Before the core group begins meeting together, it is vital that there is some kind of awareness raising event for the whole church to build their ownership of the Discovery process and their commitment to support the core group.
Such an event could be:
• A special service dedicated to thinking about the needs in the community and to the commissioning of the core group.
• An away-day for the church to think about the needs in the community and how the church might respond.
• A church lunch with a session on how the church might think about the needs in the community and how the church might respond.
• A series of sermons on how the church might respond to the needs in the community with discussion time in small groups built into the service.
In all of the above options, it is important to introduce the Discovery approach and help the church think through the implications and opportunities of doing it. Below is an outline, which was used in one of the first Discovery churches, which could be adapted to any of the above suggestions.
|
Focus |
Activity |
|
Introduction |
Explain that the purpose of the day is to think as a church as to how we might respond to the needs of the community. This is a taster for what a small group might do over the next 6 months. |
|
Celebration with Balloons |
Give everybody a balloon to blow up and write on it the things that they are proud about in their church. Get each person to share their balloon and bat it in the air. Capture all the comments on a flipchart and read it back to the group at the end. |
|
Draw a map of our community |
Divide the group up into small groups and give them flipcharts to draw what they think the community looks like in the form of a map. Get them to identify good points of their community and areas of need. If there is time available, get them to prioritise which parts are best and which parts are worst. |
|
Vision of the future |
Get each small group to create a collage from old magazines and newspapers of how they would like to see their church work with the community in 10 years time. |
|
Introduce the Discovery approach |
Explain that a small group will be set up to build on the work that has already been started today and will be together for 6-9months, meeting once a month. A fuller introduction to Discovery could be done at this point. If the core group has not yet been chosen a leader could invite members to volunteer or this could be done at a later date. |
|
Summary and closure |
Summarise all that has gone on during the day and get the group into pairs to think about one thing they’ve gained from the day and one thing they’d like the church to take forward. Share these in a plenary session. Close with prayer |