News

Music and Liturgy for Epiphany

14th November 2022

Commercial: What kind of business?

23rd October 2022

There are broadly three kinds of businesses available to congregations that wish to pursue commercial engagement in the spirit envisaged in this chapter...

Compassion: Shifting from Food bank to Food co-op

22nd October 2022

How to shift from food banks to food cooperatives? An informal consortium of church-based food banks and alternative food providers in Hull, together with similar consortia in other parts of the country maintain that a form of self-generated ‘Community Cash First’ grants system is also needed to make the ‘Cash First’ approach sustainable in the long run and end the need for food banks in the first place. In order to achieve this, they are at varying stages...

Congregation: Village churches

21st October 2022

How many times have you heard (or said yourself), “If only we had a kitchen and a toilet, we could...”? Whilst it’s fair to say that modern facilities can make a difference to the overall comfort of the church, having a toilet and/or kitchen will not in themselves bring people in. People come through the church doors primarily because of relationships, not facilities. Those relationships will have many different faces...

Congregation: Abundance in context...

21st October 2022

HeartEdge 4 Cs can be "explored from within existing churches and organisations which have a clear sense of their own historical, geographical and social context. The emphasis here is not on creating new churches, but on opening existing churches up to breathe in the new life of the Spirit as they engage with the realities within which they find themselves..."

Music and Liturgy for Advent

17th October 2022

Congregation: Annual Report - Six Top Tips

22nd September 2022

What if the annual report was less report and more a promotional opportunity - a resource to explain your mission and impact? The annual report can feel like a clinical statement of facts and figures that satisfy a regulatory requirement; boring to write, boring to read. If you treat the exercise as something akin to creating a brochure showing all the great ministry you’ve done this year. Explaining the impact you’ve made to your congregation and to your community, you switch from reporting facts to sharing good news about your church and community.

Book extract: "Humbler Faith, Bigger God - Finding a Story to Live By" by Sam Wells

20th September 2022

"... First position is, there’s a reality that’s deeper, truer, and more permanent than this one. Before about three hundred years ago, this was a largely uncontroversial assumption. So much of life was unex- plained, everyone took for granted that it was controlled by unseen forces. But in recent centuries the chain of cause and effect has linked so much of the known universe that it’s become tempting to think it can gobble up everything. When we use the phrase “people of faith,” this sense of a beyond is pretty much the only thing all such people can agree on."

Congregation: Growing partnership

20th September 2022

“Turf and terms” are great concepts for kick-starting a church discussion around working in partnership – what it might mean for the church and what people think of this. Here I say a bit about this and describe what partnership looks like for a church creating a community garden on the church’s turf (literally) and on shared terms. Many churches engaging in compassion, culture or commerce initiatives are seeing the benefits of working in partnership with individuals, groups and organisations outside the church. Partnership can look very different depending on

Commercial: Pathways out of poverty through dressmaking

17th September 2022

Dorcas Dressmaking Project supports people out of situations of poverty by providing skills training, resources and pastoral care. Their online training platform enables them to reach people wherever they are, even in remote parts of the world. They offer training, raise funds to provide equipment and support a network of volunteers building craft hubs in local churches...

Culture: Discovering the art of natural dyes, fabrics, and textiles

17th September 2022

Sew and Grow is one of a bunch of Milton Keynes Christian Foundation’s social enterprises - staffed by young people not in education, training or employment who gain essential work experience and qualifications as they hand-craft beautiful textile products. Sew & Grow develops beautiful and useful textile products utilising natural dyes, and repurposed materials where possible...

"At the Gates: Disability, Justice and the Churches" - Book extract

25th July 2022

Our [church] cultures grow out of the stories we tell. As churches tell stories — or stay silent — about access, participation and the sins of ableism, they tell disabled people whether or not we are imagined and wanted among their communities…