Back to Church Sunday launches in Portsmouth Diocese

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.

The Ven Caroline Baston, who chairs the diocese's evangelism working group, said: "The research suggests that about 20 per cent of the population has had an experience of church and would be open to an invitation to come to a service. Our problem is that we often don't do the inviting!

"Sometimes people lose touch with church because of family commitments or personal circumstances, and then think they wouldn't be welcome. Our job is to persuade them that they would be.

"The research also shows that people are far more likely to come to church if a friend invites them than for any other reason. And once those newcomers have experienced church once, 88 per cent of them would be open to a further invitation.

"Because Back to Church Sunday is on the same day across the country, it means there can be national publicity about it. It also means any newcomers can be confident they won't be the only new people in church that week.

"It gives our churches the chance to show just how welcoming they can be - not just in saying hello as new people come in or chatting over coffee afterwards, but also explaining throughout the service what's going on for those who may be unfamiliar with what we do."

As well as 38 of the Church of England's 43 dioceses, Back to Church Sunday 2008 will also happen in Churches Together in Scotland, the Church in Wales, Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed churches nationwide, Elim Pentecostal churches and Anglican churches in New Zealand and Canada.

Research by the Diocese of Lichfield after last year's Back to Church Sunday suggested that 6,000 people came back to church on that day and that, six months later, between 700 and 900 (12-15 per cent) had become regular members. About a further 3,000 are still in touch with their inviting churches and may have come at Christmas or to a social event.

The 2008 resources centre on a special and personal invitation, with a place card bearing the emblem 'VIP'. The venture is supported by Traidcraft, which produces fairly traded and environmentally friendly resources for churches to advertise their invitation and welcome.

For more information, see www.backtochurch.co.uk.