New from Adult Formation and Caritas in the Diocese of Nottingham!

‍Save the dates in your diary

Mission Lab offers fresh ideas for the future of your parish.  In nine online sessions starting in May 2025, we’ll showcase how parishes around Nottingham diocese are seeking to build vibrant, attractive and outward-facing Catholic communities.

Mission Lab isn’t just a ‘think tank’ for mission, but a ‘do tank’ as well – a space to discern, plan and equip ourselves to be pilgrims of hope, in the Church of today and tomorrow.  We’ll:

• learn from good practice around the diocese and beyond

• develop initiatives that can be proposed in our own parishes

• grow personally in confidence, resourcefulness and leadership

• form a community of practice for parish resilience and renewal.

Sessions take place monthly on Zoom from May 2025, on Monday or Tuesdayevenings.  All are welcome – drop in when you can.  Click below to register for the series – we’ll send you a reminder of the link shortly before each session.

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Register for the Mission Lab

“Pastoral ministry in a missionary key seeks to abandon the complacent attitude that says: “We have always done it this way”. I invite everyone to be bold and creative in this task of rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of evangelization in their respective communities.” – Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel (33)

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Tuesday 20 May: Welcomers and welcoming

First impressions count: they can make the difference between keeping a newcomer and losing them.  It’s not just first-timers who benefit from a welcoming environment – longstanding attenders become participants, and participants become volunteers.  How can we ensure everyone who comes to our parish has a welcoming experience and feels they belong?

Join us to hear how they do it at:

• St Anne’s, Buxton, from Yvonne Ripley, parish council chair

• The Glossop parishes, from Leadership Team members Ann King and Liz Nash

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Monday 16 June: Intertwining vocations

All the baptised are anointed with gifts from the Holy Spirit.  How can our parishes become communities where we not only discover our gifts and vocations, but also help others flourish in theirs?

Last year a group from three parishes embarked on ‘Called & Gifted’, a discernment process to ‘help us unlock our story, understand our gifts and discover our unique mission’.  At this session we’ll meet Andrew Elliott, music and liturgy leader from Glossop parishes, and Hilari Chetwood, catechist at St Mary’s South Wigston, who will share their experience of the programme.  We’ll explore SHAPE, a framework which also calls on our heart’s desires, natural abilities, personality and experience, so that we bear fruit by sharing the gifts they have been given.

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‍Tuesday 8 July: What next after RCIA?

The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults culminates in welcoming the candidate into the People of God.  How can we ensure that completing the RCIA is not anending, but merely the beginning of lifetime of adventure and growth in the communion of the Church?  What can make our parishes places of continuousdiscovery and discipleship, for candidates and all their fellow parishioners?

Reg Carter, catechist at Good Shepherd, Nottingham, and Adam Lee-Morris, who recently completed the parish’s programme, will join us to map out anongoing journey for RCIA candidates to discover.

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Provisional dates and topics for the rest of the year

Tuesday 8 July: ​​What next after RCIA?

Monday 8 September: ​Engaging volunteers

Tuesday 14 October: ​Fundraising for outreach

Monday 10 November: ​Global parish

Monday 12 January: ​Parish as synod

Tuesday 10 February: ​Cell groups

Monday 9 March: ​​Mission Enabling Fund