Worshippers across south-east Hampshire and the Isle of Wight will invite their friends to come back to church this September.
Eight parishes across Portsmouth's Anglican diocese will take part in Back to Church Sunday 2008. It's a national initiative based on research that shows millions of non-churchgoers would come to services if invited by friends.
Each parish is given packs of personal invitations, posters and helium balloons, and encouraged to provide a warm welcome to newcomers on Back to Church Sunday - which this year is September 28.
The initiative started in the Manchester diocese in 2004, but has quickly spread. Last year 20 Church of England dioceses took part, and 20,000 people came back to church as a result. This year 38 dioceses have signed up.
In 2008, one parish in each of eight areas covered by Portsmouth's Anglican diocese has been invited to get involved, as part of a pilot scheme. If the trial is successful, other parishes will be invited to take part in 2009.
The pilot parishes are St Saviour's, Stamshaw (Portsmouth); St Wilfrid's, Cowplain (Havant); St Mary Magdalen, Sheet (Petersfield); Soberton and Newtown (Bishop's Waltham); Holy Rood, Stubbington (Fareham); St John the Evangelist, Forton (Gosport); Shalfleet, Calbourne and Newtown (West Wight), and St John's and Christ Church, Sandown (East Wight). They have been chosen for the variety of worship styles, geographical locations and size of congregations they represent. Other parishes may also volunteer to take part in the trial between now and September.
The initiative hopes to build on the fact that attendance has risen in Anglican churches in the Portsmouth diocese. The most recent figures show that 15,200 people went to Church of England churches in the diocese each week during 2006, three per cent higher than the previous year. Much of the rise was down to the growth in the number of children and young people attending, which rose by 19 per cent between 2005 and 2006.
