Manchester Diocese made its first steps on a learning journey to develop discipleship in the lives of our parishes, school and chaplaincies.This is part of the national Setting God’s People Free initiative which we have renamed as #MoreThanSunday in Manchester. Despite the current pandemic, our team has been carefully planning and has invited eight parishes, one chaplaincy and one of our church secondary schools to work with us.
At Saturday’s event (on Zoom), we worked on our vision for exploring what it means to follow Christ Sunday to Saturday beyond church in our work, education, community and family contexts. The project manager, Canon Simon Bessant said, “After all the preparation, it has been good to start working with people who are beginning to catch a vision for a whole life, everyday approach to following Christ in his world”.
The project team has written a course book called “Seven Shifts to Inspire Sunday to Saturday Faith” and this is creating the shape of the reflective learning that the pilots will be exploring through to next year and can be found here.
The pilots are: St Paul’s Blackley, All Saints Langley, St Peter & St Mark Levenshulme, St Thomas’ Delph Friarmere, St John’s Atherton, Holy Family Failsworth, St Martin’s Norris Bank, St Mary’s Ellenbrook, Manchester Minstry2Business and Trinity High School.
Bishop Mark Ashcroft said, ”Living out our faith Monday to Saturday in the places that God has put us is at the heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Church is not just about Sunday services but our every day faith, so I am thrilled that our Learning community has launched with such a diverse group of partners”