By Frauke Eicker

Do you remember those 3D images that don’t look like much on the outset, but when you train your eyes to see and relax into them enough a whole new world unfolds before you?  

Well, I found Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) to be rather like that.

I first stumbled across PMC on the CMS website while working as a coach, and I was curious: here was something that sounded different from your standard church course or event. PMC seemed to offer deep challenge as well as the chance to unlock potential within both the church and the community. And all that with attention given to the local context – not one size fits all.

So I offered to volunteer and got to experience first-hand some of the core strengths of PMC:

PMC enables lay leadership

It is fascinating to see: people are coming out of the woodwork even where a church may have struggled to recruit volunteers in the past. Unexpected people suddenly find their place and shine. And they step up and get courageous. Whether that’s the person who served the tea discovering they’re a really good listener and love to talk to people in the community, and weaving God into conversation more easily than they thought possible. Or the family member who tagged along never feeling they fitted in church, but who loves the opportunity to help with food hub deliveries.

God is the invisible motor who releases energy

It is like that moment when your eyes go from straining to see, to relaxing into the 3D image. You can’t force it, but it happens: through PMC people slowly but surely are getting excited about God showing up around them.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but the change through the PMC spiritual practices is tangible. Anna, a PCC member, teacher and mum of three, puts it this way: “You talk about God being with us, and if you really believe that everything changes. Because you’re starting to see him at work everywhere – in your church, outside your church…. It’s a life changing way of thinking.”

And it’s infectious. Like Helen who, with a beaming smile on her face, is able to say “We’re not involved in the area of mission we thought we would be involved with. But this is the mission that God has chosen for us now and we’re happy to walk with him and the people he is choosing for us on a wonderful adventure.”

And that’s the main reason why PMC got me hooked so much that I now do the work for a living!

PMC is transformational – way beyond its finish line

It may sound like a bold claim, but the thing about transformational change is that we don’t even know this way of seeing is possible unless we go there. It shifts the underlying perspective we didn’t even know we had.

PMC has left me changed. I can’t not see the God opportunities in the community around me any more than I can go back to seeing 2D when viewing a 3D stereogram. And I am not alone. Vicar Phil reflects: “I saw formation happening in members of the congregation far more than any sermon I had ever preached or any other course or activity we had undertaken…. These people…would be transformed for the rest of their Christian lives.”

And that, I find, is worth investing in.

If you are curious about PMC, sign up for one of our taster days on 27 or 31 January, 9 or 10 February, or get in touch for a conversation to explore if PMC could offer the perspective change your church needs (subsidies are available).

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The post Time for a fresh perspective? appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Phil Marsh, mission and ministry development officer in Ely diocese, shares his experiences of the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) journey and the transformation it can bring.

By Phil Marsh

I first got involved with PMC 10 years ago, when Nigel Rooms (Partnership for Missional Church leader at CMS) introduced it to Southwell and Nottingham diocese. Our church was invited to be part of the very first cluster.

I’ve been involved since then as a church leader and as a facilitator, and leading the team working with a cluster of churches in Ely diocese.

Something different

I was looking for something different. I was burned out by ministry, by being the service provider, the events manager, the coordinator. Despite having a really collaborative ministry and wanting to raise up a team of lay folk, I just found it like pushing water uphill. And I was figuring there had to be a different way of helping congregations to engage in ministry.

PMC offered a framework that would enable me to lead the congregation in the exploration of rethinking their missional culture without having to put the frame in place as well. It married up with where I was in my thinking and how I was seeking to lead. This isn’t an off-the-shelf programme in a book, this is about building a community of mission-mindedness.

“I don’t know what it will look like”

Everybody wanted to know what it was going to look like in five years’ time. And all the time I was saying, “Well, I don’t really know. Because this is about what God is doing and how God is leading us.”

Three things helped me through that. One was the PMC people leading us as a group of spiritual leaders. They invested in us both at the cluster weekends and in between – checking in and reflecting with us on what was going on. That relational element was key.

The second was the spiritual practices of PMC. They were steadying and centring. They don’t just help us organise the congregation to do reflective and discerning work, they’re also personal spiritual practices.

And the third is the impact I saw on individuals within the congregation. I saw people become much more outward looking. I saw their confidence build and grow.

I saw formation happening in members of the congregation far more than after any sermon I had ever preached or any other course or activity we had undertaken. It wasn’t all done and dusted, but I realised they would be transformed for the rest of their Christian lives. And that seemed worth investing in. Sure, I could put time and energy into getting another project off the ground, but when I leave, those things stop. This work, formed in hearts and minds, remains.

Transformed lives

People challenged their normal activities and thought about the impact beyond themselves. It transformed their decision-making – not just coming to decisions based on argument or persuasion, but having a sense of conviction because God is involved.

I saw people transformed in their lives as well. One individual, when we started the process and were looking for “people of peace”, recognised quite openly that he didn’t have a very wide social circle. But after three or four years involved in PMC, he ended up organising social events because he wanted something he could bring his mates along to.

So somehow in the midst of it, he learned how to build relationship with others.

Shifting the focus

For some, the locus of their sense of mission moved from, “I help the church with its missional activity,” to seeing mission happening among their colleagues or with neighbours and friends. And people really began to have a sense of being involved in God’s mission in the places where they lived and worked. That was the biggest shift, away from, “I am here to help the church with its mission,” towards, “I am actively involved in mission every day of my life.”

Building capacity

It’s broadened my imagination on where and how and in whom God works. It’s changed how I view Christian leadership. I’ve become convicted of the need for us to learn how to build capacity in congregations.

It’s changed my leadership away from needing to be involved in everything to trusting people to work stuff out themselves. And having appropriate spaces for them to reflect and learn and grow.

It’s about discipleship growing in the midst of doing and trying and experimenting. And my role is not necessarily making events happen, but rather to nurture and enable people, and to be okay with the fact that it isn’t always pristine or the way I’d envisage it to be. But that becomes a learning space for people.

I just haven’t seen anything else that has had the same transformational impact on individuals and in congregations. PMC offers a scalability and capacity as well. Because you cease to be dependent upon a few people driving things.

This will help you discern for yourselves the activity of God in your local context – and how God is calling you as a church very specifically at this time in this place to act and engage with his mission in the world.

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Find out more about PMC and how your church could get involved

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The post From burned out to fired up for mission appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).