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‘What Kind of Church?’ – A new vision for Carnmoney

Wednesday January 15th 2020

The Rev Andy Heber and members of the Carnmoney Parish Select Vestry at their Away Day.

Since September, Carnmoney Parish Church has been looking to the future and considering its function and priorities.

Here the rector, the Rev Andy Heber, outlines the work the parish has undertaken to formulate a vision and determine ‘What Kind of Church’ it wants to be.

Between September and December we have been considering as a church how we can move forward into God’s future for us and grow as a church, not only in numbers but also upwards towards God, inwards in love for each other and outwards into our local community.

Following a sermon series over eight Sundays, members of the congregation met on Thursday nights to discuss the way forward with the help of a DVD-based course entitled ‘What Kind of Church?’ produced by the Evangelical Alliance.

Out of these meetings, and through much feedback and discussion, a vision has slowly emerged and an Action Plan has been formulated that will hopefully guide our work over the coming years.

This focused on three areas:

• Growing up towards God (Worship)
• Growing inwards towards each other (Fellowship)
• Growing outwards into our community (Evangelism)

On November 2, the Select Vestry had a very productive Away Day at St Peter’s in Antrim Road. In the morning we considered what our strengths and weaknesses were as a church and also decided what our main function and priorities should be.

In the afternoon, following a relaxed lunch at the Landsdown Hotel next door, the Action Plan was introduced, discussed, tweaked slightly and finally unanimously agreed. To conclude the day, as part of our closing worship, we built a cairn together using precious stones from Iona, symbolizing the stage we have reached in our church’s journey and our desire to continue to move onwards and upwards into an exciting future under God’s direction.

During January, the Rev Carol Harvey and I are preaching four sermons to share this vision with the entire congregation.

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