A “deep” approach to mission helps churches connect with local communities, report finds
Church assets in terms of both buildings and people provide a real resource for rural community development. This report helps put more flesh on those bones. It tells us:
A Partnership for Missional Church programme developed by the Church Mission Society for local churches, helps to empower lay people, a study has found. The finding came into a report commissioned into the three-year PMC programme which CMS introduced in the UK in 2011. The two key findings in the study are that churches taking part in the PMC programme engaged publicly with their local communities; and that lay people felt empowered to step into positions of leadership within the local church and beyond. The results were found across church traditions and in both urban and rural contexts.
The study was conducted by Liz Clutterbuck and Andy Schofield of the Transformational Index group, who spoke to 82 participating churches from the dioceses of Southwell and Nottingham, Leicester, Oxford and Durham. The research included a survey of church members.
“Seventy-two per cent of respondents said that PMC had made a positive impact on their ability to establish partnerships outside the church, and seven out of 10 said PMC had also made a positive impact on their individual Christian lives, deepening both their personal faith and their corporate spiritual experience,” CMS said in a statement.