12.11.2013
New Year Seminar Aims to Help People Engage Effectively with Local Communities
The Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Growth Team has announced details of an event taking place in the new year aimed at exploring the challenges and practicalities of creating a missional discipleship culture. ‘Missional Discipleship in Ireland Today’ will take place in Christ Church Cathedral on January 8 and 9.
The first session of the event is aimed at everyone – from church leaders to church planters and lay leaders. Topics covered will include empowering lay leaders, personal growth and development, creating a culture of discipleship and discipleship that leads to mission. The session will also hear from PJ Booth, leader of Open Arms Christian Fellowship and national leader of the AGI; Andy Carroll, minister of Donabate Presbyterian Church; and Ross and Lucy Hill, leaders of Hope Community Church, Ringsend.
The second session will be more interactive and practical and is aimed more specifically at church planters – those who are currently or have recently planted a church or those who are planning something new in their community.
The main speaker at this event will be Paul Maconochie who runs a network of church based on St Thomas Crooke’s in Sheffield. Paul also oversees the European network of churches that have an affiliation with St Thomas’. He will share his experience.
“A number of contemporary writers pick up the biblical emphasis on making disciples as the foundation of building and growing the church and the consequent importance of building a discipleship culture. This is perhaps an important area for discussion and reflection as we consider the issue of making the church a welcoming place, which has been another important area for us in Dublin & Glendalough,” Andrew McNeile of the Diocesan Growth Team explains.
“Indeed, Ric Thorpe, the Bishop of London’s adviser on Church Planting, spoke to a group of people in January of this year and last Wednesday led a day seminar in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute – an event that was attended by some 40 people, mostly clergy from the Church of Ireland. 9 dioceses were represented. So Mission and Discipleship are very much contemporary issues in today’s church,” he adds.
This event will be run in Christ Church Cathedral but is overseen by an interdenominational group so there will be people from a variety of denominations there.
It is hoped that the event might be a helpful way to continue the conversation started at the Diocesan Growth Forum last year and will stimulate further ideas to find new ways of engaging with local communities in an effective way.
Spaces for the event will be limited so to secure a place please email Andrew McNeile at amcneile@eircom.net by the end of November. More details are available at www.irishchurchplanting.org .