Jenan Taylor
4 September 2024
Melbourne churches will be offered the opportunity to learn how to grow thriving congregations at an upcoming seminar.
Revive & Renew: Strategies for Church Revitalisation will explore church revitalisation as an option through which churches can use their existing resources, and external relationships, to re-energise their congregations.
Organiser Canon for Church Planting the Reverend Bree Mills said the seminar aimed to broaden expectations of what revitalisation involved, and how fruitful this could be.
Canon Mills said many people tended to think reviving a church was about the individual church doing more ministry, but revitalisation emphasised that sometimes collaborative work was needed to flourish.
She hoped this would encourage congregations to enter into partnerships with other churches in their revitalisation efforts.
Canon Mills said the seminar would discuss different types of revitalisation including replanting, a process in which churches replanted into other churches to stimulate their congregations.
She said the gathering would look at partnerships that worked very well in the United Kingdom under this model.
Read more: Church planting is pivotal to our future. Here’s how it can flourish
Canon Mills said guest speaker the London diocese’s Bishop Ric Thorpe would discuss his wealth of experience with replanting and what work needed to be done to be successful.
St Alban’s and St Augustine’s Merri-bek vicar the Reverend Angela Cook will be part of a panel of people at the seminar sharing their revitalisation accomplishments.
Ms Cook said she was keen for people to hear that smaller churches could get thriving congregations through strategic thinking.
She said St Augustine’s was an example of an initially smaller church that wanted to focus on its children’s programs, but realised it needed to work with neighbouring parishes to grow.
Ms Cook said she was also looking forward to easing people’s worries about changing their congregational make up.
“People get older and things get harder, and often people think, ‘We’ll keep doing what we’re doing and we’re comfortable’, but change is constant and present, whether you like it or not,” Ms Cook said.
“We’re trying to give people a vision that there’s a different sort of change that might actually bring growth and health and life.”
The seminar will take place on Monday 30 September at St Paul’s Cathedral.
To register and find out more, see here.
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