The Membership Growth Practitioner's Group
The Membership Growth Practitioners Group - Why do you want your parish to grow?
Ask yourself: Why are you interested in growing your parish? Why would anyone want to return to your church? These were among the questions that 27 priests of the Diocese considered at the first gathering of the Membership Growth Practitioners’ Group held at St. Mary’s, Kerrisdale (SMK) January 15th, 2015 . The clergy involved in this project have responded to an invitation from Bishop Melissa to commit every third Thursday for the next year to focusing on growing the churches that they serve.
The facilitators of the group, Bishop Melissa and I, are hoping to create a learning community, a safe space for people to learn and experiment. It will take time, and the plan is to develop trust through small group discussions. The format is largely plenary presentations followed by small groups, where participants get a chance to reflect on what they have just learned and apply it to their own parish. In between sessions, participants will read and reflect, with a view to working with lay leaders to make changes in parish life.
Over the year, the content will focus on strengthening Sunday morning worship and on gathering people into the parish. Beginning with session number 2 in February, each participant will preach a sermon to two of their colleagues and receive feedback. This will require some bravery! Some of the feedback questions include, “What might the preacher do to strengthen what he or she said or did?”, “What is the one sentence that expresses the central idea or proclamation of the sermon?”, and “When did you as a listener think or feel “that’s me!” when listening to the sermon?”
A focus of the January 15th initial session was a survey on liturgy. Participants were asked to rate themselves and the liturgical practice of their parish. Topics included: the role of the presider, the liturgical space, flow of liturgy, participation of lay people, and more. Some sample questions were “I feel comfortable and competent to lead appropriate liturgical change in my parish,” “In our liturgical space, the central foci of action in the liturgy (font, altar, ambo, assembly) are central and prominent,” “Deacons, lay servers, readers and intercessors are appropriately trained for their roles and function with confidence and competence in our liturgies,” and “Our liturgy appropriately engages the culture/ethnicity/age/diversity of those I would like to attract to the parish.” Participants completed the survey on large flipchart pages that were positioned around the SMK hall which allowed them to immediately see and interpret the results.
This is just one example of the ways in which participants will work on growing their congregations. Learning together and from each other, they will develop ways of deepening and enriching Sunday mornings and becoming more intentional about gathering new people into the parish.
Plenty of support and a respectful atmosphere for learning is key to Bishop Melissa Skelton’s vision of a diocese where Parish Development is a principal focus of mission and ministry. Stay tuned for more reports about this exciting initiative in future web reports and articles in Topic, the monthly publication of the Diocese of New Westminster.