I’ll soon be travelling to Australia and spending a month out there. In all the arrangements for the trip, I’ve had to make sure that all the hotels are booked, money and documents are ready, transport is arranged and flights aren’t cancelled by BA! It’s taken lots of time to think through all the logistics for the trip, mainly to make sure that I can get home at the end of it. In looking at church life, it’s really important that we are aware of the details and logistics of seeing people move on a journey towards faith.

In my work with church, I meet up with lots of group leaders to review how their group has been going as well as looking ahead at the next term. As a leader of a group myself, I know it’s easy to get pulled into dealing with all the immediate, pastoral and practical things which need to happen. Taking time out to review and plan is a vital part of being a leader. An important question to ask is, 'how does outreach fit in with the rest of the term programme?' Of perhaps a better way to ask that question is, 'how does the term programme fit around outreach?'

Identifying what the outreach opportunities are for the coming term and then planning the rest of the content around that makes lots of sense. I could only book my hotels once I’d booked all my flights and knew when I was leaving and arriving. With an outreach event we need to see how we prepare and build towards it and then what the follow-on is from the event.

In lookin