Your Guide to Tell Serve Give 7 -10 March 2019
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www.liverpool.anglican.org
Diocesan Prayer Loving Father, by your grace we long to see more people knowing Jesus, and more justice in the world. Help us to live as your disciples in the power of the Spirit and to work to your praise and glory. Amen.
Welcome March 2019 gives us a golden opportunity. As Archbishop Sentamu leads bishops from across the north to our diocese we will receive a host of people to help us talk about Jesus. It’s a time when you, your parish and your deanery, your school or fresh expression or chaplaincy, can come together and show how knowing God can make that bigger difference. It’s a time when you can create events and bring your friends. It’s a chance for you to do one thing to help make God’s kingdom known. I urge you to make the most of this opportunity. I am committed to doing so myself. My experience of these missions in other dioceses has shown me that wholehearted commitment to them can really change lives. I have shared my own faith story, and witnessed others talk about theirs, in pubs, clubs, schools, cafes and on the streets. I have seen many come to faith and others form relationships that start them on the journey to knowing our God and to being part of His Church. March 2019 will see parishes and deaneries across our Diocese welcoming bishops as part of the Archbishop of York’s vision to make Jesus real to the communities we serve. We all have have time to plan and to engage so that we can make the best of this opportunity. I pray for your own preparations as part of the mission, as you work to enable more people to know Jesus next March.
Bishop of Liverpool
What is Tell Serve Give 2019? Between the 7th - 10th March 2019 we have an opportunity to unite together, as deaneries and as a diocese in locally organised mission, outreach and evangelism. Each deanery will host visiting teams and bishops to support us leading events and activities to tell the good news of Jesus and invite others to join us on a journey of discipleship. We want everyone to be involved working to show how we can be a bigger church making a bigger difference. This will be big. We anticipate over 200 activities will take place across our diocese with plenty of high profile opportunities. So it is important you don’t miss out. We want you, your parish, and your deanery to be involved as we tell people the good news, serve our communities in many ways and give them a taste of what it feels like to be part of the Good News. Being involved is not daunting. Many of you will be able to take some of your existing plans and activities and gain extra strength from the teams that are coming from across the Northern Deaneries. We are here to help, this booklet is one way which we can help you make the most of this opportunity. But we want to talk to you and support you in any way we can.
Why are we doing this? To share the love and message of Christ with our friends and all in our community in telling, serving and giving It is an opportunity for all individuals, congregation’s, schools and chaplaincies to join together in mission with others from across the diocese. It will be most effective when it works to support local church mission initiatives or plans and wider initiatives such as ‘Rule of Life and Thy Kingdom Come.
What you can do. • Pray for your community. Pray for the mission locally and across the deanery, especially pray that others may be able to come to know Jesus or know him better. • Appoint a deanery advocate or small team to co-ordinate, and communicate about the mission and its events across the deanery (there is a separate role description attached) • Your parish can organise at least one event aimed at reaching those outside or on the edge of your congregation encouraging them to know Jesus better. • Host a visiting team who will support you in the mission and outreach activities during the mission. •
Follow up appropriately those contacted through the mission, allowing them to ask questions, discover and develop in their discipleship. Make church a welcoming, healthy place for them to be, grow and serve others with the love of Christ.
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Use these days to build the parish mission into the future. Mission and growing disciples takes much more than a few days. How your church or deanery does this needs a long-term plan. Please make these few days support your wider plan.
This is an invitation for you to take part This is an opportunity, not an obligation. You don’t have to do this but we hope you will choose to join in together in a common desire to build a bigger church to make a bigger difference. • If your church has some good plans which this mission does not help then don’t let this hinder them.
• If your church is not in a place to do this, feel free to decline
• If your church just does not like this approach, then find an approach you do like and make that work. Make Christ known and we will cheer you on. We pray that you will choose to join with us and we can do this together.
A simple step by step guide - Step 1 Raise Expectations in Prayer What we expect is often what we get. This is the same with church and mission, so let’s pray expectantly. Early in your planning, plan to pray, here are just a few suggestions; • Encourage individuals to identify friends and others they are praying for. Link this with the prayer from Thy Kingdom Come and invite at least 1 person. • Organise some special time of prayer for the mission, an event for prayer or a particular focus in church or house groups. Share and raise your expectations together. • Include the mission in your prayers of intercession, in your services on Sunday and throughout the week. Include events and activities you are planning in these prayers. • From Pentecost to Trinity Sunday join in with the national initiative to pray, Thy Kingdom Come. Use this to support your prayer for Tell Serve Give. • Consider organising a prayer event with others in your deanery and even with other churches and denominations in your area. Maybe start a Prayer room (https://www.24-7prayer.com/ is a popular prayer network to explore) • Our Cathedral will also be preparing a space to pray for the mission which will continue through the mission. You could arrange to visit and join in prayer for the whole diocese.
Step 2 - Create a Plan Here is some help in developing a mission plan. You may have a plan for mission in your parish or deanery, if so use this to support that plan. If you have not got a specific plan then use this to build one.
Process • Pray Together Unless the Lord builds we labour in vain - Find God’s heart, His vision • Plan Read - Learn/ Research - Set goals - Plan a Programme • Prepare Gather a team - Allocate Tasks - Administration - Communications • Perform This is short, but key - hopefully it is affective but it is bigger than these few days • Build on success Build on the people you’ve encountered or activities you’ve discovered what can we do next?
Build a strong foundation You may have seen the new bridge built over the river Mersey. There is a lot of work which goes in to build foundations, structure and infrastructure to make a bridge work before they finally link up the bridge. If we only did the bit in the middle the bridge would be a bit useless. Using this analogy think through the different elements of church, mission and discipleship. Prayer, planning, follow up, worship services, seeker services, activities, discipleship groups, service to the community, networks, schools, leadership, faith of congregation, ideas, visiting team, reputation of the church, are all elements of our mission. • What parts do you have in place, what success can you build on? • What needs adding? • How will the Tell Serve Give link the elements you already have?
Step 3 - Plan a timeline A number of organisations will have explanations of how to help you in developing a mission plan, because it is always a process. We have borrowed a well-structured document (from Fusion Youth and Community) which may help in thinking through a Strategic Process of Mission (ask your deanery advocate for a copy) A suggested timeline
• January to March: appoint advocate have initial ideas and Pray.
• April to August: decide plan for mission and events, ask for hosts for team, invite other churches or organisation to join you and Pray.
• May to August: Trail some mission events and pray.
• August to Nov: plan and prepare for events, communicate with visiting team/bishop, define tasks, delegate and Pray.
• January to February: promote events in the area and Pray.
• March: Enjoy the event and Pray. Advertise follow up events.
• March to April: review progress, follow up contacts and Pray.
• April onwards: continue with further plans for local mission.
Step 4 - Consider the practicalities Think about how you will host teams: Each team will be between 5-10 people and they will need accommodation and meals during their stay. This is a great opportunity for the team to meet member of the parishes. You will need to make sure that people, unfamiliar with your local area get good clear information about where to go and how to get there.. Meet your team: We will be allocating bishops and teams as early as we can. Speak to them, and try to get them to visit. The more you know about each other and the plans the more effective you can be. Use your Deanery Advocate: The missions are split into deaneries, so we will hopefully have a full variety of events between all the parishes, school and chaplaincies, but we’d expect each parish/church to be looking to do at least one event. We suggest you co-ordinate events through the advocate, so parish events compliment and support each other. Talk to us: Tell us what you are doing and what you may want support with. We will have a central programme with Archbishop Sentamu so think about how this can link and support your local events - maybe he could even be a part of it. Think about how you promote: Tell people in your community early. Get information to schools, other churches and chaplaincies, community notice boards, shops and tell your neighbours. We will be looking to put resources that can be adapted and printed onto our website. Our communications team will help you promote this. You need to invest in this: You can use your deanery growth and mission fund, but it is helpful to see this as an investment in your church. Please see our ideas booklet for a range of ideas and activities that you can run in your parish and deanery.
Get in touch: Chris Neilson - Episcopal Chaplain for mission Communications support and advice chris.neilson@liverpool.anglican.org Linda Jones - Director of Mission linda.jones@liverpool.anglican.org
Bigger Church, Bigger Difference
www.liverpool.anglican.org