Top Ten Tips for Church Leaders and Core Groups
1. Create time to share the vision with key leaders in the church.
2. Try and identify the barriers and opportunities for your church in getting involved in Discovery and in community action. Use the activities in this section to help overcome the barriers and make the most of the opportunities.
3. Use every means of communication within the church (prayer times, newsletters, sermons, notice boards, etc) to keep people informed about the process. Try to communicate at least one thing every week.
4. Involve the core group members in feeding back to the church.
5. Encourage the core group and other people in the church to share their vision for the church’s involvement in the community.
6. Organise a church visit to another church in the area who are doing things in the community from which your church could be inspired or learn.
7. Give the process a name. If “Discovery” doesn’t work for you, call it something else.
8. Communicate the time-frames of the process, especially when it will start and finish, and break the process into bite-sized chunks that people can understand.
9. Celebrate as a whole church the reaching of key mile-stones or achieving things (no matter how small)
10. Preach on themes of community involvement and inclusion. Use examples and stories emerging from the Discovery process to illustrate your points.