INITIAL feedback from this year’s Back to Church Sunday on 30 September has hailed the day a great success.
Nearly 120 churches across the Oxford diocese took part, asking members to send out invitations to friends and relatives who were lapsed or non-churchgoers, welcoming them to a special service.
Fellowship was high on the agenda with churches being encouraged to make extra efforts to ensure their worship was accessible to newcomers and offer refreshments and a time for people to chat and get to know each other after the service.
Feedback reveals that the numbers of people returning to church was often quite high. One church said its congregation had been boosted from the average 20-30 to more than 120, including a number of families.
Other comments included praise for the idea of personal invitations. One church said: ‘The invitation proved very helpful in getting parishioners involved; feel very encouraged.’
Another found welcome activities helped break the ice, while others were uplifted by the fellowship. One said: ‘We followed our service with a bring and share buffet harvest lunch and more than half the people and their children stayed to enjoy the food and fellowship. It was a truly wonderful morning.’
While some churches followed the suggested format exactly, others tailored the day to suit their vision, writing their own invitations and using their own service material.
Not all churches found the resources easy to access or suitable for their use, while others worried that continuing the success of the day would be hard to achieve.
Others were already planning ahead with PCC debriefs on the venture.
And as one church concluded: ‘It helps to make people aware that they have a part to play in inviting others to church and also to think about what they are inviting others to and why they themselves come in the first place.’
Plans are already underway in the diocese for Back to Church Sunday 2008.
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