A CONFERENCE FOR OUR TIME

Church leadership is tough today and Covid has made it even more challenging. However, this moment in history represents an opportunity to take stock of church life and reassess our approaches to ministry and mission. It’s not a new normal but a new opportunity!

So, what skills do we need? What approaches have proven effective? How can we lead the church so that people have a genuine encounter with God in worship, newcomers are welcomed warmly, and we provide contexts where people can engage with the message and person of Jesus? The ‘Leading your Church into Growth’ conference will help answer these questions and equip you with knowledge, inspiration, and skills!

CHURCHES ARE URGED TO SEND A TEAM OF CLERGY AND LAY LEADERS!

WHAT?         ‘Leading your Church into Growth’ is a very well-regarded conference from the UK and is a compulsory course for many clergy there. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to access this conference right here in Christchurch!

WHO?           The presenters are Ven. Rhiannon King and Rev. Harry Steele.

WHEN?         Lunchtime Tuesday 18 (lunchtime)-Thursday 20 October 2022. A detailed programme will be available soon.

WHERE?      The venue will be St Christopher’s Church, 244 Avonhead Rd, Christchurch. The conference will be non-residential. Those requiring a billet please email Veronica Cross on bishopsea@anglicanlife.org.nz.

TOPICS?      Topics covered will include creating a prayerful culture of growth, fruitful evangelism, engaging worship, becoming an inviting and welcome church, and making a pathway for seekers to become disciples.

COST?          The course is $100 per person—we hope parishes will pay for this on behalf of their respective teams. Lunches and refreshments will be supplied as part of the cost.

TO REGISTER CLICK HERE 

Although this conference is not compulsory for clergy, you are urged to attend along with up to two of your lay leaders—they may be Wardens or other key members of your team. This will be an important and very worthwhile professional development and team building opportunity.

WHAT ARE BISHOP’S SAYING?

“For years Leading your Church into Growth has been and remains the best single piece of training that any local church can undertake if it wants to learn more about sharing the great news of Jesus Christ.”

Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool

“In a church culture which is too easily besotted and beguiled by all that is shiny and new Leading your Church into Growth concentrates on the tried and tested putting parish and people, evangelism and service front and center. This is extraordinary help for ordinary churches.”

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, The Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of York

“Leading your Church into Growth is a terrific way of helping parishes think, pray and act in ways which really do lead to growth. It is proving highly valuable for us as a Diocese.”

Rt Revd Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham

BIOS OF OUR PRESENTERS

VEN. RIANNON KING

Rhiannon King has been the Archdeacon of Ipswich (Suffolk) in the Church of England for the last three years. She is also the Director of ‘Inspiring Ipswich,’ an initiative to help 7,500 explore the Christian faith, 1,500 to be nurtured in their new-found faith and to start 25 new worshipping communities. The project is three years into its seven-year term. Rhiannon works with an amazing team and enjoys learning from both the successes and failures of the project.

Before Ipswich, Rhiannon was the Director of Mission for the Diocese of Birmingham where she helped to set up a ‘Growing Younger’ project and a momentum to plant churches (large and small) throughout the diocese. She enjoyed living in an inner-city community during this time. Before this, Rhiannon was the Vicar of a group of semi- rural churches outside Cambridge. Throughout these posts her burning passion is to see people come to faith, live it out in their communities and to see churches flourish and grow.

Rhiannon is married to Philip, a Physicist and Photographer (in his spare time) and she enjoys great food, gripping books, and distracting films.

Rhiannon has been a member of the Leading your Church into Growth speaking team for about ten years and for the last two years has been a trustee of ‘Leading your Church into Growth’ (LyCiG). Ten years ago, she visited Christchurch Diocese for a few weeks and is thrilled to be able to return. She looks forward to learning what God has been doing over that time and can’t wait to get on the plane!

REV. HARRY STEELE

Harry Steele is a priest in the Church of England who has served most, but not quite all, of his 13 years of ordained ministry in the Diocese of Sheffield. He is married to Zoey with two boys. He loves reading novels, cycling, walking, basketball (watching, not playing) and listening to country music. He is also a collector of tattoos and fountain pens.

Harry is currently chaplain to the Bishop of Sheffield. In this role he supports Bishop Pete and the rest of the senior staff team of the diocese as they seek to revitalize the Diocese of Sheffield. Prior to that Harry was half-time Associate Director of Leading your Church into Growth, and a half-time Church Growth Officer in the Diocese of St Albans in the South of England. At that point of his life, in his spare time Harry was also the House for Duty Rector of two very rural, picturesque parishes about 15 miles south of Cambridge. Before that Harry has experience of inner-city estate parishes of a variety of theological traditions when he served as an interim minister. Harry has also grown an Anglo-Catholic parish church. He began his lay and ordained ministry leading a Fresh Expression of Church for young people and young adults: Harry was one of the first ever selected to be an ‘Ordained Pioneer Minister’ in the Church of England.

More than all that though, Harry is convinced that life with Jesus is better than life without Jesus and that the more people who knew that and believed it the better life this side of eternity would be!