Imagine Project: Next Steps

In this short new video, Neil Hudson outlines some of the next steps for the Imagine project over the coming months. Now that the Pilot Project is finished, how is the work developing?

Update from the North-West - Chick Yuill

Some of my best friends - the kind who know me well enough to tell me what they really think - have sometimes suggested to me that I might occasionally suffer from delusions of grandeur! I’d always thought they were joking until I took up the post of - wait for it - North West Regional Church Life Consultant for the Imagine Project. It’s worth getting out of bed in the morning for a title like that! My mates might have been right after all...

Seriously, it’s a great job which requires me to get involved with individual local congregations, clusters of churches in the same geographical area, and denominational groupings. And my role is simply to help them make the transition to Whole-Life Disciple-Making communities. It’s fascinating to see the range of churches who are either showing real interest or who have actually come on board with the Imagine Project here in the North West - a long-established Anglican church, a non-denominational new plant, a large Black-majority congregation, a lively Church of the Nazarene congregation, a URC church, a relatively new church in the Oasis network...

Work in Progress

At the moment I’m working on a publication that I hope will see the light of day in the autumn this year. It’ll reflect the work I’ve been engaged in with the churches that linked themselves into the Imagine project. This is a short excerpt from the introduction….

For three years we worked with churches up and down the country, getting to know them well, trying to understand their particular challenges and opportunities, encouraging them to become whole-life disciple-making communities. From this experience we have been reminded that there are no silver bullets, no ‘off the peg’ resources that will change everything. Over three years later, we have learnt from our work with these partner churches.

What we have found is that there is a clear process that can be used by any church, regardless of their denominational stream, their age profile or their geographical location. Of course, what they end up doing will be unique to them in each situation. Each church is local and unique, and God has a way of dealing with each of them according to his plans and purposes.

But the simple process can be summarised in three points:

Talk: Whole Loaf & Whole-Life Disciples (MP3)

Neil Hudson, the Imagine Project Director, recently introduced the ideas behind the Imagine project to a group from Crofton Parish Church, Stubbington. The talk was recorded and has been made available on their website. For those interested in hearing more about whole-life discipleship this talk may provide a useful way in.

To hear or download Neil's talk click here...

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.

North-West Pilot Project Video

We posted this video on our website before, but thought we would put it up here again as in it Chick outlines some of the thinking behind the North-West pilot project...

NEW Imagine DVD Small Group Resource

This new resource guides a small group through the themes, ideas and questions raised by the Imagine DVD. Over the course of 6 weeks, groups will grapple with the material and discover new ways of supporting and equipping one another as whole-life disciples.

To download this free new resource click here...

Welcome

Welcome to the new blog from LICC’s Imagine team.

A Quick Recap…
For those of you who are not familiar with the Imagine project, we are part of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). The project began in 2003 with the publication of Imagine: How we can reach the UK by Mark Greene which argued for the recovery of whole-life disciplemaking as key to reaching the UK with the gospel: equipping the people of God to live with a vision of the Lordship of Christ that impacts every area of life as they engage day by day, in different contexts, schools, homes, daycentres, offices…

Since then the work of the Imagine project has led to two pilot projects, working with churches across the UK, exploring the ways in which churches can equip their people to engage fruitfully and faithfully in life as disciples of Jesus.