Partnership for Missional Church resources

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Articles

Books

We Are Here Now

A new missional era

This ground-breaking book introduces a new era of mission – discovering our partners – experimenting – visioning for embodiment – learning and growing – mentoring and sharing.

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Dwelling in the Word

A pocket handbook

Experience and adopt for your congregation this tested habit for deep listening to God, one another, and your neighbour. Live into a Bible passage and see how it shapes your group’s imagination and vision for God’s mission through your church.

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Grove Books related to PMC, by Nigel Rooms and Pat Keifert

Spiritual Leadership in the Missional Church

A systems approach to leadership as cultivation

How can leaders hold their Christian community in tension with the needs of newcomers and the unchurched, and remain open to the missional opportunities that lie beyond the church walls?

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Forming a Missional Church

Creating deep culture change in congregations

Change is a certainty in the life of any church, although it may be slow in coming to pass. This study argues that far from being resisted, change must be embraced if congregations are to become missional communities.

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Missional Church

What does good look like?

is helpful guide invites congregations to discover where God is already at work in their local context, and to take up the call to catalyse in the world a glimpse of God’s future.

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Missional Church: stories

Some stories from participants in Partnership for Missional Church, supplementary to Missional Church: What Does Good look like?

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The post Partnership for Missional Church resources appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

About Partnership for Missional Church

We’ve all recently lived through so much change in so little time. The question is, will we lean into this change and join in with what God is doing in our communities? Or will we avoid it, and miss the chance to be part of something greater?

Change can be liberating – and scary. Especially for churches.

The PMC journey invites churches to take a look at ourselves, our communities and our calling, and to step out in deep, radical faith to discover what God is up to around us and how we can be part of it.

If this sounds a bit unsettling, that’s pretty much the point. Thankfully, you won’t be alone.

Churches navigating change. Together.

Each church that joins in PMC forms part of a cluster of 10-15 churches who share the journey, learning together in community while applying the underlying PMC principles to their unique context.

Churches of all kinds are encouraged to join: big, small, urban, rural – and all denominations are welcome.  Because PMC does not offer a cookie-cutter approach, every congregation’s story will be unique.

And for those in areas of greater deprivation, there is even funding support available (more below).

Empowering every member

PMC is serious about setting all God’s people free into God’s mission – not just clergy. Each participating PMC church sends a mix of clergy and lay people in teams to join the process, which is guided by CMS PMC facilitators either in person or online.

A unique process

Real change and true growth take time. The full PMC process is a three-year journey including learning six spiritual practices, but churches are welcome to sign up for just the first year initially to test the waters.

Year one focuses on listening, paying attention and discovering where God is already at work. It’s about discerning God’s unique gifting and call for your church in its community.

Year two moves into experimenting. Based on what churches discover about themselves and their communities in phase one, the next step is to take some mission risks and learn from what works well and what doesn’t. This is all done with people in the local community, not just ‘for’ them.

Year three is about creating a sustainable vision for the church that can be lived out by everyone in the congregation.

Get in touch with us to find out more details about the process.

Seeing real change

Browse these pages and you can read a comprehensive PMC impact report and lots of testimonials.

In summary, PMC reignites people’s faith and deepens their discipleship as they discover God at work all around them. Church members are inspired to connect with their local community and empowered to live and share their faith. Participating churches have seen growth in worship attendance and numbers of people turning to Jesus.

Furthermore, they’ve seen many people who aren’t clergy become empowered for leadership and get more involved, which helps churches thrive.

And together, churches have developed creative, innovative and effective ways of making God’s dreams for their communities come true. Read some of their stories.

So if you are serious about wanting to see real transformation in your church and community, if you’re ready to delve deeper into God’s word and if you are willing to trust God as your primary partner in mission, then get in touch with Church Mission Society.

It’s a time of great change. Let’s face it – and embrace it – together.

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The post About Partnership for Missional Church appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

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).

Chris Easton, lay pioneer minister at Bestwood Park church, an Anglican-Methodist church on a large outer estate in Nottingham, shares the long-term impact of participating in the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) journey.

By Chris Easton

I joined the church 10 years ago, when they were exploring being involved in PMC. It wasn’t always easy as one of the first churches in the UK to participate, but it has left us equipped to engage with our community, and we’re still using those principles.

There are 25,000 people living on three estates here: Bestwood Park, Top Valley and Bestwood estate. These communities are all in the bottom 10 per cent on the index of multiple deprivation, with issues typical on outer estates and a lack of hope.

The PMC journey centres around spiritual practices and for me, coming in and trying to do pioneering mission work, it helped to focus on what we were trying to do in being more missional and more engaged with the community.

Transformation through listening

The practice of “Dwelling in the Word” (an approach to reading a passage from the Bible to help us listen to one another and to God) was quite transformational. It was empowering people to feel that they’ve got a voice. It got everyone engaged with God’s Word, and then everyone listening to each other and trying to discern what God might be saying through each other.

The spiritual practices also encouraged us as a church to talk about God more, to ask God, “Where are you at work?” In our services, we have times to share where we have seen God at work. It builds up people in their Christian faith to recognise that God is at work and to have greater expectation that God is going to do more.

PMC really helped me to think about how we want to be a church where people get involved in worship. Our services are very interactive, even our prayers. We ask, “What are we going to pray for today?” and we pray about it.

As a church we’ve been growing. When I started, it was a small elderly congregation, whereas now we’re about 75 adults and 40 children and young people. We’ve grown in different ways and part of it is learning from these spiritual practices.

People of peace

Another key element of PMC is to do things in partnership, with “people of peace”. We’ve come across people in our community who we partner with – continuing long after we finished the PMC journey.

A few years ago we heard about people being isolated, and felt God was prompting us. We held a community meeting and asked, “What are your experiences?” Everyone said this is a massive issue. We looked at models for social eating, for people to eat together. And then we asked, “Where should we do it?” The community said, “Let’s do it at your church.” So in June 2017, we launched Bestop Kitchen, a weekly social eating event. It grew from the first week – when we were overwhelmed by 50 people – to gathering 80 or 90 people every week.

During the pandemic we have delivered meals to vulnerable adults – between March 2020 and May 2021, we delivered 9,800 meals. We also delivered food parcels, in partnership with our local primary schools. They knew families who were struggling, so we supplied food parcels to the school and they got them out. We had local police helping deliver the meals, local organisations, the local churches, so it was real partnership.

People have come to Bestop Kitchen and just felt valued, loved and supported. And even with the food deliveries, people have felt cared for. The meals come in a brown paper bag and one recipient described it as her “weekly hug in a bag”.

Asking what God wants

We’re more prayerful. We try to turn our attention to God, listen to God, hear what he is saying. Our church leadership teams are brilliant and we spend probably a third of our meetings in prayer – that changes the dynamic. We’re asking not what we think, but what does God want for us in this?

Three years ago we were struggling to fit everyone in to our building for Sunday services. The building was originally built in the 1960s, and the plan was to build a church on the land in front, but it never happened. And so we discerned that we could start exploring making the church bigger. We went down one way of doing it, we prayed about it. We got architectural students involved helping design the project. It was amazing. We got our amazing plan, which we all felt was right, and we felt this could be quite exciting. It was going to cost a couple of million pounds, which seemed impossible.

Then we were praying about it, and in January of last year the council came to us and said, “Actually, the building next door has become available. Would the church be interested?” And this building is more than we could wish for and it’s a fraction of the price. When we brought the idea to the church leadership team, they all felt this is God. It was a real sense of this is God, there wasn’t “I think this”. There was a sense that this is God’s doing, because we’ve had this expectancy that God is going to work, we’re going to see things happen, see answers to prayer. God had something else in store, we were just faithful and it came one step at a time, God was taking us on this journey. And we’re hoping to get the keys in September.

Reflecting our community

Our leadership team is really diverse – that’s something we’ve worked on, moving towards being a more diverse church and more intercultural. Our community was changing and our church was growing. And we needed to evolve because our leadership needed to represent that.

I don’t think that because we’ve done PMC we’ve become more diverse – but because of the impact of PMC, of us listening to God and how he’s shaped us, more local families have come to join us. We actively looked at how to encourage them to become part of our church council, leadership teams, youth work and so on.

Recently a woman whose family joined the church said that when she came through the doors, there were people who looked like her – as soon as she came through the door there was somebody at the front saying welcome to church and preaching that Sunday and that had an impact.

Continuing to listen

Over the past 18 months, we’ve been encouraging the church to look for opportunities to listen to people. It might be just smiling at someone on the street, saying hello, or it might be a bit deeper, listening and offering to pray with someone.

One man, who has been coming for a little while, gets buses everywhere and just asks God, “Who do you want me to encourage today?” One day he was at a bus stop and there was a woman who looked quite sad. He said, “Are you all right?” She burst into tears. She had lost her husband the week before. This man listened to her and said, “I’m really sorry. I’ll be praying for you, that you know that God is with you in your pain.” He wouldn’t describe himself as the most eloquent of people, but that’s God using him. He shared that story, and he said, “Chris, that’s God using me isn’t it?”

It’s been amazing. There’s a phrase, right the start of the PMC journey: “Be detectives of divinity”. It’s just asking God, “Where are you at work, what are you doing?” And really listening to our communities, trying to serve the need and partnering with others. We’re trying our best to listen. We probably do it quite badly, but we’re just trying to listen.

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See our pages on Partnership for Missional Church for more impact and to find out what subsidies are available.

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The post Listening for the long haul 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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One of the paradoxes of being a Christian in the Western world is that there is freedom of religion, yet it seems many Christians resist the idea of practising their faith in ways that can be observed publicly.

By Nigel Rooms, Partnership for Missional Church leader at Church Mission Society

Faith, a private matter

There is a long story behind how this situation has come about. During the Enlightenment period (approx. 1650–1950) in Europe (and later North America and in other “Western” places) the individual, rational, thinking mind became of the highest public value. The scientific method, which claimed to be objective, reigned supreme. So, facts (which can be proven by the scientific method) and values (which can’t) came to be separated. Facts were allowable in public, values in private.

Religious faith (despite many valiant attempts over the centuries) cannot be proven via the scientific method. And so religion must be relegated to the private sphere, which is why you often hear politicians say that religious people should not interfere in public matters. Incidentally, some people think this is also why women tend to be more religious than men – since men have, until very recently, controlled the public world of “hard” facts, while women concentrated on the private, family home and “soft” values.

So, with some notable exceptions, the Christian Church in the West has given in to this “social imaginary” of how things are organised – faith is considered a private matter. In the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) process, we help congregations take a close look at themselves, their beliefs and actions, kind of like a mirror. The data from across the UK shows that the kind of congregations we work with exhibit quite high levels of individual and privatised spirituality within the boundary of the church.

And some (though fewer) people are involved as individuals in their wider community outside the church.

However, churches rarely act in public in the name of their church. We tend to exhibit our faith when we go to church, but for the rest of the time it largely remains hidden. We are rarely caught being Christian out in public.

Simple steps

I’m not arguing for forcing our faith to the surface, turning every conversation we have to being about Jesus. This might work for some, but to many these days such an approach comes across as false and overbearing. Somewhere in between hiding our faith when we are in public and imposing it upon others is a way of being Christian that pays attention to what God is doing. God is always at work, creating a trustworthy world, always forming kind, loving, gentle community. After all, that is who God, as Trinity, is.

In our world today, there are many forces at play which block people’s view of God at work in our world. Here are just three:

• How human behaviour is destroying our planet through climate change and species extinction.
• How peoples are being driven apart through nationalism and isolationism.
• How the “bubble-fication” of our lives prevents community, since we stay within our chosen group of people that look, think and act like us.

I suggest that in such a world, it is perhaps easier than it used to be to be caught being Christian in public. So how to go about it? In the PMC process we have six mission practices, two of which are particularly relevant. The first is Dwelling in the World, where a local church identifies a public “Kingdom”-type issue that God is calling and sending the church to address, such as poverty or loneliness.

As part of this practice, church members are encouraged and equipped to form relationships with concerned people outside the church (we call them “people of peace”). We show them how to set up and have one-to-one meetings with these people of peace. When enough of these people outside the church have been identified, a bridge-community can form which acts together on this public issue.

When something good happens in that action, which looks like the activity of the God who is always at work, it is pointed out by church members, so that everyone else has the chance to notice God at work. For example, a Christian might simply look at some progress made and say something like, “Looks like God to me.” We call this second practice Announcing the Kingdom. This is one simple way in which the body of Christ and her individual members can overcome the public/private split, take up an authentic role in society and be caught being Christian.

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The post How to… be caught being Christian appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Wendy Cranefield was drawn in from the fringe to the centre of church life through the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) journey. Now a key leader of St Wilfrid’s, Wilford, near Nottingham, she explained to Frauke Eicker how the process has changed the way she sees the world…

How did the journey start for you?

I didn’t really get involved with church because we’ve got a son who’s got medical problems. So I felt that I couldn’t. Then I became involved in PMC and it gave me meaning.

Then I got involved with the different aspects of church and became a churchwarden. Which probably wasn’t what I was anticipating, but it was building upon what we had learnt through the process and how we know that God’s gone before us. And that having a child with a disability – which can be an isolating place – doesn’t stop you from doing what God wants you to do. It gave me the freedom to actually realise that the world was still my oyster in regards to God!  

If you were to describe PMC to someone who has never really heard about it, how would you describe it?  

It’s looking at your faith in a different way. It’s like putting on a new pair of glasses and everything is becoming so much clearer and visible. You know, we are called to be disciples. And the image for me of doing mission was to go out and talk God – and know what I’m supposed to be saying!

PMC gave me the freedom of being me. Warts and all. You know, this is who I am. This is what you see.

And those sort of conversations then just happen because you become friends with people. And God has called you to those certain people.

So there’s a lot of freedom in PMC. I thought, I can see who God is calling me to. I can be who I am. The mask has come down. I can go and ‘be God’ in whatever situation, wherever I am.   

Sounds like quite a transformation for you?  

I think it was for all the family actually. We look for the activity of God, we look for where God is calling us to, in every part of our lives.

How would you say has PMC enabled you to notice God at work and adapt during this season?

During Covid it’s been hard at times and we’ve had to really dig deep. But I think you can plot where God has gone before you when you look back.

During Covid, people have become a lot more aware of their own communities. We’ve had someone from the church lead the Covid-help group within Wilford straightaway as we went into lockdown. And she has partnered with someone from the local community group. The conversation was more about “How are we going to continue our connectivity?” not “What can we put on? What can we do?”

I think there is a sense of God is at work in us, even in this vacancy – we currently have no clergy. I think we were very much tuned in already – we felt that it wasn’t a parish that was going to stand still because we know that God doesn’t stand still.

I like to plan Christmas. And without clergy there, Christmas is quite difficult to organise. So, in September I got people together who would be interested in doing a Christingle service, because we hadn’t got a vicar. And it was amazing. We had a team leading the service who were on the fringe of church, who haven’t been regularly involved in church for a long time. And together we worked and we did it and it was brilliant. And these are the people that came to mind when we were looking at what we could do for our children’s work online now. And even extending further, we’re looking at what we’re going to do for Christmas, because we realise that it will be a different Christmas this year and it won’t be in church because we can’t fit many people in.

With the Covid crisis, how you have noticed God at work in your community during this time?

A member of the local community had got in touch with us and said, “What are you doing in this care home? It’s a new care home. My mother’s moved in.” I then partnered with the other church locally and said to the new vicar there, what are we going to do about this?

And then we went into Covid. We wanted them to know that we cared so we sent chocolates and straight away it was on Facebook: “Thank you, Wilford Church. Thank you for caring for us.”

I then got the name of a person at the care home and I connected with her and said, “What can we do as a church to support you?” And she said, “We love letters.” So I emailed the congregation: “Would you be willing to send letters?”

There was a particular person that came back to me and said, “You’ve really struck a chord with what I’ve been thinking. I am retiring in the next year and my passion is care homes, because my father had dementia. I want to be that person that connects with the care homes.”

Members of the congregation had gone and sung a blessing to the local hospital on the last time we were clapping for the NHS. We were having virtual coffee one morning and someone said: “Wouldn’t that be lovely to do that for our local care homes?” So the guy who was the link said, “Well, I actually need to go and talk to them about this. Is it what they want?” So he went back and they said yes – but we’d love to sing lots of songs. And it’s developed from there.

Because of the weather we haven’t been able to do the singing straightaway, because they want the residents to be able to come and sit outside so that they can join in. But his means we will have been able to practise more of a repertoire that they can join in with.

We have a newsletter that goes out weekly now. It’s about sharing those stories to encourage each other and to make people stop and think – where have we seen God working? Where are we announcing the kingdom? So, please pray that continues and that we can really build upon those stories.

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Watch videos from several PMC participants and find out more about the process.

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The post Like putting on new glasses appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Former SAMS mission partners Carolyn and Mark Gilmore first hit on the idea of applying the Partnership for Missional Church process in Uruguay during a visit to Montevideo in 2017.

Partnership for Missional Church is a three-year process designed to help churches find freedom in God’s mission through seeing where God is at work in their community and how they can join in.

Familiar with the PMC process through their work in Nottingham, something prompted them to consider whether the same principles could be applied in another diocese close to their heart.

Carolyn and Mark had been mission partners in Uruguay during the 1990s and on to 2003. When they returned in 2017, they discovered that the Anglican Church was facing huge challenges with greatly reduced membership and a lack of community.

La Espronceda: conspicuously different

However, there was a vibrant, community-based, mature church doing amazing work with vulnerable children and young people in their barrio in Montevideo: La Espronceda. What made this church different?

On reflection, Carolyn and Mark could see a lot of parallels between the PMC approach to the parish work in Nottingham and La Espronceda’s work in their local community.

Wider research suggested PMC might be a good fit for the Anglican Church in Uruguay, providing a framework in which the church could begin again and reboot itself. But at the time, the lack of leadership and unity in the diocese made it seem like wishful thinking.

Starting small

Even so, when they returned to the UK, Carolyn and Mark asked Nigel Rooms, leader of PMC in the UK, whether PMC materials were available in Spanish. They weren’t. Carolyn and Mark explored the possibility of translating some of them and put together a basic plan of how to introduce the principles in Uruguay. The leaders of La Espronceda church were keen to sign up to the project to help trial the material and also to help adapt it for Uruguayan culture.

In September 2018, Carolyn and Mark returned to Montevideo on sabbatical, ready to introduce Dwelling in the Word, one of the PMC practices, to La Espronceda at a church retreat.

But in typical Latin fashion, at the last minute that idea soon became a suggestion to lead the whole retreat. This opened the door to introduce the theological and missiological framework in which PMC operates as well as the six spiritual practices which underpin the process, with a special focus on Dwelling in the Word.

Immediate impact

La Espronceda took to it like ducks to water. They were looking for God’s direction and PMC provided them with the framework in which to continue their journey.

As well as falling in love with the practice of Dwelling in the Word, they felt that the underpinning principles articulated their own missiology in a unifying way.

It also had an immediate effect: they particularly responded to the idea of partnering with local “people of peace”, and changed a planned mural design (above) to include the local community and reflect not just church life but the life of the neighbourhood.

More recently, Carolyn and Mark shared their experience of PMC in Spanish with the new Bishop of Uruguay, Daniel Genovesi, and his wife, Mechi Tarragona, a CMS local partner.

Bishop Daniel and Mechi were very taken with the PMC process and could immediately see how it would bring something very positive into the Uruguayan context.

As such, they asked Carolyn and Mark to hold a workshop with some key leaders, consisting of a very quick overview of PMC and a Dwelling in the Word session.

People loved it and there was a real sense of God’s presence in the room in what felt like a rebirth for the Anglican Church under Daniel’s inspired leadership. They want more.

Thinking big

Looking ahead, Carolyn and Mark are planning a three-year process working alongside CMS and churches in Uruguay to implement the PMC process.

This will hopefully include La Espronceda and the Anglican Church working together on the process and inviting other churches to participate.

Having worked with Nigel and CMS on the relevant material, the idea is that Carolyn and Mark will go every six months to present the next stage of the process and do additional translation of material to leave things in the hands of Uruguayan leaders, being on hand to help via Skype in the interim periods.

The idea is that by the end of three years, the Uruguayan church leaders who have been involved in the process will be able to share the process anywhere on the continent.

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The post PMC: From Nottingham to Uruguay appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

A church in Durham diocese welcomed 1,200 people from the local community to an unusual event over four days in June 2019 – a beer festival in partnership with local businesses.

Members of St Mary’s Norton welcomed those attending and spent hours in conversation with parishioners who had not been to the church for decades. On a more “normal” weekend of holding weddings in the church, they might have had the chance to meet around 150 people and spend a few minutes chatting – so what changed?

St Mary’s was one of a group of churches in Durham diocese to embark upon a new journey with Church Mission Society through the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) process. This is a three-year journey of listening to both God and the local community, experimenting and taking risks in mission, then discerning how God is calling the church forward in his mission in the community.

In the listening phase, St Mary’s undertook a community questionnaire surveying how their community viewed the church. Although St Mary’s was “known and loved” among some respondents, others shared that it was “inconsequential and irrelevant to the life of the village”.

The congregation became acutely aware of the disconnect between the daily life of Norton, a village to the north east of Stockton-on-Tees with café bars and boutique shops, and the “chocolate box” Grade 1 listed church building.

In response the congregation took these perceptions seriously and reconsidered their core vision and values. After spending time renewing their discipleship, prayer and teaching, they have begun to reimagine how to share the gospel in their context.

Brewing up new ideas

One outcome of this was their “Love Norton Advent Trail”, in which local businesses hosted windows to tell the nativity story illustrated by local school children – and this proved to be a success with more than 30 local businesses getting involved. The vicar, Rev Martin Anderson, commented: “This enabled us to recognise that people were open for the church to offer something of value and substance, and provide a real focus within the community.”

As the church were considering how to build on this, Martin heard of other churches hosting real ale festivals – and he invited the PCC to consider something similar at St Mary’s.

Conversations soon followed with Three Brothers Brewing Co., a local business with strong church connections, and relevant dates were agreed. A small diocesan mission grant enabled the church to buy event carpet to cover an area of the nave floor, and church members assisted with moving furniture and distributing promotional leaflets.

Alongside the beer, local food businesses participated (including a sweet stall for children) and had to restock their supplies as demand was so great. Local musicians played each evening.

Gracious hospitality

The team were aware that not everyone would be in favour of the church hosting a beer festival, and they did receive some negative feedback. However, Martin reflected: “It created another space for mission, where conversations and relationships could be renewed, and parishioners given the opportunity to connect with the church in an informal way.

“Using our buildings creatively removes barriers that so many still feel about church. When our doors are open, and something dynamic is going on, we can meet people on the margins and reach out to those who for whatever reason feel excluded or uncertain about our welcome.”

The congregation seek to be like the 72 sent out by Jesus in Luke 10, proclaiming that “the Kingdom of God is near” among the many people around them who long for peace in their lives. By offering gracious hospitality through events like the festival, relationships can be forged and deeper conversations begin.

At the festival, members of the congregation met parishioners who had been married or baptised in the church 30 or 40 years before, but hadn’t been back until now.

A couple who had been married in the church six years earlier organised childcare for the Saturday so they could attend for their wedding anniversary, and were delighted to meet new people and share their story over a pint of real ale!

Church members heard stories of pain and conflict in family life and met those with concerns in the workplace. Others who came included the local councillor, teachers from a nearby primary school and off-duty police officers.

Faith at the heart of community

Martin shared that at the festival, “There was so much talk of Jesus implicit and explicit in the conversations.” This is a great starting point for the church to “be a space in which people can re-examine who they are and sense God’s prompting and call in their lives.”

Nigel Rooms, UK PMC leader at Church Mission Society, was at the festival and was encouraged by the buzz and warmth that the event brought to the church and community. He noted the enthusiasm of local people to talk to Martin and make a connection – even asking for selfies!

He shared that events such as this, which use contextually relevant approaches (craft beer and artisan food fitted perfectly in Norton) to build relationships, form community, “break the sacred/secular divide and uncover faith at the heart of the community.”

So what comes next? The church is being asked about dates for the festival to run again next year, and in the meantime they continue to find ways to open their doors and build connections in the community.

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Numerous congregations meet in school buildings, but it is much rarer to find the kind of deep relationship that has blossomed in Thatcham as churches there participated in Partnership for Missional Church.

By Jeremy Woodham

“The school I went into seven years ago might have had an occasional visit from the vicar – now there are real relationships,” says the Rev Pat Jones, former team vicar at St Barnabas’ Thatcham Park, which along with sister church St Mary’s Thatcham, took part in the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) journey between 2015 and 2018.

St Barnabas’ congregation actually meets in Thatcham Park C of E Primary School but had struggled to make connections.

On a PMC awayday, Pat explains, the team – led by lay members of the church – was exploring the idea of looking for “partners of peace” in the community. “We realised we already had people who were parents – they had an inside role at the school, so we empowered them to be the main people.”

“PMC gave us language and permission to change imagining we might do something into actually doing it,” says the Rev Mark Bennet, Thatcham’s team rector.

Noticing what God is doing

One of the themes that emerges from churches engaging in PMC is realising how much they – or God – had already been doing, how much was already in place for the next steps God was calling them into.

The key spiritual practices involved, such as “Dwelling the World” and “Announcing the Kingdom” offer ways of spotting what God is already doing in the community.

Mark Bennet again: “Dwelling in the World opens your eyes to things that are on your doorstep but hadn’t noticed before.”

The seeds of the new relationships had been sown: church members already ran the barbecue at school fetes; Pat Jones had a background in youth and families work; a highly supportive new head teacher, Alison Webster, had arrived in 2014.

With growing confidence in the congregation at St Barnabas’, the church–school relationship started to flourish, as associate priest the Rev Brenda Harland explains.

“One of the main things was we had started to find partners of peace without realising what we were doing – it was a big confidence boost to realise something had already started with the PTA.

“Our culture was changing. Now, more people say ‘Ooh, I think that was God!’ – or there’s a light in their eyes that wasn’t there before!”

The church is not shy

The church has partnered with the PTA and the school pastoral team, which looks out for vulnerable families.

“We found relationships easy to grow somehow because we were noticing what was important to other people not just to ourselves,” says Mark Bennet.

The supportive community around the school is praised in its latest Ofsted report.

“Read the section about ‘personal development, behaviour and welfare’ because that is the biggest area that we work on together for the good of the children,” says Mrs Webster. The rating of “outstanding” speaks for itself.

While Pat has moved on to a new role, a strong network of relationships remains, as part of the PMC journey is about allowing lay people to take a lead.

“It feels now that the church is not shy,” says Leanne Baker, one of several parents at the school who found their own faith journeys revived thanks to the new connectedness of church and school community.

Coming home

“I was brought up in lots of different churches but I rebelled as a teen,” Leanne continues. “As I got older, I always had a faith but never went to church – I thought the Church of England was terribly stuck up and I was never going to venture in one!” Then a fellow mum invited her along.

“It was like coming home,” she says of her first visit to St Barnabas’ two years ago.

The symbiotic relationship of church and school is clear from talking to Leanne.

“I’m co-chair of the PTA – we couldn’t run a fete without them!” But it’s no longer just running the barbecue – church folk run prayer stations at the school fetes and clergy sit and have a cup of tea in the PTA building.

“The parents and children really embrace them – they have become so much part of the school community – that’s been lovely to watch.”

Head teacher Alison Webster agrees: “There is not a school community, there’s not a home community, not a parish community. We are one community. And when things arise we support each other.”

Changing the way you think

“PMC changes the way you think about where you are,” says team rector the Rev Mark Bennet.

For example, Leanne – who is now exploring a call to ordained ministry – is part of a new pastoral team, formed as a result of the PMC process, which is aiming to take discipleship out into the community.

“One of the big things now at St Mary’s is our response to dementia,” says Mark Bennet. “We host a memory cafe and are thinking more widely – in our community a number of residential homes for people with dementia are being built.

“PMC helped us to listen and respond – just the spiritual practices equip you to see what’s going on in the world and respond. Embedding those is what’s changed us most.”

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On Holy Saturday, the small congregation of Caversham Park Church, based on a large housing development on the edge of Reading, were taking part in a prayer walk around their community and distributing Easter gifts.

By Jeremy Woodham

Just one example of the increased confidence they have found through participating in PMC.

Church member Christine Viney says their church is now more a like a river – flowing out into the community.

“I enjoyed doing the questionnaire [an early part of the PMC process] – talking to people and getting a bit under the skin of what was happening in the village. People said there was no centre – they were feeling lonely.”

In response, the members of Caversham Park started a coffee morning based at a local social club and a monthly bring-a-friend lunch at a local cafe. Not rocket science but crucially out in the community, not in a church building (in fact, they don’t have one!). Along with the Easter (and Christmas) prayer walks, these are another sign of confidence, wanting to be visible Christians in the community, says the vicar, Derek Chandler.

PMC has also, says Derek, had for the congregation “a profound effect in terms of discipleship and God being a real presence that’s around every day of the week, not just someone you visit on Sunday.”

That said, the Sunday service has seen some PMC innovation with the spiritual practices of Dwelling in the Word (which now begins every service) and Announcing the Kingdom becoming firmly embedded.

“We have some tealights in the form of a cross at the front of the church,” explains Christine, “and people come and say how they’ve seen God working during the week and just light a candle in thanks and praise to God.

“That’s what’s helped me personally, the way of seeing God in everything.”

Find out more

Watch videos from several PMC participants and find out more about the process.

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Three years ago, Woosehill Church began its participation in PMC, a fairly new initiative which encourages churches to ask God to show us what he is doing in our communities and where he wants us to join with him.

By Eileen Fletcher, Woosehill Community Church

After much discussion and prayer the PMC team had felt that we should try to address the problem of loneliness and isolation.

It was clear, however, that Woosehill Church didn’t have the people or finances to undertake grandiose schemes to reach out to build community here on Woosehill. So we thought about traditional communal activities and set up a “knit and natter” group, which we called Wool With A Mission.

We began with a core group of older church ladies, which drew in people who were a little on the periphery of the church. This immediately brought a sense of involvement and purpose among the congregation.

Our mission was to create a truly welcoming group while crafting garments for good causes and the group has been growing as people respond to the leaflets we circulated.

One of our ladies hadn’t knitted for 45 years! Prior to joining the group she had been through a brutal time, with two bereavements within months. “Knitting has been my saviour,” she told me. “Life has been tough, the hardest year of my life, but once I pick up the knitting an inner peace comes over me. It’s difficult to explain and I wouldn’t have believed it, but it’s true.”

We had also been encouraged, through PMC, to think in terms of working with other people and organisations. And so we prayed: “Bring the people you want us to work with into our lives and enable us to be channels of your love in our community.”

Shortly afterwards, as we were meeting to knit and crochet, one of the ladies mentioned First Days, a local charity working with childcare professionals who refer families to them when they are at a time of crisis; when they need something for their children and simply cannot afford it.

Such a good cause and right on our doorstep! It seemed like a marriage made in heaven; lonely and isolated people, knitting for local children in need.

We attach a label to each garment that we produce. It says “crafted with love” and we hear from the First Days volunteers that mums, with tears in their eyes, express their amazement that someone would go to all the trouble of knitting or crocheting for their children.

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The post Crafted with love appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).