Want to learn:
- The best way to Invite newcomers to your parish?
- Welcome them when they visit?
- Connect them with parish life and community so they belong?
This is an invitation for parish leadership teams to learn some of the best ways to foster church vitality and growth, to re-examine their own parish systems, and then to create strategies for new ways of doing things and implement those strategies.
What is Invite Welcome Connect?
The ministry of Invite Welcome Connect is a useful framework, gathering existing best practice and supporting its parish implementation in ways that thrive in today’s culture. It equips and empowers congregations to practice invitation, hospitality, and connectedness. Invite Welcome Connect relies on the collaborative creativity of clergy and laity who choose to actively, intentionally embody the principles of hospitality, making this method adaptable to any parish, age group, or location.
Invite Welcome Connect is not a program, it is a ministry that moves parishes from a maintenance culture to a Gospel-driven mission culture. Its strength lies in the excellence of the workshops, the accessibility and applicability of its resources, and the ways to acknowledge and work with the discomfort some of us might have with inviting people to join us in worship or fellowship.
Each person who attends the workshop will receive a copy of the award-winning book, Invite Welcome Connect: Stories & Tools to Transform Your Church, published by Forward Movement in 2018. This book will be used for the follow-up Zoom book study in October and November that can be used by parishes to design and implement their strategies
Workshops October 12 & 13
Mary Parmer will run a two-part workshop at Church of the Advent on Thurs Oct 12 – Fri Oct13. Each evening starts with a finger supper at 6 PM, the session begins at 6.30, and ends at 9.30 PM (Thurs), and 9 PM (Fri). These sessions will be livestreamed as a Zoom webinar for those who cannot attend in person, and who wish to participate in the Q & A afterwards. The sessions will be recorded for the use of our Diocese. The workshops will be followed by a 6-week implementation book study via Zoom during October and November, in which parishes could work together to create a strategy for their parish, and the steps to implement that strategy.