A successful first series of Mission Workshops
The first of the Mission Workshops events has taken place in Moira Parish Centre and was attended by over 100 representatives from a cross–section of parishes.
Down and Dromore’s Council for Mission ran a total of 8 workshops – four during the first part of the morning and four after the coffee break. They looked at some areas for mission focus and how to do mission in different contexts.
Our workshop leaders come mostly from within the diocese but we were delighted to welcome visitors such as Paddi Totten (Glenavy) who talked about Mission amongst Older People and Ali Calvin (Killeshandra) who lead a workshop on Mission in Rural Parishes.
The other topics covered were Alpha re–examined, Mission to Men, Mission and Children, Mission in Country Towns, Suburban/Urban Mission and Mission in Large Estates.
On Monday 21 October the event will run again in Newtownards and and on Thursday 24 in Knockbreda (7.30 – 10.30 pm both nights). We look forward to welcoming several hundred more participants on those evenings, and to whet your appetites, here are just a few of the positive comments shared during the coffee break in Moira:
“Fantastic, really good resources and really good for giving us links to go ahead and look at our own context as well.”
Pete Graham, Youth Ministry Coordinator at Seapatrick
(Mission and Children workshop).
“I’ve never been to an Alpha Course so I wan’t coming from an experiential position. It was informative for me because we have an ageing congregation and we would need to start from a different perspective. It gave me food for thought.”
Rosie Armstrong–Woodroffe, St John’s Newcastle
(Alpha Re–examined workshop)
“The discussion afterwards was particularly helpful. Hearing that other people had tried things and they’d failed – it took the pressure off. It encourages you to keep on trying and to think, ‘What will really work in my church?’”
Irvine Lavery, Knocknagoney
(Alpha Re–examined workshop)
“Very good. It set a good focus on how we need to make a culture so that men will feel comfortable coming into church events.”
Peter McMurray, St John’s Moira
(Ministry to Men workshop).
See some photos in our gallery here.