Church planting and fresh expressions resourced by Incarnate Network

It's now three months since I started at Gildersome and we had our first outsider to visit. One of the children who comes to the monthly intergenerational event brought her friend and her mother this month.
Football managers start the season looking for their first clean sheet, first point, first win.
I start a new ministry looking for the first visitor, first returnee and first baptism.
The church has  a wide range of contact activities, (men's breakfast, healthy walks, high class tea shop, toddlers, dancing lessons) but few stepover events. So we get onto the penalty area, but don't score very often.

I am beginning to cast vision for a drama school. The outlet for the drama will be the First Sunday inter generational event, a natural place to bring family and friends to watch the performance.
We'll see

I've become the minister of the Baptist Church in Gildersome. It's one of the oldest Baptist churches in Yorkshire, having been founded in 1707, though there are records of Baptists in the village in the mid 17th century.
I first preached here, to about 30 people, in the mid 70's.
Since then the congregation has grown in the 80's and drifted back until now, after 30 years on Home Mission the church has a membership of 23, an average congregation of 28 and a total of 43 regulars if we all came on the same day.
I have come to be the part time minister with a clear vision of how my time will be spent.
For the saints I will run a serious Bible study every Wednesday evening - this has an attendance of 15 each week.
I spend one of my 3 days a week on pastoral visiting.
For the people who don't come to church, at the moment, I will spend one day a week door knocking with a straightforward invitation to join us. So far I have knocked on about 500 doors and spoken with 250 people. I have received a warm welcome and look forward to the first person attending. Our Sunday morning is being restructured to follow short 3/4 week series on topics such as family relationships, using money, leadership etc.
The church members have committed themselves to deliver a monthly advertising leaflet to 700 homes and are already involved in a series of pre-evangelism activities.

Well here we go again. I made a count today of the total number of people who attend my new church in Gildersome. If the regular congregation all turned up on the same day there'd be 43 of us, which is, coincidentally the number of people who attended Conisbrough when I went there after college.
However at Gildersome there is a head start as they had already started a monthly intergenrational event and a series of pre-evangelism activities. I am so looking forward to seeing where God takes us this time round. This will be my fourth church and each one has been a different exciting adventure.