So I’ve returned from my antipodean adventure and, despite industrial action by BA and a volcano exploding, I managed to get there and back. I’m now in full swing getting ready for the World Cup.

Already the England flags are being seen all over the place and the excitement is mounting for the competition. As church it’s important that we make the most of the opportunities there are in society to engage with outreach. Sometimes I think we make mission and sharing our faith very difficult. I consider it pure joy to share my faith by getting people together to watch football. I’m just doing my best in serving the Lord!

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

In my previous blog, I shared how I was preparing for Christmas and making the most of the season to share Jesus with people. I hope you had a good time this last Christmas.

The Christmas clean up and decorating that we did for a local charity drop-in centre went really well. We had 15 people come along and help tidy the place up, do some DIY and put up some decorations. The staff were really blessed by it and we had lots of fun helping out. The mid-week group that I help run has a link with this charity where we look to bless them practically once a term. We want to make sure that we have opportunities to minister and help put our faith into action. It’s helpful having opportunities to do practical things as we don’t want to model a passive Christianity.

I help lead a mid-week church group and recently we’ve been keen to increase our missional agenda. The word missional gets everywhere and feels like one of those buzz words. The fact is, the people in the group aren’t the type that are going to pray for people on the streets. They aren’t that type. As a leader, I don’t want to go on and on about being missional every time we get together. I want it to be a natural part of what we do and what we’re about.

Increasingly, I want our group to have a culture that thinks and talks missionally without the leaders having to mention it from the front all the time.

Whenever we get together we always spend 10 minutes praying for our non-Christian friends. We do this in pairs, using some of the time to share where our non-Christian friends are at and the rest of the time praying. Before this prayer time, we share any encouragements about people or situations that we have been praying for - where there have been answers to prayer or opportunities we’ve had we’ve to share our faith.

My name's Nigel Savage and I’ve been part of the iCQ team for the last three years. My role is Church Coordinator, which means that I keep in touch with the church leaders that we’re working with. I talk through how things are going, look at strategic planning and how leadership development is happening.

When I’m not working with the iCQ team, my main job is working as a leader in a large church in Bristol, which has over 1,000 adults. I’ve been working as a pastor in this church for over 5 years. I oversee all the mid-week groups that happen and I also lead one of these groups.