A celebration service was held at the Mount, St Helens as the first group of leaders celebrated reaching the end of Grow, the second stage of the Cultivate Pathway. The celebration combined worship with stories from some of the participants on how they are putting their learning into practice.
Cultivate is one of the key planks of Fit for Mission and is supporting the efforts in both of our Cohort 1 deaneries as we develop leaders who are working on introducing people to Jesus.
The evening saw tales of simple ideas being developed in their local communities including
- A breakfast club which is developing into a worshipping community soon to host their first baptism,
- A café gathering to encourage friendship and support amongst the lonely and isolated that will have a God focus
- A recycling upcycling scheme in their community
- A church hangout group in a housing scheme
- Work to support a canoe club, encouraging St Helens council to clean up an area of the town.
Over the next few weeks we will share a couple of the stories in more depth showing how being part of Cultivate has helped develop leaders and plant congregations that will see more people coming to know Jesus and more justice in the world
Cultivate is a development programme for lay leaders. It seeks to enable the growth of missional leaders and the planting of new worship communities and justice initiatives. It began five years ago in a grassroots church-planting context (Gateway, in Wigan) by Revd Frank Hinds, who developed it because of a pressing need to grow and support a range of emerging lay leaders.
Click here to watch a video of Frank talking about Cultivate.
In St Helens over 113 people have engaged with Cultivate with 66 joining in in West Derby. Participants have described Cultivate as “inspiring and challenging” with people valuing the opportunity to meet other Christians and finding it challenging, inspiring with plenty of support from clergy.
As one participant commented “I would encourage all Christians to attend this course. I was given so much encouragement, especially in one week when I felt like giving up. God has really spoken to me during these times. I started with no vision but now realise my vision is already started.”
Look out for our stories from Cultivate in St Helens in future bulletins. You can sign up to receive the Diocesan bulletin here.