Engaging the Community
Empowering Leaders to Embrace God’s Mission in Local Contexts
Jesus intentionally connected with all sorts of outsiders as part of his mission. How can we, as followers of Jesus, have the confidence to do the same in 2023?
Monday Evenings 7:00pm – 9:00pm EST
This course, designed specifically for lay leaders and deacons, will provide participants with the inspiration, tools, and practice necessary to confidently engage with people in your local neighbourhood and community. Together, we will learn how to discern and follow God who is already present in those contexts.
Our aim will be to deeply listen to those outside the church and get on board with what God is already doing. We invite you to participate in this course individually or, better yet, sign up as a parish group so you can explore intentionally connecting with your parish neighbours together.
How it works
Learn together
Participate in six two-hour sessions with Emily, Ian and the learning community.
Practice in your context
During the course you will be encouraged to apply your learning in your context in order to deepen your understanding.
Reflect in community
Your new knowledge and experience will become even more meaningful when shared with other learning practitioners like yourself.
Instructors
Emily is the Parish Development Missioner at the Anglican Diocese of Niagara and is focused on nurturing faithful, vital, and resilient missional faith communities through parish consultations, education, and resourcing. Emily guides the development and implementation of programs and resources in support of the diocese’s vision and mission-driven initiatives, as articulated in the diocesan Mission Action Plan. Working in collaboration with the diocesan senior leadership team, she helps nurture and support parish leaders by providing consultative services in strategic planning, visioning, faith formation, and congregational development.
Ian has ten years of experience as a Lay Pioneer and sixteen years as an Ordained Pioneer Minister in the Church of England. He has been involved in founding five Fresh Expressions of Church including three new monastic communities and an alternative worship community in a Parish ‘mixed economy’ context in Central and South London. Ian is also on the Chapter of the New Monastic Society of the Holy Trinity a Pioneering fraternity seeking to plant missional new monastic communities in Canada, USA, the UK and beyond. Ian has in the past played a part in the National Fresh Expressions team in the UK. He is currently the Community Missioner in the Diocese of Niagara. As a former Occupational Therapist Ian has worked within Mental Health services and complex disability rehabilitation. Ian is fully aware of the consequences and challenges of mission, who himself experienced serious burnout as a consequence to his own inability to surrender and trust God in a difficult former working missional context.