GodSend Dot Intro

It is mainly for two groups of people:

• Diocesan officers with a parish enabling role, and mentors/coaches.
• Incumbents and their lay or ordained colleagues.

Diocesan officers and mentors/coaches can use it with:

• • Incumbents/parishes wanting to know what new worshipping communities/fresh expressions of church/parish-based church planting etc involve. (Language varies!) For example:

During a vacancy an archdeacon invites the PCC to discuss one or two of the 15-minute videos. The hope is to include starting a new worshipping community in the parish profile.

• • Incumbents interested in introducing these new Christian communities in their parishes. For example:

A diocese appoints a mission enabler to support parishes in growing new worshipping communities. The enabler visits a parish to learn more about what they are doing. The first visit is all about listening and establishing a relationship. The enabler asks whether the incumbent would like a second meeting to discuss whether the diocese can support the parish in any way. At this second meeting, the enabler mentions new worshipping communities and they watch the 15-minute taster video together. The incumbent asks the PCC to discuss several of the other videos. The mission enabler returns and accompanies those interested through the process of starting a new community.

• • Incumbents and parishes wanting to include new Christian communities in their mission action plans. For example:

A diocese invites parishes to review their mission action plans, and to include new worshipping communities in their thinking. Parishes discuss some of the Godsend.Intro videos and share their reflections with the mission enabler.

• • In a Chapter or Deanery. For example:

An Area Dean wants to support the diocesan objective of multiplying new worshipping communities. S/he shows the 15-minute taster at a Chapter or Deanery Synod meeting and invites parishes to use the resource in their PCCs, Standing Committees or Church Wardens meetings.

A diocesan enabler wants to encourage churches in an area to multiply new worshipping communities. The enabler gathers interested local clergy and lay leaders, shows them the taster video, invites them to use the resource in their parishes, and welcomes them into a learning community with other local churches to explore how to grow new worshipping communities.

• • In a wider diocesan context, such as ministerial training. For example:

A diocesan training department uses the resource as part of curates’ IME training. The resource is also used in training lay and self-supporting ordained ministers.

Ministers can use Godsend.Intro with:

• • Their church wardens, standing committee or PCC. For example:

A minister shows the 15-minute taster video to church wardens. One of them looks at the other videos (all no more than 15 minutes). They agree to use the session, ‘We must do something, but what?’ at the next PCC. From the menu of next steps, several PCC members offer to do another session and report back.

• • Lay people thinking of planting on to a new housing estate (or elsewhere). For example:

The sessions exploring ‘What’s it about?’ or ‘We want to do something but what?’ would be a good starting point.

• • Leaders prepared to develop further an existing outreach initiative. For example:

A parish has a thriving coffee morning. The minister meets with its leaders and invites them to do the session, ‘Won’t it be difficult to share our faith?’ They select a next step from the menu of ideas, and eventually add an optional ‘spiritual extra’ to their coffee morning.

• • As a Lent course. For example:

A minister develops a Lent course based on the four sessions. The course is introduced on Sunday service through a sermon that draws on the taster video and the first two chapters of the Godsend book.

• • People disillusioned with Sunday church. For example:

A minister offers a series of evenings entitled, ‘If Sunday church doesn’t work for you…’, and uses the taster video and four sessions. The theme is, ‘If Sunday church doesn’t work for you, might you and some of your friends who don’t currently attend church “do church” differently at a different time of the week.’ (Anecdotal evidence suggests that those who are dissatisfied with Sunday church are most likely to start new worshipping communities.)

It is based on the idea that, like any human group, every congregation is bound to leave some people out. It will be unavailable to people:

• Who cannot access the congregation because they are housebound, disabled or live too far away.
• Who cannot come when the congregation meets because of family or work commitments.
• Who are put off by the style of the congregation - its music for example, or it’s too formal, or “it’s too middle class”.
• Who don’t share the congregation’s agenda to worship Christ.

Godsend.Intro will help you sensitively and practically to love people for whom Sunday church is out of reach, to explore spirituality with them, and perhaps even to start a new worshipping community alongside and connected to your existing congregation.

It consists of the following:

• Taster video: “What’s it about?”.
• “We must do something - but what?” Video + discussion questions.
• “How do we start?” Video + discussion questions + handout.
• “Won’t it be difficult to share our faith?” Video + Soulspace + discussion questions.
• “How do new worshipping communities integrate with the parish?” Video + discussion questions.
• Accompanying handouts/slides.

These sessions can be used as one-offs, they can be combined in twos and threes, they can be taken in any order, and they can be of any length. You can:

• Just show the video - about 15 minutes.
• Use the video and some/all of the questions (or make up your own) - 30 - 45 minutes.
• Use the video, the questions and the Soulspace (or another) worship resource - up to an hour.

There is a supporting book: Michael Moynagh, Godsend.  A handbook for new Christian communities, available from Amazon (bulk orders get a discount through godsend.cloud). But you don’t need the book to use the resource.

Most important, Godsend.Intro is free!