This year Churchgoers across the Church of England were set to personally invite up to half a million people to services on Back to Church Sunday making the event one of the largest co-ordinated evangelism events shared across the Church in recent history.

Every one of the Church’s 44 dioceses took part in the initiative this year, by encouraging churchgoers to invite someone they know who used to attend church to come back on a particular Sunday. Churches focused on extending an even warmer welcome than usual on the day, supported by ‘Back to Church Sunday’ resources such as special red ‘welcome’ T-shirts and subsidised ‘party packs’ of fairly-traded catering products, produced in partnership with Traidcraft.

Up to 16,000 Church of England churches were due to take part, joining congregations from the Salvation Army, Churches Together in Scotland, the Church in Wales, Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed churches nationwide, Elim Pentecostal churches and Anglican churches in Australia, Argentina, New Zealand and Canada.
This was the third year that the Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham took part in the day. The first year Bishop Tony took to the air in a small plane to promote the day and last year he went underground to meet miners at Welbeck Colliery – one of the county’s few remaining pits. This year he took a ride on a racing motorbike and delivered Back to Church Sunday invitations to soldiers at Chetwynd Barracks in Nottingham.