Step 5: Become an inviting and welcoming church

Grow relationship with children, community and contacts

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A session to help churches thinking about church as a family or a community, rather than just a building or a place.

Establishing a family atmosphere

Is your church more like a refrigerator or a radiator?

i) How warm is your church family for you personally?

ii) How warm is your church family for new people?

 

Hospitality

In the Gospel stories Jesus seems to spend quite a bit of time eating and drinking, either welcoming or being welcomed. 

What place does welcome and hospitality have in your church?

For more information see the Everybody Welcome Course 

Maintaining effective pastoral care

How is your church helping people with the ups and downs of life, including marriage breakdown, poverty and bereavement?

How is your church helping people with the ups and downs of faith, including depression, illness and doubt?

How good are we at going after the lost sheep?

 

Children and teenagers

How central to the whole church are your children and young people?

How often are they discussed at a PCC/Church leadership meeting?

What part of the whole church budget goes to children and young people?

How much do they contribute to the life of the church?

 

Beware the Pied Piper Phenomenon

Many churches suffer from the 'Pied Piper Phenomenon'.

These churches have a lot of younger children involved in Sunday School, Parent and Toddler groups and after school clubs etc. |
As the children get older, they often disappear: to the point where many now think it is normal for teenagers to leave the church and their Christian beginnings.

(LyCiG Manual - Page 63)

 

And then, who can we invite to things that we are doing as a church?  Who do we know?

Perhaps we have more contacts than we realise.

Mapping our Galilee (a reference to the different villages that Jesus used to visit as He taught in their synagogues, proclaimed the Kingdom and healed the sick) is a LyCiG exercise helping us to think through these things.

 

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