’. It is not necessarily a way of bringing people into traditional church congregations, but sees itself rather as a way of re-defining what church is.

Full details here. Looks quite exciting, actually.

Christian Resources Exhibition Exeter 09

Made it to the South-West CRE on Thursday, and came home with the usual bag full of leaflets, cut price books, and ideas about various things which will probably never happen. 'Highlights' included:

- the clergy catwalk show, mainly for one vestment which, from where we were sitting, looked like it was made out of rubber. Apparently they were all offered £50 to do it. I spent considerably more than that on a new set of shirts, which you'll see on the streets of Yeovil in a few weeks.

- Lucy Moore, speaking about Messy Church, really bubbly and enthusiastic, and great to see how many churches have used this model for reaching out to families and all ages. They have a website, there are now 2 books out, and it's been so popular that Lucy is now employed full time by Barnabas to help Messy Churches around the country.

- Christians Against Poverty have developed a 3-session course which any church can run on money managament and debt issues. Spot on for the current climate, they will train up your church members to run the course, provide the course materials, and then local churches can get on with it. Training day in Bristol on April 25th. More stuff on debt tomorrow.

- The Exeter diocesan beer, which is nearly as good as ours. However they have a really nice logo for their 2009 celebrations (its 1100 years since Exeter and Bath & Wells dioceses were created) which puts ours to shame. In fact, I'm not even sure we've got one! If their cricket team all turn up in June (Church Times cup, much more serious than the Ashes) wearing the black diocesan hoodies then we'll just point and laugh, then ask quietly whether we can have one.

- Street Pastors stall, they did a seminar on Thurs and lots of people who hadn't heard of it were really interested. Our Yeovil Street Pastors started training yesterday. I picked up the Torbay Street Pastors newsletter, which has a statistical summary of what they've done in 18 months or so on patrol, here's a few of them:
Nights 50
Man hours 2356
Flip Flops 191
Emergency Blankets 45
Contacts 3969
Incidents 190
Lives Saved 3

That last one really hit me between the eyes. Fantastic.

Now back to those leaflets....

Messy Church hits Yeovil

Top marks to St. Marks Methodist church in Yeovil, who are launching our first Messy Church, starting Saturday Feb 23rd, and also on 29th March, 19th April, 24th May, 10.30am - 12.30am. contact Anna Baker a-baker@hotmail.co.uk for more details. Starts with 'creative activities', then a short celebration service, then food. I'm a bit reluctant to put this up, for fear it will be swamped with Fresh Expressions tourists from the area, but they did send me some publicity for it.........

Messy Church goes online

Great news: Messy Church now has a website.

Messy Church is what it says on the tin: a form of all-age church which involves plenty of mess, but which is ideally suited for running midweek, Saturday afternoons, after school etc. The 'normal' format includes a craft/activity/play time where parents and carers get stuck in playing with their kids, then a short time of worship, then a meal together. Several churches are picking this up as a monthly outreach, and it's been quite effective in reaching people who normally don't go to Sunday worship. "I don't see it as a stepping stone into Sunday services... it needs to be valid in its own right."

The website has ideas for services, lists of who's trying 'Messy Church', training events, and is a networking site for people who are trying it. One of the holy grails of Fresh Expressions of church is a way of 'doing church' which can be replicated in various settings without masses of effort. It's very hard going completely back to the drawing board with every new form of Christian community, mission or worship.

There's also a book (pictured), details via the website, or via Barnabas in Churches.

Messy Church

One of the holy grails of the emerging church/fresh expressions movement is the search for a new form of church that can be reproduced in many contexts. Yes, part of the ethos of having a mission-shaped church is that you don't predetermine the form that church will take, but allow it to emerge from the process of mission. However, given that we still have some cultural common ground as a nation, it shouldn't be a surprise to find that some things work in several places, not just one. Lets face it, its really hard work to come up with something brand new from scratch, so if there are models which work in other places, then why not try them?

'Cafe church' seems to be one of these - it even has a Wikepedia entry now, and there are now quite a few examples in England and elsewhere. Many other churches (like ours) have a 'cafe service' as part of the normal worship pattern - ours is monthly, and though I wouldn't ever call it 'cafe church' there is an increasing number for whom it's their main diet of Christian worship and teaching for the month.

'Messy Church' is another - it's the title of a book by Lucy Moore, and there's a decent-sized extract here to give you a flavour of it. There is also a clip on the first Fresh Expressions DVD and I'm aware of several churches who already do this, or are thinking about it. The model is based around a semi-structured craft/play time, followed by a 15-20m act of worship, then a meal together, so it can work in churches and in secular buildings. It also works better if done in an afternoon, either during the week or on Sat/Sun, which makes it ideal for reaching people who can't make church on a Sunday morning, or who need an entry point to faith that isn't Sunday-morning shaped.