How It Works

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Church21 is the Parish Development Programme for the Church of Ireland. Over the course of an 2 year period the Programme progresses through the following elements from initial application to completion:

Sign-up Team Together Day Preparation Course Conference Facilitation Period Review Day

Churches must first make application to their Bishop. The Programme has places for an average of two parishes (or groups) per diocese, twenty-four overall. Parishes will be informed of their success or otherwise by the end of 2008.

Team Together Day (February 2009)

Successful parishes will gather in February when they will meet their facilitator for the first time and receive orientation for the programme. Find out more about the Team Together Day here.

Preparation Course (Lent 2009)

Parishes will be encouraged, through a series of simple activities designed to give a sense of local ownership, to have already started the development process before they arrive at the Conference. This will involve prayer, scriptural reflection and addressing some simple questions.

Conference (September 2009)

A major event with the theme, ‘Vision: what it is, how to get it, share it and implement it.’ Parishes are expected to bring a team of four people to the conference. One of these should be the incumbent or person in charge. Ideally the team should be of mixed gender, with two members under 50 and one under 30 years of age. Find out more about the Church21 Conference here.

Facilitation Period

Following the conference parishes will be offered the opportunity of partnership over a period of 18 months. We hope that each parish will identify priority areas of ministry for development and we will challenge them to pursue the changes necessary to implement their vision. Parishes will meet with their facilitator a minimum of 3 times over a 6-9 month period. Also, since resources are often an issue we can link parishes up with people or organisations with specialist experience and expertise.

Review Day (September 2010)

All participants will be invited to a day for review in September 2010 to identify hopeful signs in local parishes, share stories with the wider church and discern the way forward for the Programme.