Church Twinning where you are

If you search the Internet for articles about Church Twinning you will come up with all sorts of helpful information about partnerships with churches in other countries. This can be a valuable and enriching experience.

You might also come across news of partnerships between well-resourced congregations in the UK and smaller congregations in the countryside or in the inner city. This too can be well worth considering and by no means represents a one-way relationship.

But have you ever thought about twinning with a local church that serves the same community that you do?

You might be in a suburb, or in a city centre, or in a village – in any of these it is not unusual to find a parish church and a chapel built within a few streets of each other. If you belong to one of these, how well do you know your neighbours in the other church? You serve the same area and if you are like many churches, it is increasingly likely that similar people will be meeting in each to sing similar hymns and songs, read from the same translation of the Bible, offer prayers about similar concerns and maybe even hear sermons of similar length (!), but despite all this you may not know very much about each other at all!

Yet we serve the same God, live in the same community, and are called to engage in the same mission. So how about sharing some of it?

We are not suggesting a merger between you, but you might consider exploring a new commitment to each other. We sometimes talk about a regular “exchange of pulpits” (actually that’s tricky – it’s much easier to exchange preachers!) and it’s not hard to add the other church onto your magazine distribution list.

Sharing diaries means that major “outreach” events won’t clash, and you can pray for each other’s activities in your services. An invitation to each other’s anniversaries and festivals is often welcomed, and a short series of joint study groups, as in Lent, can be a great opportunity to get to know each other better and be enriched by what we learn of each other. In small ways like this we can begin to get to know our brothers and sisters in Christ better and break down some more of those “walls of partition”. When this happens we can find our mission to our neighbourhood is much more effective.

So, who could your church “twin” with?