Come celebrate with us!

Are you interested in what is effective in children's ministry? Are you fascinated by what others are doing amongst families and keen to learn from them? Do you want to know what good practice is happening? 

Well, this is why it's so important to research this area of ministry. One of the goals of the CYM Research Centre is to equip and empower practitioners and academics in research activities relating to children and family mission and ministry. But also, to be a place to facilitate conversations amongst like-minded individuals.

With this in mind, in a couple of weeks we have our first ever online research conference to gather together and discuss these sorts of topics. It is for children and family practitioners; ministry leaders; parents/carers; students and researchers. So please spread the word as our conversations are always so much richer when we have a broad range of perspectives. We've chosen to do it online to make it as easy as possible to access. This will work really well with connecting us all together and there will be optional times to chat during the morning (but this will not be compulsory, don't worry if you really don't like breakout rooms!)

We chose a Friday morning, as hopefully that won't clash too much with your kids/families activities. But if it does, feel free to dip in and out of the morning if you need to. We will be posting the timetable for the morning onto the conference webpage within the next week, so if you have signed up you will be able to view that. 

The idea is that at the end of an inevitably hectic and full week, you can carve out some time for yourself - to sit down and listen, ponder, be inspired and explore in your mind the possibilities for ministry explorations and developments. So put your slippers on, make a cuppa and come join us in these conversations.

The aim of the whole research conference is very much to affirm and inspire research occurring around children and family ministry, hence the title for the event: Celebrating Contemporary Research of UK Ministry with Children & Families. There will be a keynote presentation and six other speakers, all providing inspiring and stimulating content, research findings and discussion starters. Gareth Crispin is our keynote speaker and will be bringing some thought-provoking ideas to share with us and get our minds exploring things a bit differently than perhaps you have before - the title of his talk will be announced shortly!

You can sign up here, which also gives you access to the recordings of the sessions afterwards.

If you're keen to contribute or have some research-related news to share, please email Sarah Holmes in advance, who would love to hear from you.

We hope you can join us!