At a recent workshop we were facilitating, the Love Your Neighbour team stood and watched a roomful of church people animatedly dreaming about their future together. At one point we spontaneously turned to one other with the same thought on our minds: “We just love doing this!”

And the feedback shows churches love it too:

“I enjoyed the diversity – opportunities for people to encounter each other and listen in Christ. We have sparked the fire of activity together, and made a decision. We now know how to move forward.”

“I enjoyed the opportunity we all had to share – best was the outcome that we are now all in it together with the same desire!”

Helping whole churches discover their purpose through facilitating workshops is what Love Your Neighbour does. While we use a number of creative tools and methods in our workshops, we have been framing our work using a strengths-based model for change called Appreciative Inquiry. This model is popular in the corporate world but it fits the church context perfectly. Unsurprisingly the originator of this approach comes from the church context himself!

We want to be as good as we can be using this model, but the training courses we have found are aimed at corporates and are very expensive.

We were recently delighted to discover a group of professionals in the UK who will be running an ‘Appreciating Church’ workshop in Cambridge in September. This is a 3-day workshop limited to only 16 participants that seems tailor-made for us. After a number of Skype meetings the three members of the Love Your Neighbour team have been invited to participate in this workshop!

The team has committed to going and must now raise the funds we need over the next 5 weeks to make this possible. Love Your Neighbour is a faith-based organisation with small reserves and we need to raise $12,000 to cover flights, transport, registration, accommodation and meals.

Are you able to help send us to this training? Your investment in our professional development will bear fruit in more and more healthy, outward-focused churches in the future!