WORSHIPPERS across the Portsmouth diocese will invite their friends to come back to church this September.

You can be assured of a warm welcome when you come back to church

Eight of our parishes 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 41 dioceses have signed up.

In 2008, one parish in each of our eight deaneries 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; St Wilfrid’s, Cowplain; St Mary Magdalen, Sheet; Soberton and Newtown; Holy Rood, Stubbington; St John the Evangelist, Forton; Shalfleet, Calbourne and Newtown, and St John’s and Christ Church, Sandown. They have been chosen for the variety of worship styles, geographical locations and size of congregations they represent.

The Ven Caroline Baston, who chairs our 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.”

One worshipper who came back to church in 2007 was a Wyn Watkins from Peterborough diocese. He’s featured on the Back to Church Sunday DVD explaining that he came to church because his friend Cheryl invited him.

National evangelism adviser Paul Bayes said: “He came because it was Cheryl, not because it was Billy Graham or Rowan Williams. All of us can do what Cheryl did and invite one person.”

Although our eight pilot parishes have already been chosen, any other parish that would like to take part in Back to Church Sunday 2008 is able to do so. Contact Neil Pugmire on 023-9289 9673 for more details. There’s also information on www.backtochurch.co.uk