Building the Body: Faith Enhancing, Community Nurturing Exercises for the Local Church

Building the Body is bursting with ideas and inspiration for all who long to see their church community flourish and all its members growing in faith and discipleship. Containing more than fifty ready-to-use group activities - all thoroughly road tested - it offers an imaginative and varied resource for revealing fresh insights, inspiring creative ideas and bold visions, stimulating profound learning, deepening commitment, encouraging confidence, strengthening relationships and enabling future directions to be discerned. Arranged in six sections: • Reflecting on Whose We Are • Knowing One Another • Exploring Our Cultures • Understanding Our Communities • Learning from Our Experiences • Discerning Our Future, each activity is outlined step-by-step, with its purpose, preparation and equipment needed, leaders’ instructions and photocopiable resources included. In addition, a helpful introduction explains how to facilitate group activities well. ‘In this book we have drawn together activities which encourage active listening, arouse curiosity and creativity, inspire prayerful reflection, assist better understanding of others, bring together different perspectives … and much more. In our experience, not only do they often lead to profound insights and experiences, they are also usually a lot of fun!’ All the authors are staff members of the Church of Scotland Mission and Discipleship Council.