Even before the Covid-19 pandemic got underway, iKnow Church was becoming more and more central to making our pastoral and mission work more effective across our whole deanery of 180,000+ people. Since the Government and Church of England advice has cut in, it has begun to prove a real God-send. It is making our teamwork and collaboration so much easier as we all begin home-working with restrictions.
Across my seven churches, which in turn form one ‘hub’ of seven in our deanery, iKnow Church made it possible for us to run a quick campaign to get people to review their GDPR permissions and enable us to be better in touch. We’re now in contact with more people than ever before. We’re now busy organising contact trees and chains, between and beyond our members, and Circles and SuperCircles are the obvious tool we’ll be using – oh, and the Map-App too. Because missional contacts cost us nothing, we can go as wide as we like in our pastoral care this way. Our local Borough Council are just delighted that the church is responding in this way.
Our daily Lent Reflections – a new thing this year – go out on social media and our website, of course, but through iKnow Church they also go out by email to over 2000 people every day, and rising. Now that the pandemic is placing even more restrictions on us, we’re going to be extending those reflections for as long as we need, because the response has been amazing, and iKnow Church has really broadened our reach, but kept us within our GDPR obligations.