The Church’s first national digital evangelism and discipleship workshop

12/10/2018

This week we held our first national digital evangelism and discipleship workshop, inviting people from all dioceses to attend. We were thrilled that more than 50 representatives from 26 dioceses were at the event.

The aim of the workshop was to get together to look at national and diocesan projects in this area, learn from each other and identify more opportunities for us all to work together. A key focus area was on how we encourage attendance into local churches.

There were a variety of speakers from teams across Church House including the Digital, Evangelism & Discipleship, Setting God’s People Free and Ministry. We also heard from three dioceses:

  • Carlisle on their digital work at Christmas and engaging people who are exploring faith throughout the year
  • Leeds sharing their learning portal and how this links to support the development of the whole people of God
  • Birmingham and St Albans on Soulfood, an innovative initiative to provide reflection material on issues and life events for visitors and occasional churchgoers.

Here are some of the key slides from the day that cover:

  • Why and how: audiences and how national projects are approached
  • Recent campaigns, including Lent 2018
  • Setting God’s People Free – this year’s #EverydayFaith campaign and plans for 2019
  • The #FollowTheStar Advent and Christmas campaign
  • The Alexa skill
  • Longer term aims, aspirations and next steps.

Our hope is that this turns into a workshop that takes place regularly and we’re looking to run an all-day event in 2019. We all left the day excited about the opportunities that digital brings to help people grow in their Christian faith and know more of the love of God in their lives.

Adrian Harris is Head of Digital at the Church of England and Nick Shepherd leads the Setting God’s People Free programme of work for the Church of England