Dublin Service for Week of Prayer for Christian Unity; Friday Night Live with SAMS; Summer Madness Anniversary Ball; New Derry & Raphoe web site; Seminar Tells of Elements of Church Planting
Dublin Service for Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
The inaugural service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2013 takes place in St George’s and St Thomas’s Church on Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin 1, on Friday January 18 starting at 8.00 pm. This service will be attended by Church leaders from many Christian denominations. The speaker will be the Roman Catholic Revd Professor Frederick Bliss, Professor for Ecumenical Theology (Rome).
Friday Night Live with SAMS
Share with SAMS and be inspired about the work in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Peru. Be encouraged and challenged by a variety of special guests.
Hosted by Revd Andrew Forster with keynote speaker, SAMS Mission Director, Bishop Ken Clarke –
When: Friday 1 February 2013 at 7.30 pm
Venue: Craigavon Civic Centre
For further information please contact:
SAMS House, 1 Irwin Crescent, Lurgan, Craigavon, BT66 7EZ.
Tel: 028 3831 0144
Summer Madness Anniversary Ball
Would you believe it…? It’s been 25 years since Summer Madness began it’s journey in Castle Archdale. Now its organisers are planning to celebrate what God has done through all of years and provide a chance for everyone who has been touched by this ministry to get together and enjoy a few memories and look forward to a few new Mad Decades! The blurb states – “Since then many of us have moved house, embarked on careers, got married, had children, travelled the world, moved away, moved back, changed jobs, changed church… – maybe even changed the world :–) “So, in case the SM office doesn’t have your up–to–date details, don’t be shy about giving us a call or email for more information. “Look forward to seeing you there !”
Venue: La Mon Hotel, Belfast,
Date: 15 February 2013
Cost: Tickets £40 each or a table of 10 for £350
Tel: +44 (0) 28 9067 3379
Email: office@summermadness.co.uk
New Derry & Raphoe web site
BBC Radio Foyle broadcaster, Mark Patterson, kindly helped Bishop Ken Good to declare the new Derry & Rapghoe site, www.derry.anglican.org, live earlier this week at the diocesan office. The Derry and Raphoe website has undergone significant developments in recent years. The new–look site is not only a source for practical information about Derry and Raphoe. It also wants to communicate some of the vision and life of the diocese, as well as being a great way to keep up to date with the latest news.
It was in 1997 that the first Church of Ireland parish website was launched in Castleknock Parish, Dublin. In an era of tablets and smart phones it may not sound like much of a revolution in communication today. Yet many churches remember when the height of communication meant running off parish newssheets on rickety old printers in a cold church hall. Fifteen years on and websites are commonplace for churches and religious organisations.
In launching www.derry.anglican.org Bishop Good said, “Churches are like any other organisation. They need to keep abreast of the latest platforms to get across their message.
The message that St Columba carried lives on and is still as relevant as ever – it’s just that the tools for communicating have changed ever so slightly!”
The new diocesan website is just one part of Derry and Raphoe’s developing online presence. People can also follow it on Facebook and Twitter.
Seminar Tells of Elements of Church Planting
Invitation and mission are vital elements in church planting, a seminar which took place in The Exchange on Dublin’s Gardiner Street has heard. Over 50 people from various parts of Ireland gathered for the seminar on church planting which was delivered by the Bishop of London’s church planting advisor, Ric Thorpe. The seminar was organised by Andrew McNeile of the Diocesan Growth Team and Sean Mullen of Third Space in Smithfield.
Ric Thorpe addressed a wide range of topics which were raised by the audience. These included: how to start a church plant, how to reach young people and bring church in the 21st century, the make up of a church plant, church planting in industrial or workplace settings, how much of the original denomination must be held on to in the church plant, partnership, discipleship, crossing cultural boundaries, the characteristics of a church planter or leadership team, diocesan support, the transition from church plant to mature plant and the theological basis for church planting. Local church planting stories were contributed by the Revd Rob Jones of Holy Trinity Rathmines and Sean Kirkpatrick of Urban Junction in Blackrock.
Ric Thorpe told of his experience of planting a church in St Paul’s Shadwell, a deprived area of East London in the borough of Tower Hamlets. He took 100 people from the parish where he had been a curate, Holy Trinity Brompton in London’s Knightsbridge (which had a community of about 2,500 people at the time) to the new church. Eighty of those already lived in east London while the rest moved there. Since 2004, St Paul’s has planted two other churches and are about to plant a third. Each time they send about 20 people to the new church.
“It is very costly doing church plants. You have to give your best away and you are leading, preaching training and bringing in people all the time. But for the church plant to survive you need to give away your best,” Ric explained. He said that when they plant a new church, they aim to honour the past and try to keep the existing service going for the existing community to help them navigate the change for the present and build for the future.
He then spoke about getting people to come to church and the importance of the invitation. It was necessary to find many different ways of inviting people. These could include courses, parties, services and leaflet drops. However, Ric said it was not enough simply to try to attract people to the church – only a certain amount would respond to your invitation. The next step was to get small groups together to become missional. “When you live in the community you have to bring the word of God to people,” he said adding that they were now planning to go into the housing estates and start prayer groups or coffee mornings – anything to gather people together.
The most important thing when planting a new church is to get a team together, he said. The leadership team should be made of:
· A leader who needs to know they are a leader and take responsibility. This, he said was a spiritual gift which needed to be recognised. “You’ll know they are a leader because people will follow them,” he explained.
· An assistant leader who can keep things going if the leader is on holidays.
· A worship leader who is responsible for half the service as music is important if young people are to be involved.
· Someone whose focus is on youth and children as the most successful long term plants have families in them and if children are not looked after in church then families will go elsewhere.
· An administrator who can take care of operational matters and plan for the future.
The members of the team may not necessarily be paid staff but once the team is formed then they can gather people.
Ric said that an individual could only do a certain amount and it was important to release mission. He said that this meant training missional leaders or discipling others who would in turn disciple more people as St Paul did. He said that any leadership role that existed within the church should have an apprentice which was being trained up so that they can then carry out that role. He said it was also important to have a network for leaders to provide support and to create a learning community. The planter also had to ensure that he or she was accountable, he added.