Nourishing Roots - with Ruth Perrin, 31st Jan 2023, 10:00-16:00

Location: St Antony's Priory 74 Claypath Durham, DH1 1QT

Date: 31st Jan 2023, 10:00 - 16:00

Register your place HERE.

A day of reflection and spiritual refreshment for Free Church chaplains within the quiet and peaceful surrounds of St Antony's Priory, Durham. This day is part of our tri-annual 'Nourishing Roots' sessions where we seek to help refresh our spirits and have a time of retreat away from our busy ministries.

Our reflections will be led by Dr Ruth Perrin, an experienced minister, trainer, researcher and mentor; she has been exploring and encouraging faith development for two decades and is passionate about helping people to draw close to Jesus and explore their part in his kingdom plans.

A buffet lunch will be provided - please advise us of any dietary requirements in advance.

The day is free of charge, but there are only 15 spaces available due to the size of the meeting room. We will initially have tickets available for six prison chaplains, six hospital chaplains, and three education chaplains. Tickets may be made more widely available in weeks to come.

Connecting Communities, Serving People, The Church & Social Cohesion

Connecting Communities, Serving People, The Church & Social Cohesion will take place on the afternoon of 30th September and be hosted at Liverpool Town Hall.

This event flyer is available to download HERE.

Shaping our Every Day Prayer – Zoom Conference September 22, 2021

Joint Liturgical Group of Great Britain presents

“Shaping our everyday prayer”

A Zoom Conference for all who pray and lead prayer in Christian Communities

22nd September 2021

2.30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m. (Zoom will open at 2:00)

For more info, please visit HERE.

Join in at Zoom link HERE

There is no registration fee, but donations will be accepted on the day, for the costs of the day and the on-going work of the Joint Liturgy Group.

Contemplation & Prayer — Fr. David Birchall will lead the Conference in imaginative contemplation and reflective prayer.

Watch and Pray: responding to visual art as a practice of prayer — Revd Peter Gardner will invite us to open our eyes, to look with attentive curiosity and to consider what we would choose to look at when we pray. He will reflect on ways that contemporary visual art practice can enhance our ways of seeing and transform our everyday prayer as individuals and worshipping communities.

About our presenters:

Fr. David Birchall joined the Jesuits in 1976 and was ordained in 1985. For nine years he was the Director of St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality centre. He is currently Director of the Ignatian Spiritual centre in Glasgow.

Rev Peter Gardner lives and works in Glasgow. Visual artist and Church of Scotland minister, Peter studied at the University of St Andrews, Edinburgh University and Leith School of Art. Ordained in 1988, Peter has served in rural and city centre Parishes and currently is the Church’s pioneer minister among the visual arts communities of Glasgow. Together with his wife Heidi, they form visual artist duo Gardner & Gardner. Their art practice focuses on temporary, site-specific installations and interventions, often set within the context of worshipping communities and their buildings, introducing a conceptual element into the sacred architecture and drawing attention to the sacred found in contemporary culture.

An Invitation to Hope: Mission through Prayer and Lament, 9 February 2021, 10 am

An Invitation to Hope: Mission through Prayer and Lament will take place on 9 February 2021, 10 am to 11.30 am. Please join us and please pass this invitation on to your friends and colleagues. Christian leaders from all spheres are warmly encouraged to attend.

We are in the middle of a protracted pandemic. Not just in wider society but among church leaders, there's a sense of weariness about Covid – and also a wariness about the larger convulsions affecting our society that the present focus has somewhat masked. How are we called to lead in this context? It’s time to come together to pray, reflect and ask a key question: what is God saying to us?

Many of you will have attended the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast last June, and the webinar afterwards on Mission during Lockdown and Beyond. Following on from that, we are delighted to let you know that we are hosting another webinar in February in which we are inviting the Church to pray and lament for our nation, as we seek God for his missional heart for this cultural moment. Please join us at this significant time.

Led by Christian leaders from multiple traditions and cultural spheres, we will spend time in lament, prayer and reflection, asking God what he is doing and how we can partner with him in a new wave of mission across our country. We so hope you will be able to join us.

Do have a look at the short video from our Chief Executive, Paul Williams to find out more. You can book your free place now.

Please visit the Bible Society website HERE for details of the programme.

Building Back Better Conference: The Church and Social Cohesion, 26th Nov 2020, 10:30AM

The launch of a report from the Free Churches Group assessing the impact of churches on social cohesion.

Date and Time: Thu, 26 November 2020, 10:30 – 11:30

Location: Online Event, booking via Eventbrite here.

The toxicity of the Brexit debate, a summer of Black Lives Matter protests, and the struggle to balance personal freedom with group responsibility throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have not only made clear how vitally important social cohesion is, but have also underlined that cohesive societies do not just happen by accident. Rather, time and effort are required to build up social capital over time – and this report particularly uncovers the many ways in which the nation’s churches are offering this time and effort in abundance.

The Church and Social Cohesion: Connecting Communities and Serving People is the culmination of a major research project commissioned by the Free Churches Group and prepared by Theos think tank, which has consulted with over 360 people in England to assess the churches’ social cohesion contribution on the ground.

In contrast to the crisis-driven approach of the major cohesion policy interventions of the last 20 years, The Church and Social Cohesion concentrates on the range of church-based assets that are fostering positive cohesion outcomes away from the headlines: buildings, social networks, convening power, leadership, volunteer capacity, and (perhaps most importantly) vision for the transformation of their communities. Moreover, it observes the Christian motivations behind this day-to-day community engagement, and unpacks the different ways these motivations can play out in the churches’ relationships with other organizations, whether public sector representatives, other faith communities, or indeed other churches.

Finally, it offers a number of practical recommendations for how both churches and policymakers can maximize the churches’ potential to foster social cohesion in the community. Churches are an important element of the nation’s social fabric, and the cohesiveness of our societies will grow stronger if churches and policymakers alike recognize the distinctive assets that they have to offer.

Join us for the virtual launch of this report, hosted by FaithAction, to listen to a presentation from Theos on the findings of the report and participate in a panel discussion chaired by the Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP featuring:

Hugh Osgood, Moderator of the Free Churches Group
Madeleine Pennington, Head of Research at Theos
Rev Dr. Joel Edwards CBE, formerly of Evangelical Alliance and Micah Challenge International
Manmit Bhambra, Research Officer at the LSE’s Religion and Global Society Research Unit

Booking available via Eventbrite HERE.

*This event features as part one of FaithAction's three-part conference - Building Back Better: The Role of Faith. See HERE to book the rest of the day's events and the event flyer here.