Speakers and participants

The Right Revd John Pritchard - Bishop of Oxford
Bishop John introduced the day and conducted opening worship

The Right Revd Stephen Cottrell - Bishop of Reading
Bishop Stephen led a talk on What evangelism is today

Steven Croft - Archbishops’ Missioner and team leader of Fresh Expressions. He is a co-author of Emmaus: the way of faith and has many years experience of helping churches think creatively about evangelism

Steven led the seminar Nurture Groups - the role of nurture groups in the journey to faith and discipleship.  

Rachel Jordan - Associate Mission and Evangelism Adviser for the Church of England and an associate missioner with Fresh Expressions. Rachel led the seminar: Spiritually Aware? - seeing what God is doing beyond the fringes of Church and joining in. 

Sadly, Yvonne Richmond who was due to lead this seminar is unable to attend after the recent death of her husband. We are grateful to Rachel for stepping in.

Janet Russell - Parish Development Adviser ... who is enthusiastic about helping people to live and share their Christianity

Ian Macdonald - Diocesan Youth Adviser... loves spending time with teenagers and believes we have a lot to learn from them

Yvonne Morris - Oxford Diocese Children's Adviser. . . passionate about small people discovering Big God who loves all His children.

Ian and Yvonne led the seminar: Children and Young People - sharing faith with young people / children 

Andrew Gear - Parish Development Adviser for the Buckingham Archdeaconry

Archbishop Rowan's quotation that "Mission is finding out what God is doing and joining in" has breathed new life into my understanding about what the local church is called to be and to do - to listen to God more attentively and look with God's eyes at the people and activities in our communities.

Seminar leader for Rooting living faith in the Parish

After the excitement and energy of the day, some practical "what next" thinking that you can take back in your local church?  Some questions we need to think about are:

• who else needs to be involved and how do we get more people on board?
• do we need to form a team?
• how do we root prayer at the heart of what we do?
• who are the people we might want to reach?