Yesterday (Saturday) I had the opportunity to serve tea, coffee, and biscuits (cookies) at a pretty awesome event.  Robin Gambel is the "canon evangelist" for the Manchester Diocese, which means he does a lot of teaching churches about evangelism and growth.  Back in the fall, a number of vicars from the diocese attended a retreat where they received some in-depth training in the area of church growth.  Saturday was a day-long event where some of those same vicars brought lay people from their churches to learn some of those same concepts and begin to think about how to apply them to their churches.

There was a group from St. Andrew's (the church I work with) there, so when I wasn't pouring tea, I sat in on some of the talks and participated in the discussions within the church group.  There were about 75 people there from about 8 or 9 different churches.  It was awesome to sit in the sanctuary and listen to the buzz of conversation as these different churches brainstormed ways to grow numerically and spiritually.  I know that God has an amazing vision for each one of those churches, and I'm sure that Saturday was just the beginning of seeing that vision come to be reality.

Would you join me in praying for St. Andrew's and the other churches in the Manchester Diocese?  Pray for a God-ward focus, for the willingness to try new things, for the workers needed to make the vision happen.  God is poised and ready to do awesome things through these churches.  Let's support them in prayer!

In Christ,
Katie