Kelvin Holdsworth, the provost of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow was on sabbatical in the US and part of Canada about 18 months ago. He visited lots and lots of parishes and talked to lots and lots of people (including a lunch with Jim Naughton!)
Today on his blog he lists nine things he learned on his sabbatical. They include:
1) The need to stop talking about mission – no-one joins a church that is so needy as to advertise that they are interested in “doing mission”. (Advertise in this context means any website, poster, church sign or magazine)
2) The need for strong high quality lay education – I was impressed by EFM http://www.sewanee.edu/EFM/
3) The need to train people in good quality congregational development – I was impressed by this: http://www.cdcollege.org/