Support for all age café-style worship from Zone2
The team behind Zone2, the weekly all age café style service at Liverpool Cathedral have launched www.oldoakresources.com a new web based resource to help churches develop a similar service. The Old Oak team is also available to work alongside parishes through the process.
Supported by funding from Church Commissioners, the site is part of a package that aims to share the experience gained by the Cathedral since they launched Zone2 in 2011. Zone 2 has grown steadily in those first two years, from a planting team of nine adults and nine children. Now attracting fifty to sixty worshippers most weeks, the team is working towards launching a 4pm service each week starting on 21st April.
Visit the website www.oldoakresources.com
Most of the work creating the site was done by Mike Prescott, who is mission pastor at the Cathedral, supported by Church Commissioners.
Canon Richard White, who steered the project, explains “One of the Cathedral’s purposes is to be a resource for our Diocese in mission. We’re certainly not saying that we have all the answers, in fact we learn every week from our mistakes, but we’d love to share what has worked for us, as well as to learn from others and use their ideas”.
The site provides enough resource to set up and run a complete service. From the essentials you need to think about to provide a friendly welcome and well-run service, and talk, sung worship and creative prayer ideas. It includes complete service outlines and a blog area so that you can get involved in conversations about ideas, problems and solutions. There are already over a hundred resources on the site, and it will continue to grow every week.
Old Oak is not a brand or an organisation - it’s an image that captures a growing part of the life and ministry of the Cathedral.
Partnering with parishes:
The team is also available to partner more intensively with one or two churches within Liverpool Diocese at any one time, offering focused support, encouragement and coaching. “We know many churches have a desire to develop something similar,” Richard explained “but just need that extra bit of help. We are committing ourselves therefore to being available to partnerships where we can support, encourage and coach others in that process.”
Richard is keen for it to be a two way process and would be keen for feedback. He told us “If you do use any of the ideas, adapt them or create your own and are happy to share them please feel free to let us know. We're interested in how you feel ideas could be improved, what sort of things you'd like to see next and how the resources on this site inspire you to create your own.”
Why Old Oak Reosurces:
The Allerton Oak in Calderstones Park, Liverpool, is estimated to be 1,000 years old. Each spring hundreds of daffodils bloom in the shade of the Old Oak, protected by the fence around it, and spreading like crazy into the rest of the park.
That captures our hopes for this project. We'd love this "Old Oak" to give shade and protection for similar new, small, fragile, colourful, life-filled projects in the Diocese of Liverpool and beyond. We're praying that the resources and support on offer will make this a place to connect, share ideas and learning from each other.
For more information on this please contact Richard and Mike through the site www.oldoakresources.com