Sharing Stories, Sharing Life

Everyday English Conference Friday 31 January, 2025.

Humans love stories. We love hearing stories, and people love to share their own stories as well. The Everyday English Conference in January 2025 will be all about hearing and telling stories. Learn how to tell stories from the Bible, discover new lessons based on people telling their faith stories, and get new tools to help you share yours.

Omar Anheluk has Argentinian heritage and was named after a famous soccer player. He has served at Campsie Anglican Church since 2006 – a multicultural church dedicated to serving God and the community. It has an English Conversation class, an Easy English service (complete with an English lesson each Sunday!) and another service in Mandarin. Omar will be encouraging us from the Bible and also sharing in the panel on pathways from Everyday English to church life. Come along to a wonderful day of encouragement, practical input, varied sessions and free resources. 

There will be new lesson resources for all churches and a showbag including: 

• a calendar of training events for 2025 (in-person and online)
• an Anglicare Op Shop voucher
• a new self-assessment tool for teachers to develop their skills
• a copy of Connecting our Stories, a new Discipleship resource in easy English.

Details:
Friday 31 January, 2025
Multicultural Bible Ministry (MBM) Rooty Hill
9:15 am – 3:00 pm
Cost: Early Bird: $40.00 until 15 December, 2024
Standard: $50.00
If finances are a concern, please email us at crossculturalservices@anglicare.org.au

Registrations will close Monday, 27th January 2025.

All tickets include access to the recordings of the session on the main auditorium. These will be available two weeks after our conference.

Choose two electives:

1. Panel discussing how to connect students with the wider life of your church
Ever wondered how our students can take the pathway from English class to church life? A panel will talk about their different experiences of inviting students to activities at church, Bible Studies and Easy English church services. We will have time for questions, so come prepared to ask!

2. Their Story ~ Your Story ~ God’s Story
Your story is a powerful bridge between your students and Jesus. It allows you to speak positively about your faith rather than negatively about other people’s faith. Because the Gospel is your story, you will also be sharing something of God’s story. But before we share about ourselves, we must show a genuine interest in other people by listening deeply with curiosity and generosity. In this elective, we’ll practise listening deeply, we’ll think about how we can succinctly share parts of our story, and we’ll explore how to make connections between our story and God’s story.

3. Team leading with intentionality and joy
What team vision, values and practices can create a healthy and inspiring ministry team culture?
In this elective, we’ll explore together what it takes to build an effective, encouraging and God-honouring team culture on your Everyday English team! Judy will share her own varied experiences of building healthy team cultures and invites you to come ready to share your own great ideas, challenges and questions. Judy Fitzmaurice is the Team Leader of English For Living, a ministry of gospel partnership between two churches in Macquarie Park. She has led various ministry teams in several different contexts and loves to think through the dynamics of teams and how to lead well for God's glory. 

4. Structured activities or free conversation? Can we do both?
This practical session with Kristy Freney will focus on getting the right mix between structured vocabulary exercises, and free conversation. Whether you run a class or an informal group, come and learn how to introduce and practise new vocabulary which becomes the building blocks for students to discuss topics with greater confidence. This elective will explore the In Our Community series and help you to develop solid foundations about a topic, which then allow students freedom to share personal experiences.  

5. Engaging and memorable Bible stories   
This elective will show you how to take a Bible text and craft a Bible story that is clear and memorable for you and your students. Not word-for-word memorisation but still faithful to the biblical text.  We will also see how easy it can be to facilitate a simple discussion in response to a Bible story.