Going for Growth

I have just finished reading Mission-Shaped Parish and was struck - inevitably - by the need to engage with our community. We need to get round the fact that "evangelism is a reluctant guest on the agenda of many churches." (p. 101) Often, I think, we give it too much hype. We think we can't do it. We forget that evangelism is just encountering people and telling the story - and we can. We need to be looking for where we are doing it - "The question each church needs to ask is: 'Where is our church's spiritual growbag? Where is the place for new life?'" (p. 101)