Do you have a Festival Church in your benefice? Are you looking for ideas on how to run occasional services?
A Festival Church is a church building which is not used for weekly worship, but is valued and required by the community for local events and for Festivals of the Church and for Rites of Passage such as baptisms, weddings and funerals.
These Festivals include Christmas, Easter and Harvest Festival, but also local festivals, Saints’ days, Mothers’ Day, Remembrance Sunday, Rogation Days, etc. A Festival Church can also accommodate more secular events, for example a beer festival.
The Festival Church model is both simple and flexible and boils down to two fundamental changes in the way the church operates:
- Worship – doing less but doing it better: Festival churches no longer hold regular formal worship, but will instead concentrate on fewer “festival” services.
- Management – more people to be involved: Festival Churches will adapt their management structures to enable anyone with an interest in the building to take on an active role in its care.
A wonderful mission resource for Festival Churches to use. The aim is to set the tone for experimentation and all age approach to holding a gathering with a simple gospel message. Written by Revd Dave Lloyd, Mission Development Officer for the Diocese of Norwich.
The Festival Church Recipe Book
The Festival Church recipe book is a new mission resource written by Revd Dave Lloyd, Mission Development Officer at the Diocese of Norwich. It contains 12 ‘recipes’ to experiment with an all age approach to holding a gathering with a simple gospel message – which gives you 12 services to use throughout the year. It’s a free resource and available to view here: Festival Church Recipe book – Diocese of Norwich