St John’s Leyland – Ministry Trainee for September 2008

Website? www.stjohnsleyland.co.uk

Church background

St John's Leyland was a church plant of St Andrew's Leyland many years ago but became its own parish in 1991. We are situated in the North West corner of Leyland, Lancashire, which is a town of some 36,000 people off junction 28 of the M6. We are a small Anglican Evangelical church with an average Sunday attendance of 60 adults and 12 children.

We are looking for a male or female Ministry Trainee. Age is irrelevant and we would consider someone who has taken early retirement as well as young people taking a gap year. What matters is that you can honestly subscribe to the statement of belief of the Evangelical Alliance ( see http://www.eauk.org/about/basis-of-faith.cfm); have a measure of spiritual maturity, and be both teachable and willing to learn. We are members of the Evangelical Alliance and the North West Partnership of Churches.

The vicar, Alistair McHaffie, is the only paid staff member, but we have a female NSM and two Readers, one of each gender. You will be working in a parish church which is small but friendly and informal, and certainly not hung up about church tradition.

You will be living just a short distance from where the North West Partnership Ministry Training Course takes place making it easy for you to access the weekly teaching days to which we would expect you to be committed.

Areas of ministry
(Focused particularly on teens and young families)

• to take a lead in running our three mid-week groups for teenagers

• helping run the Sunday evening Youth Cell Group

• involvement on Sunday mornings
  (e.g. helping with either of our 2 Sunday Groups; running Powerpoint; helping with the PA; Music, etc…. Gift and Talent dependent!)

• School assemblies

• Shadowing the vicar as appropriate and meeting with him weekly for preparation, planning and prayer

• Some admin tasks

• Other tasks as required

• You will receive as wide an experience of gospel parish ministry as possible

Training

We will fund an academic year on the North West Partnership Training Course (see www.northwestpartnership.com) which is run by Justin Mote. You will be expected to participate fully in this course throughout your time with us. The aim of this course is to give you a basic understanding of Biblical Theology and the tools to be able to handle and teach/preach the Bible well in a variety of contexts.

If there are other courses – diocesan or otherwise – which we consider would be helpful for you to attend, we would aim to fund them.

Finance & Admin