Imagine: The Story So Far...

As the Imagine project is now seven years old, for those new to what the project is doing we thought it might help to recap how the project has developed, the progression of our thinking and how we hope to see the project developing over the next period of time.

2003: Publication of Imagine
Imagine began with Mark Greene’s essay Imagine: How we can reach the UK. The central thesis argued for a recovery of whole-life disciplemaking as key to mission in the 21st century. With a copy distributed to every person receiving the Evangelical Alliance’s Idea magazine, Imagine struck a chord with many who read it. As Joel Edwards, the EA General Director commented, ‘The response by our readers was extraordinary. Never before have we received such a wave of positive affirmation from a publication.’

2004: Imagine Project
With the unexpected scale of the response to the Imagine essay, the question began to be asked, ‘so, how do we respond to the issues raised?’ Consequently in May 2004 the Imagine Project was launched, led by Tracy Cotterell, as a grassroots pilot learning and experimentation project with local churches. The project began by focussing on research and consultation. The first step of which was to engage in a listening exercise, leading to two reports What the People Said and What the Leaders Said that identified the issues and barriers to whole-life discipleship capturing the perspectives of both church leaders and members.

2005: Understanding the task – Focus on culture shift
In 2005, LICC hosted the Let My People Grow conference in partnership with RUN, launched the first website and published the second magazine Let My People Grow. By this stage the project was gaining focus recognising that the core issue was that of culture shift, creating the right environment for whole-life disciples to flourish and focusing in particular on the values that underpin it.

2006: Transferable Resources
2006 focussed on creating resources that would begin to engage churches and church leaders with the whole-life conversation. This led to the production of the Imagine DVD and the book Let My People Grow (if you’ve got a good title stick with it!) which was a collection of essays for church leaders.

2007-8: Research & Development
2007 heralded the launch of the Imagine Pilot Project, led by Church-life Consultant Neil Hudson, as a three year experimental pilot research programme. Working with 16 churches from a number of denominations across the country the project had a number of aims:

1) to help leaders grasp a vision for making 'whole life disciples' in their communities
2) to help leaders and churches introduce simple actions that start a change of culture
3) to develop the starter materials to pass it on and start to help people grow
4) to understand the possibilities of networking people together to create a forum that catalyses and reproduces this way of life
5) to identify and start to tackle the major hurdles that impede growth
6) to identify the key elements that allow this way of life to become a reality in many churches in the UK
7) to demonstrate that focusing on whole life discipleship in an apprenticing culture leads to a healthy church and ongoing fruitfulness

This period also saw the Imagine project connect with Bishop Graham Cray who developed the series 21st Century Disciples looking at what it means to be a disciple in the modern day and exploring the biblical dimensions of whole-life discipleship.

2009-10: Preparation for Scalability
With the first pilot project coming to a close, having learnt a number of important lessons and developed a process that churches can adopt to become whole-life disciplemaking communities, the project has begun to focus on the question of transferability. How can the lessons we have learnt in the pilot project be best disseminated and shared with other churches?

To this end the Imagine project has been developing four core areas of work:

1) Transferable consultancy: developing consultancy and leadership training capacity and skills that allow us to work effectively with churches keen to become whole-life disciplemaking communities.
2) The North-West Pilot Project: Chick Yuill heads up the North-West Pilot Project, the aim of which is to focus on a working with a group of churches in a specific geographical region to broaden the research parameters of the project so that we learn not only what works, but also much more about the barriers to whole-life discipleship. Additionally, and vitally, a North-West pilot creates the opportunity to develop wisdom in how to pass on the learning that our current church consultant has acquired to others so that they will be able to take a church through the process of culture shift.
3) Denominational engagement: The work of the Imagine has been very warmly received by a number of denominations and we recognise that as a small team we need to be working in creative partnerships to maximise our effectiveness. In particular this has led to extensive engagement with the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Elim and the Methodists.
4) Product development: Imagine has always rejected the idea of discipleship as a programme. However, we do want to give churches the tools that they can use in the culture shift process to stimulate imagination. Currently, under development are a book containing conclusions, learnings and ideas from the first pilot project and a second small group resource on equipping for life on the Frontline.

Alongside these elements, the original message of the Imagine essay still burns brightly in our minds. As the 2009 LICC/Spring Harvest Apprentice Survey demonstrated, the sacred-secular divide remains a potent reality, huge numbers of people in churches across the UK are daily struggling, failing to identify God’s purposes in their lives and unaware of the significance of their presence in homes, workplaces and the many other places they have been called. Our desire remains to see God’s people flourishing as whole-life followers of Christ wherever they are, whatever they are called to do, released, resourced and supported to make a difference.