Church leaders and their teams from around the diocese gathered at the Anglican Chinese Mission in Wellington recently for the Leading your Church into Growth conference. Topics included creating a prayerful future of growth, fruitful evangelism and making a pathway for seekers to become disciples.

Two participants have shared their reflections on their experiences at the conference, and what ideas they will take back to their parishes.

Alison Seifert of St Mary’s Raetihi

The manaakitanga of the Anglican Chinese Mission was fantastic. We were well looked after with great morning and afternoon teas and wonderful lunches.

My favourite story that Rhiannon shared was about the woman in prison who wanted to talk with Jesus right now! I cannot remember all the details but I do remember that the woman was asked to close her eyes and imagine Jesus was there with her (I think that’s how the story went). The impact on the women was quite powerful.

Every parish should attend LYCiG. We are all called to tell the good news of Jesus and LYCiG gave us some wonderful examples of ways to do just that.

The two main things I learned was to pray, pray for growth. And the other thing was the number 1, one step at a time, one person at a time. We should expect our numbers to increase one by one as we walk alongside those who are seeking.

In our parish I want to make postcards with the prayer for growth and distribute them to all parishioners. We intend to pray the prayer regularly. We will be discussing some of the ideas at our next team meeting.

Rev Stuart Goodin of St Peter’s Palmerston North

Over a wonderful three days in the generous and friendly care of the people of the Anglican Chinese Mission, we were encouraged, challenged and inspired to lead our churches into growth.  Harry and Rhiannon were open and real about the challenges of ministry – Harry, for example, sharing about what it meant to “drag” his two teenage sons off to services in places where they would be the only young people.  I’m looking forward to working with my vestry through the material and implementing it. 

I found it encouraging to identify how many people we are already connected with, and the opportunity to leverage that.  I’m already conceiving promotional material for our Christmas services to distribute at our forthcoming fair and to make available to community groups using our hall.  I heartily recommend LYCiG: the framework will prompt valuable discussion, reflection, and – most importantly – action.