Clergy gather to plan growth strategy

The annual summer conference held at Durham University is looking at how the growth of churches can be enhanced and accelerated through creative focused strategies. The conference is being lead by the charismatic Revd Canon Robin Gamble and his team under the umbrella programme ‘Leading Your Church into Growth’. Canon Robin said: “The evidence from running these sessions around the country in the Church of England shows that rethinking and strategising church growth is that we see amazing progress. I think it’s about being reenergised and positive as much as anything – but the results are tangible and sustainable. “Vision is about keeping your feet on the ground – Survival; combined with our heads in the clouds – Revival. Combining these two gives us a sense of both heaven and earth, of faith of reality. “In the church we are often looking backwards to, and in the grips of our history. vision is about writing our future story.”

Church growth is all about ‘how do we help people find Jesus for themselves’ – we need to put this into language and action that we can easily understand and do.” Bishop Paul, introduced the conference and said: “one of the things that really delighted me upon my appointment to Durham, was to discover that there was an annual conference rather than every three or four years; the other thing was that my first conference was on growing the church in durham – on of my key priorities. I have known Robin and many members of the team for a while and I am delighted that they are helping us work on this.” The programme is based on ten areas:

• Vision in the wilderness
• Introducing church growth
• Establishing positive leadership
• Becoming a mission church – big attitude change
• Becoming a mission church – basic mission strategy
• Becoming a mission church – useful evangelistic activities
• Becoming a mission church – it’s your call – the priest/leader as evangelist
• Missionary worship
• The church as a loving community
• What next?