Planning For Growth

The People of Illingworth Moor Methodist Church will endeavour to;

“See what God is doing and join in”.

To fulfil this vision our mission priorities are Loving God, (Father Son and Spirit) Loving our Community, Loving each other through living out our faith and worship in Illingworth and beyond.

We will do this through our Worship, our Serving, our Evangelism and our Learning and Caring.

Worship: To increase awareness of the presence of God, and to celebrate God’s saving Love through Jesus and by the guiding of the Holy Spirit all in a relevant way.

We have a regular Worship Committee who meet to help plan worship in terms of guest speakers, own arrangements, musicians and special occasions. In terms of own arrangements, we allocate each house group and other groups within the life of the church an own arrangement to be responsible for. Our worship is varied in terms of content when led by people who are part of the worshipping community allowing for creativity and space to reflect within worship and enabling the Holy Spirit to move. The worship is relevant for those who are there who are not used to coming to church and enables them to see and experience something of God’s love for them. We have a variety of musicians that enable us to provide meaningful and engaging worship as well as using multimedia within worship when it is relevant. Worship also takes place once a month in the shop area of the church. People come to this especially before lunch while others who happen to be in the shop either come and take part or watch quietly from a distance.

Serving:  To serve our neighbourhood in all ways possible and to become all things to all people so that by all possible means we might walk alongside and help those who need to know God’s saving love. We will use our resources in the best way possible to display God’s love and Care.

We recognise that we have some good resources here at Illingworth Moor. We are blessed with a modern building and lift, along with Centre manager, Chef, Youth worker and lay worker along with a fantastic group of volunteers who help in the good as new shop and with other things we are involved with. We have a team who go into 2 schools to deliver ‘Open the Book’ and Sharon and Paula who go into one of these schools to deliver ‘Prayer Spaces and Unique’ which helps us to serve our local schools. Through our connections with the local schools we were able to offer one of them Mount Zion for their Carol service where around 600 people attended over the 2 days.

 We have volunteers who do not come to church but who are active in the social life of the church and who we also show God’s love too. Part of our service to our community is done by our layworker and some of our members going to a local care home and delivering a worship session. We have an events group who organise events that enable us to get people through the door initially and help us to build relationships with. The café and lunch club are well received and again this helps us to build relationships as we serve our community through hospitality. We also have a Christian based youth group, Boy’s Brigade and Girl’s Brigade and junior church which helps us to engage with young people. We have also had Messy church for the past 9 years which has helped over 100 youngsters and their parents hear something of God’s love for them. On occasion, we have done a couple of community clean ups in the local area and this helps us to show love for our local community.

We use our building as best as we can for the use of our community offering room hire at reasonable rates and we have an agreement that community groups pay only half of the going rate for private use. We have had the lift put in so that we can make better use of our building and also a kitchen area for making drinks in the upstairs room. We also have a vibrant office which offers working space for our centre manager, layworker, busoasis worker and volunteers. The good as new shop enables us to meet different people each day and build relationships with them, which then gives the chance for invitation to things we are doing. In the shop area there is a space for coffee and a sit down which is used by not only shoppers but also used by a Friday morning community walking group which sets off from our building. The shop also provides us with extra income that allows us to be generous to those in need in our community. Each Christmas we give vouchers to the local schools to give to families who are struggling financially at Christmas.

Evangelism: To make more followers of Jesus, gain more confidence in our faith and live out our faith intentionally.

We have just run our first Alpha Course and have got 2 new Christians and 3 new Church members from this. People who are already Christians also came along and it helped them to move on in their faith as they were challenged and given the opportunity to think, reflect and discuss in a safe space. It also has helped people who came that do not know Jesus for themselves to move on a little further on their discovery and journey of faith. We recognise that we can do better on this front, but we plan to do Alpha again and look at other events where we can invite people along to where they are exposed to the Gospel narrative, build relationships and experience something of God’s love for them.

Learning and Caring: To help people to grow as Christians and in their discipleship through mutual support, care and learning through small groups.

We have 5 house groups in operation plus a new one that has just been formed. These small groups underpin our learning together and help with pastoral support as each group has a host, a leader and a pastoral carer. As well as the small groups we have a very healthy Tuesday Fellowship which meets monthly and offers care, support, learning and worship to those who attend of which some do not attend Sunday mornings. As part of our caring for our community and members we have pastoral visitors who go and visit and take flowers and cards to those who need a bit of extra support and love at times. As already mentioned, part of our learning was to run an Alpha Course which was attended by some from our church community who have grown significantly through coming along and experiencing and learning more about faith. We have had members from Queensbury West End join a number of years ago and they are now fully integrated, supported, loved and cared for as members of Illingworth Moor

 We have also undertaken the Stepping Out programme with the Circuit Mission and Vision Team and will work on the outcomes of that to help us in our ministry to our church and local community.

It can be clearly seen from the information above that Illingworth Moor is continually looking ahead for ways of engagement with the community and uses its resources wisely for the advancement of the Kingdom. The fact that we have made three new members of which two are new Christians show that we are a church open to see what God is doing and willing to join in.

 Therefore, while reviewing ourselves within the criteria of the questions and along with our Mission statement we see ourselves as stream 2