A busy season, and plenty of opportunities

A busy season, and plenty of opportunities

The next few months are shaping up to be a particularly busy season for Rural Missions, and we are really excited about the opportunities ahead.

Across the autumn, our team will be out and about at conferences, gatherings and events across the country. We’ll be speaking at CRE, helping to lead LoveRural, joining deanery gatherings, contributing to diocesan events and spending time with church leaders and congregations in all sorts of rural contexts.

It means quite a few miles, plenty of conversations and probably more than a few cups of coffee!

But behind every event in the diary is something much more important.

Each one gives us an opportunity to encourage people who are faithfully serving their communities, sometimes in places where ministry can feel isolated or overlooked. It gives us the chance to remind rural churches that they have a vital part to play in God’s mission and to help them think creatively about what mission could look like where they are.

Sometimes that happens from a conference stage. Sometimes it is through a workshop with a room full of church leaders. And sometimes the most significant conversation happens over coffee afterwards, when someone says, “Can I tell you about our church?”

Those conversations matter to us.

One of the things we want Rural Missions to be known for is being alongside rural churches. We are not interested in arriving with a ready made answer or telling churches what they ought to be doing. We want to listen, encourage, equip and help churches discover what God might already be doing in their community and how they can join in.

Events such as CRE and LoveRural also give us an important opportunity to raise the profile of rural mission more widely. Rural churches are incredibly diverse. Some are thriving, others are struggling. Some serve growing villages and market towns, while others are small congregations spread across several communities. Yet each has opportunities to share the love of Jesus and help people find and follow him.

As our diary fills up, we would really value your prayers.

Please pray for our team as we travel, speak and lead. Pray that we would listen well and say the things that are genuinely helpful. Pray for the conversations that happen around these events and for new relationships to develop. And most of all, pray that churches leave encouraged and increasingly confident about joining in with God’s mission where they are.

It is going to be a busy season.

But if that busyness means more rural churches encouraged, more leaders supported and more communities experiencing the love of Jesus, then we are very excited about what lies ahead.