17 July 2021 – 10am-2pm – Church
Our away day (at home!) as a PCC will be an important time to be able to spend some time meeting together physically for the first time since March 2020 and to consider together the journey we have been on through the pandemic over the past 18 months and where we are coming out of that period as a church. Much of what we took for granted back in March last year no longer exists – but that gives us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to stop, reset, listen to God and consider where we need to rebuild and restore, what we should be laying aside now and where we need to be doing new things.
In preparation for Saturday, the following pages will give you some background information to remind you of some of the things we were considering before the pandemic. Please try to have a look at the short summaries, even if you don’t have time to read the whole documents, and spend some time praying and asking God what he wants to be saying to us now and what we should be considering picking back up and what we need to lay down as we come out of the pandemic.
When you have had a look at the background, there are four questions which Bishop Nick posed to the church last summer when things began unlocking after the first lockdown. These are still useful questions for us to consider now and we would like to use these to frame our discussions on Saturday. The questions are:
- What have we started to do that we should continue doing?
- What have we started to do that we should now stop?
- What did we stop doing which we should now restart?
- What did we stop doing which we should not start again?
There is a simple form to fill in here if you have ideas or feel God is speaking to you in advance of Saturday – it would be great to have thoughts in advance. If you’re not able to come long to the away day on Saturday, we would especially like to hear any thoughts you want to share – please do send us a few quick bullets using the form.
We have deliberately built these pages as a section on the website which can be adapted and opened up easily to the wider congregation when we have had an initial discussion as a PCC to help us build a new vision together over the summer that we hope and pray we will be able to start putting into action from September onwards.
Backgound summaries
Maturing in Christ – the Diocesan Strategy
Shipley Christians Together – CAP Debt Centre
Where we left off – ideas from the last PCC Away Day in July 2019.