Shallow Small groups 2

I was preparing for our young adults weekend weekend away when I saw that there was a follow up (and no doubt you dear reader had spotted it years ago) to the Shallow Small Group video I posted some time ago.

New Year… New opportunities…

Well happy New Year to everyone. It’s a strange time in the land of vicars leading up to Christmas. Not only do we have the busy service schedule (and grabbing time to buy presents, prepare for Christmas etc) but we also have to be thinking ahead to the new year and planning for the year

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Without buildings

I’ve just had an article published about operating as a church without owning our buildings on the Church Growth R&D website. You can read the article here: http://www.churchgrowthrd.org.uk/blog/churchgrowth/without_a_building

Missional Community Groups

One of the most exciting areas that I saw whilst I was on sabbatical was the role that Missional Community Groups play in some of the churches I visited.

Getting down to business – RUSH style

We’ve been in Kakamega now for 10 days and only got one day left here before we head back to Nairobi via Lake Nakuru. It’s been a great reminder out here, as usual, that makes you realise how much we take for granted.

Time in Kenya

Well I arrived in Kenya with three of my daughters to visit the RUSH charity we support last Saturday. It was one of those journeys you would rather forget!

Caring in Clubmoor

My final visit to churches who had received development funding grants was to St Andrews, Clubmoor in Liverpool. Steve McGanity has been vicar at St Andrews since before I was a curate in Haydock!

Glo’ing in Offerton

Glo Church was planted in 2010 out of All Saints, Marple into the Offerton Estate which is a suburb of Stockton, Greater Manchester. This was the 5th church that I visited in my tour of churches who had received funding from the Archbishops Council for building up the church on estates in England.

Spreading out in Warrington

My fourth church isn’t really one of the estates based churches that I am visiting on my sabbatical but I was strongly recommended to see what it was all about, especially as he was using many of the principles Phil Potter advocated when I was his curate in Haydock.

Becoming Jesus shaped in Bradford

Bradford is maybe an unlikely place to find real innovation in the church going on, especially when you consider the large areas of deprivation. When I was here, briefly, in the 1990’s for a college mission there was a feeling of almost hopelessness in the parish I visited and a sense of feeling besieged.