Growing in Mission
Churches across Cumbria are deeply rooted in their communities. Through The Cumbrian Way, we’re supporting and strengthening this local presence—encouraging new expressions of church, nurturing local leadership, and creating space for communities to grow in faith.
The Growing in Mission project has four interconnected areas, focusing on:
Church Planting
We’re working with churches and leaders to establish new Christian communities that reflect their context:
- Barrow: Local churches are planting new congregations to connect with people not currently involved in church, often in collaboration with youth work, schools, and community groups.
- Carlisle: City-centre and estate-based churches are exploring fresh ways to gather and grow, with new worshipping communities forming around hospitality, creativity, and mission.
- St Aidans, Rural Derwent: A church plant in the villages and market towns around our Derwent deanery. Find out more here.
Alongside these specific locations, we are supporting other churches, leaders, and congregations to explore church planting through networks, coaching and mentoring opportunities.
Leadership Development
We are committed to supporting and developing all of our leaders across the diocese. This element of The Cumbrian Way provides development opportunities for those called to the role of Mission Community Leader and those working alongside them in this work. This is through:
- Providing a framework for mission community leadership development to support them in this important work.
- Offering coaching and training opportunities, including time for theological reflection, input and regular peer support through county wide events and Mission Community Leader meetings in the North, West and South.
Missional Revitalisation
Mission is only possible through local Christians living out their faith and listening to their local communities.
We want to help local Christians grow in creativity and missional confidence for their context and place. For the past 10 years we have called this work pioneering and we want to do more of this. We will:
- Support local leaders to build their local missional plans.
- Be a beacon to light up and share stories of people shaped by encounters with Jesus.
- Provide accessible training for mission, networking support, and encourage creative mission in local churches, the local community and mission communities.
Rural Mission Pilot
We’re going to be testing new approaches to rural mission alongside three local rural Mission Communities, focusing on:
- Working through what support can be put in place to release capacity for mission in a rural context.
- Exploring how we then use this capacity to create missional opportunities.
- What difference this could make for our rural churches across the diocese.
We hope these pilots will shape how we support rural parishes across the whole Diocese in the future.