Us vicars have been given a book called How village churches thrive. Here are the key points (what do you think, does it hit the mark for you?):

1. Warm welcome: Making your church as welcoming as your home, structuring your welcome around strangers is key and these changes enable growth.
2. Life events (baptism, wedding, funeral): There is a link between life events and faith journeys. It’s good to find ways to involve more people from the local church community and keep in touch with new contacts.
3. Creative use of buildings: Ancient church buildings are a huge asset and provide limitless creative opportunities for communities, welcome and wonder. There are ways to share responsibility across the wider community.
4. Care of creation: Churchyards draw people and we can build on this interest to engage a whole community to love and care for the churchyard. It is a visible expression of the fifth Mark of Mission: “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth”.
5. At the heart of community: The church can effect positive change in village life and for community engagement: “I am because we are.” We can utilise community audits to help collaborative leadership.
6. Celebrating heritage: Heritage presents great opportunities to build relationships with new people. Its locally embedded and broad something-for-everyone and new tech provide new ways to present churches to people who visit and those further afield.
7. Fruitful festivals: Unique contributions to rural festivals and genuine spiritual encounters with ideal opportunities for celebration, innovation and welcome.
8. Young people focused: Engaging young people as a priority – villages are great settings for creative work, collaborating with others and boosting funding opportunities.
9. Care for those who are isolated and lonely: Understanding isolation more and give opportunities for rural churches to be part of the solution so we have ways to initiate care to those most in need.
10. Effective communications: Communication with a wider audience with three key questions: what’s your message, who you are trying to reach and what’s the best way – and then setting up and managing commonly used communications channels.

Please do let us know if you have any questions or queries about your village church and how best we can work collaboratively with you.

Confirmation course

A confirmation course is being held for adults looking over your faith again if you’ve been confirmed for a long time to refresh you or if you’d love to be confirmed into the Christian faith as a member of the Anglican CofE church or want to find out more about faith. The course will be held on Wednesdays from 14 September led by the Ministry Team at St Michael’s Reepham from 7.30 pm onwards.

A confirmation service will be held at Swannington on 27 November (Advent Sunday) at 10.30 am led by the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham Usher. Please telephone 01603 875275 to book a place or to ask any questions.

Watch this space for the youth confirmation course (10+) – to be confirmed.

Revd Helen Rengert, Team Rector, Reepham and Wensum Valley Team Churches