National charity Care for the Family is urging churches to use family issues as opportunities to engage with their communities.

This call to action is the theme of a brand new day conference called Engage!, which takes place in Manchester on April 28.

Church and Community Manager, Rev Richard Hardy, is passionate about seeing churches get to grips with community issues. "For too long we have failed to reach out into our neighbourhoods by talking about the things that really matter to people. After spending many years in local ministry myself, I'm convinced our failure to address real life issues is the root cause of the church's marginalisation in our society."

Rev Hardy gave the example of a man who came to his church one Sunday.

"He was in dire straits with addiction, marriage and money issues, and we were his last hope. His words to me were: 'I've tried everything else so I thought what have I got to lose? I'll try God.' He wasn't very hopeful.