UBG Report to Lily Endowment

The report for "Mainline Evangelism Project II" has been released. Here is the link and below is the cover letter.

Dear Unbinding the Gospel Friends,

I hope your day is as gorgeous as ours is in St. Louis!

We've finished the first 15 months of our 4 year grant from the Lilly Endowment to help 1000 congregations work through the full-congregational saturation experience witih the Unbinding books. A few of you have already received a copy of this, but I will err on the side of duplicate information! Here (click on the link below) is a copy of the 10 page report I sent the Endowment a couple of weeks ago. We are extremely excited about what we're seeing in these congregations, and in what we're learning. I include many specific examples (anonymously) from congregations in the process.

The bottom line is that the books work, the coaching model is working with increasing efficiency, people are beginning to pray, to articulate their faith and to invite friends to church. (I'm hearing rather amazing reports that the term "friends" includes ex-prisoners, students, Saudis, and a few people who state of personal hygiene is not on an exact par with the typical congregant!) Staggering shifts are happening in some of these churches. i was with a Disciples of Christ pastor last Saturday who is serving a congregation whose worship attendance had increased from 90-100 to 190-195 over the course of the last 12 months. She's not a typical pastor, but we're seeing miraculous things happening in many churches.

If any of you know of churches that might be good candidates for participating in the grant process, please let me know. I would be delighted to consult with anyone interested in the exploring whether this coaching would be a good fit for them. If we determine that it is, I can help groups of churches prepare for participating in a coaching group.

Our website contains a couple of video interviews of pastors who have been part of Unbinding groups. (Courtesy of the Illinois Great Rivers United Methodists) Th report to the Lilly Endowment is also downloadable from the web site homepage (www.GraceNet.info). Let me know if I can be helpful to you.

Blessings,

Martha Grace Reese

Read the rest here.

Unbinding the Gospel Project

Have you started your Unbinding the Gospel study in your parish? Remember, your congregation received two copies of Unbinding the Gospel--one for your priest that was given out last year and one for each parish given out at Convention!

You can have an eight week Unbinding the Gospel study with your Vestry, your evangelism team or any group in the parish you want. All they need is a heart to share the Good News of Jesus Christ and a love for their Christian community! Nationwide there are over 12,000 people studying and praying through Unbinding your Heart this Lent. Thousands more are studying Unbinding the Gospel.

To help you in your study and in your work together, the Unbinding the Gospel Project has developed a new on-line community offering support, guidance, ideas and connection to anyone who is using one of the Unbinding series texts in their congregation.

This on-line community will be a place to discuss what you're doing with the Unbinding the Gospel Series in churches from all over the country and from many different traditions. Plan together. Share ideas. Figure out more resources for children and youth. How are you praying in your churches? Work on sign-up ideas for your E-vents (the all-congregational saturation study of Unbinding Your Heart). Now you can work on this stuff together, share the victories and help each other figure out how to get around bumps in the road! Just sign up and become a member of the Unbinding the Gospel Community.

Here is what Martha Grace Reese wrote to us

You can now talk with each other - we have a new, free, discussion and discovery community online. What are you learning? What's happening in your life, in your church? What do you wonder about? Sign up and start talking with each other, the coaches and me. You are coming up with GREAT ideas for using the Unbinding books - (I have listed 5 or 6 of them in my first message to the community - you can check it out when you sign up.) Here's how to sign up:

1. Go to www.GraceNet.info and click on "NEW: Unbinding the Gospel Community." (coaching pastors - the link is also on your pastor's home page)

From the Community page:

2. Create a Community profile for yourselves by clicking the "Register" link at the top right of the page (you don't need to use your real name for your screen name).

3. Accept the user agreement, create a username, password, enter your email address, and create a security question/answer in case you forget your password. For example, "What is your mother's middle name?" and "Penelope" or something like that. Then...

4. ...start "talking!" You'll see lots of topics you can talk about. Here's how: A string of written "discussion" is called a "thread" or "topic". Just go to the area of discussion that looks interesting to you. It's called a "forum." Some of the forums are "Prayer and spiritual leadership," "Planning an E-vent," "Challenges," "What's next?"

5. Click on the name of the forum. You'll be able to read what other people have written. All topics within that forum will be displayed in a list format with the newest topics showing at the top of the list. Want to read the full text or say something back? Click on the title of the thread you wish to read or respond to.

6. Want to say something? If you want to "talk" with someone who has already started a thread (said something!), click on the "POST REPLY" button in the upper right hand of your screen.

7. Want to start a new topic of conversation (a "new thread?") Click on a forum, then click on "new topic" and type away! Easy peasy, lemon squeezie!

The community will be available to everyone, not just coaching churches. Please tell your friends. (Forward this e-mail to them.) We pray that this will be helpful to everyone who is using, or thinking about using the Unbinding books. Let us know how it's going! Ask each other questions. If anyone has developed Week 3 of Heart children and youth resources, post them!!!! :-D Have fun. Let's get started!

Blessings,

Martha Grace

Learn more here.