What is Invite Welcome Connect?
The ministry of Invite Welcome Connect is a useful framework, gathering existing best practice and supporting its parish implementation in ways that make the most of 21st Century culture. It equips and empowers individuals and congregations to practice invitation, hospitality, and connectedness. Invite Welcome Connect is not a program, it is a ministry that moves parishes from a maintenance culture to a Gospel-driven mission culture. Its strength lies in the encouraging and motivating nature of Mary Parmer’s presentations, the accessibility and thus applicability of its resources, and her way to acknowledge and work with the discomfort some Anglicans and Episcopalians have with the term ‘evangelism’.
Invite Welcome Connect was founded by Episcopalian Mary Parmer in 2010 as a pilot ‘newcomer welcoming’ project in four Episcopal churches in the Diocese of Houston, Texas. Thirteen years later, it has been run in more than sixty Episcopal dioceses and is recognized nationally as an asset in The Episcopal Church, with the active support of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.
The Rev. Sr. Ingrid Andersen, who was trained in 2018 at the Harrisburg Cathedral (PA) by Mary Parmer, wholeheartedly recommends the Invite Welcome Connect framework for the way it has transformed her ministry and the parishes in which she serves. Parishioners ‘get it’ and are changed.
In the practical Invite Welcome Connect workshops, Mary Parmer shares the possibilities in a ministry of invitation, welcome and connection. She provides practical guides for parishes to assess their faith community in these areas, to create a strategy to strengthen the vitality of each particular parish, and to begin implementation of that strategy. The workshops and the handbook provide opportunities for parishes to work together creatively to see their parish in a new light, as well as providing step by step guidelines to make real change happen.
Links: Some basic background on Invite Welcome Connect (an 11-minute video)
The Invite Welcome Connect website: https://www.invitewelcomeconnect.com/
The Workshops – October 12 & 13
For the first time in Canada, Mary Parmer will run a two-part Invite Welcome Connect workshop at Church of the Advent on Thurs Oct 12 - Fri Oct13. Each evening starts with a finger supper at 6 PM, the session begins at 6.30, and ends at 9.30 PM (Thurs), and 9 PM (Fri). These sessions will be livestreamed as a Zoom webinar for those who cannot attend in person, and who wish to participate in the Q & A afterwards. The sessions will be recorded for the use of our Diocese.
The workshops will be followed by a 6-week implementation book study via Zoom during October and November, in which parishes could work together to create a strategy for their parish, and the steps to implement that strategy.
Costs
Registration Fee (In-Person Participation + Invite Welcome Connect Book) $ 50.00
Registration Fee (Zoom Webinar Link + Invite Welcome Connect Book) $ 25.00
Registration Fee (In-Person Participation - no Book) $ 30.00
Zoom Webinar Link Only No Cost
All must pre-register by September 30th!