Missionally Engaging in your Local Community in partnership with GN4S

An 8 session course about missionally engaging in our community – loving the community, making disciples, birthing contextually relevant church.

This MELC course has been tailored specifically for Good News for Swindon (GN4S ) and can be adapted for both a new housing context or general incarnational community engagement - it will be delivered in a dual format which includes both in-person days and online Zoom sessions.

Theology, Practice and Transformation (of ourselves and our community) are three key principles of the course.

This course is not about being given all the answers! Neither is it a simple blueprint for community engagement and making disciples/birthing church. It is about unpacking some theology and exploring what God might be leading you to do and be in your context. It is about having an openness to be transformed by God ourselves as we pray for God’s kingdom to come in our communities.

This course is free at the point of delivery. If you can make a contribution towards costs please let us know.

Course Outline

Session 1 – Introduction Why Underlying Principles? (in-person)
A Character First, Values Led Approach. Putting the why before the what.

Session 2 – Blessing Unconditionally (Zoom)
‘I will bless you… and you will be a blessing’ Exploring a theology of blessing and mediating God’s blessing

Session 3 – Living Incarnationally (Zoom)
‘The Word became Flesh’ Embodying Christ practically and spiritually in our community

Session 4 – Listening to God and the Community (Zoom)
How can we find out what the Spirt is doing and join in?

Session 5 – Being Friends (Zoom)
‘Jesus said I call you friends’ - Having the posture of a servant not a master

Session 6 – Laying Down our Lives (Zoom)
‘Whoever want to be my disciple must...take up their cross.’ Embracing the call to discipleship, and disciple making. Living it out authentically (Identifying and living out your DNA)

Session 7 – Laying Down our Agenda for Church (Zoom)
What might a contextually relevant church be like?

Session 8 – Keeping on Going (in-person)
Personal/Team resilience and sustainability, On-going spiritual sustainability, succession planning

Dates for October 2025 - January 2026

In person days - Saturday 11 October 2025 and Saturday 31 January 2026 (venue and timings to be announced)

Zoom Sessions

Day: Monday (usually fortnightly)

Time: 7pm - 8.30pm

Dates – 6 sessions - 20 October, 3 November, 17 November, 1 December (break for Christmas) 5 January, 12 January

Putting it into practice...
In between session each team or individual will be encouraged to seek to embody the learning practically in their context or work out how they will do that in the future. This will be part of the peer group sharing and prayer.

Peer Groups
Peer Groups are essentially an opportunity to have time and share encouragements and challenges; listen to God together; pray for the community you are engaging with - and to pray for one another as you step out in faith. You will be encouraged to meet with a peer group – either your team or a group you develop from the course.

Quotes from previous course attenders...
“For anyone wishing to embark on engagement in the local community, you will find this course a great blessing and an inspiration... It was laden with theology and practical approaches on how we could engage with our community experientially. We were encouraged to keep God at the centre of all we do...I was greatly challenged and blessed by this course. “MB

“Wonderfully fresh teaching to apply Bible principles of kingdom living in new places among new communities. Thank you” KK

“Great to learn with like-minded people about issues that are relevant to the church today. Ali shares her heart and passion for those outside of the church but it is firmly biblically based.” EL

“This is an excellent course, offering very practical and insightful guidance into getting started with or building up on engaging missionally in your local community.” LS