Estates Lay Pioneers are people who come from estates, know the estates, and able to engage in culturally relevant outreach on the many estates in our diocese.
Our one-year training course for Estates Lay Pioneers, Magnify, will start in January in a variety of locations around the Diocese.
Magnify is a course customised for estates people, drawing upon successful experiments in the dioceses of Blackburn and York.
Those who have successfully completed year one may go on to the next stage of being a commissioned lay estates pioneer via the Greenhouse Course.
Travel and childcare costs can be provided for participants.
Magnify course is designed to be the course that reaches the parts other courses do not reach. No previous qualifications or educational achievements are necessary. It consists of thirty two-hour sessions spread over a year with 6-8 participants plus two facilitators meeting in hubs around the Diocese.
The style of learning is highly participatory, and group based. There are no formal assessments or written exercises.
What is in the course?
Term one is all about who we are in Christ. It begins by looking at the story of our own lives, before considering what people said about Jesus and what he said about himself. It moves on to consider who we are in Christ as flawed but loved people, members of God’s family, called to be fruitful in his service.
Term two is about sharing the faith. It begins by looking at the community the participant comes from and them by means of the Church Army faith sharing course, considers how our story of faith and the story of Jesus life can be share with the communities where we live.
Term three is about living as an ambassador for Christ in our communities, our families and our workplaces.
If you are some one who might be interested in finding out more or if you are an incumbent who might be interested in sending someone on the course please contact Gary Jenkins, Dean of Estates Ministry, who is overseeing this project: [email protected]
