Gathering information at your event
You will receive a feedback form soon after 12 August asking for some basic information about your event, as well as for you to offer general feedback. Your information will help discern the future of the Methodist Day of Outreach connexionally, but it will also be useful information for you when planning future missional activities.
We suggest appointing someone at your event to be responsible for gathering the following basic information (this is a role that can be done alongside other responsibilities!):
- How many people came to your event?
- Of the people present, how many of them were not members of the church(es) organising the event?
- Of those people, how many had you had prior contact with as a church?
If you want to go further, you could gather feedback from the people who came to your event, perhaps through a short survey.
Reflecting as a team/congregation after the event
In the weeks following your outreach, it will be beneficial to gather the planning team, or a wider a group of those who were present, to reflect on your mission. This will enable you to be attentive to and celebrate how God has been at work, and to identify what you’ve learnt. You could do this after a Sunday service or organise a separate meeting.
Below are some suggestions of questions and reflective activities you might want to look at together.
Testimony time
Invite people to share stories from the eclipse event – conversations they had, things they noticed, inklings that God might have been at work.
After people have shared, pray to give thanks for what you have heard.
Revisit your why
Remind yourselves why you held the event – what were you trying to achieve or learn? The planning guidance included some suggestions, but you may have had your own. Together, discuss and reflect on your purposes one at a timer.
Note that this isn’t necessarily about tangible outcomes – in evangelism we are responsible for the invitation but not the response. However, if you wanted to make connections with new people in your community, to what extent did you do that? If you wanted people in your congregation to have faith conversations with people outside of the church, did they?
Equally, did the event have any unintended but welcome outcomes?
Small group discussions
Organise people into twos or threes and ask them to choose some of the questions below to discuss and then feed back to the group.
- Are there any practical details you would change (eg start time, location, communication ahead of time)?
- What was surprising?
- What was the best conversation you had at the event?
- Did anything feel brave or uncomfortable?
- Where did you notice God in the event (either at the time or in hindsight)?
- What did you learn about our ability to share faith?
Looking forwards
Spend some time, first individually and then together, reflecting on what your next steps might be.
As individuals:
- What would have helped me in having meaningful conversations?
- After this experience, is there anything I want to do more of?
- What one thing could I do to become more confident at joining in with outreach?
As a congregation:
- Do we feel we could do something like this again?
- What is our biggest barrier to evangelism? What small steps could we take to address it?
- Are there any existing church activities where we could introduce a little more intentionality to faith-sharing?
- As a church, do we have discipleship pathways that enable effective outreach? Do we need to work on any of the following?
- Ways of meeting new people.
- Making our services genuinely newcomer-friendly.
- Offering low-barrier-to-entry ways of engaging with faith outside of services.
- Are there any local events we don’t currently attend that we could have a presence at?
Further resources
The Church offers the following resources and training that may help you take your next steps:
- Everyone an Evangelist – an accessible course for small groups helping to demystify evangelism and build sustainable, intentional rhythms of both personal and shared faith-sharing.
- Evangelism for Leaders – a course for lay and ordained leaders of all kinds to help you discover what authentic evangelism looks like for you, and help others do the same.
- Microfunding for evangelism projects – small amounts of funding available for new projects in churches intentionally reflecting on their commitment to evangelism.
- Conversations Against Mundanity – a game to help enable more meaningful conversations, both in churches and with people outside the church.
- Our Church’s Future Story – guidance for growth planning, including how you might engage with your local community.
- On The Way – a new course for spiritual seekers, perfect for running after outreach events.
- Mission at events and festivals and events – ideas and principles for engaging missionally with local events.