Growing Disciples. Together Grants

At the heart of our diocesan mission is a commitment to helping people follow Jesus, serve others and transform the communities around us. We long to be communities that are effective in making and sustaining disciples. Every context is different, but the core question is the same for all of us – how do we help people encounter Christ; learn to follow him and grow into confident, outward looking faith?

Growing Disciples. Together Grants

We are offering to invest resources and support to help you reflect on what ‘discipleship pathways’ in your local context might look like and then to put them into practice.

You can apply for a grant of between £500 and £2000 to help develop new or existing pathways into faith.

This initiative is supported by TC.T funding and the time period for applying for initial grants will be from the 1st February until Easter 2026.

Applying for a Growing Disciples. Together Grant

Think about your context, where are the opportunities to create pathways for growing faith, or to deepen existing pathways?
Register your interest by emailing Chris Dobson using the link below with as much or as little information as you have and arrange a meeting to talk through your hopes.
Work with us to develop your proposal and decide how money will be used.
Agree how any learning will be shared with others.
Apply for a grant.
If you are awarded a grant for some or all of your expenditure, put your vision into practice.
Give us feedback on how you get on and how it is helping people to grow in confidence in their faith.

Identifying your Pathway

Your pathway could be a new (to you) way of enabling people to grow in faith, or it could be created by making new connections between existing activities providing steps to deeper faith. Your pathway:

Should be related to the vision of your church and demonstrate how it intentionally helps people move from simple encounter into deeper faith.
Doesn't have to be all encompassing - it could simply focus on one area of church life.
Doesn't have to have clear plan worked out before you get in touch, simply a desire to help people move forward in their faith. Part of the process witll be to help you think through how best you can facilitate those journeys
Or you may have no clue, but you want to do something, just reach out.

Example Pathways

St Andrew’s Church, Avonmouth

St Andrew’s run a Foodbank. When people come into the Foodbank for a food parcel, they also receive an invitation to The Well Café which meets once a week in the church. Those who come to the Well Café are then invited for lunch and, if they wish, to stay on for Thirst. Thirst is an opportunity to explore some of the questions people have. Some people from Thirst now attend Sunday worship and the team is thinking about offering an Alpha Course for those who come to Thirst. There are clear links signposting people along the pathway.

Foodbank > Well Café > Lunch > Thirst > Church / Alpha

St Monica's Church, Southampton

St Monica's wanted to create links for the children who came to Christmas Carol services with the wider church. They gave each child a gift of chocolate gold coins and wildflower seeds. When the seeds had grown into plants they were invited back to plant them to form a wildflower meadow. At Easter they were invited to an Easter Egg Hunt in the wildflower meadow. Everyone who attended was then invited to come to Messy Church or a Toddler Group.

David Adam Kess, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Growing Disciples. Together Grants