#renewalandreform

This week, the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council announced £7.8 million in awards to help fund a range of exciting and creative projects across the country aimed at promoting growth in the Church of England.

The grants will be used for work in nine dioceses in areas such as digital evangelism, pioneer ministry in large urban estates, new worshipping communities in city centres and a project to help rural churches.

In Exeter Diocese, the Growing the Rural Church programme has been awarded £1 million to help work with 100 churches over the next seven years, helping them promote effective mission and growth and in particular develop the use of their church buildings in a way which strengthens mission and evangelism.

Up to 40 mission communities will benefit from a £860,000 award to the Diocese of Carlisle to help fund the ‘God for All’ ecumenical strategy to give everyone in the county the chance to discover more about the Christian faith over the next five years. 

In Portsmouth Diocese, £929,000 has been awarded to help fund a team of pioneer ministers and a new city centre church appealing to young people and students.

The new Harbour Church in Portsmouth city centre will be led by Rev Alex Wood, a curate at St Peter’s, Brighton, a church plant that started five years ago with 30 people and is now 800-strong.

The pioneer ministers include Rev Barney Barron and his wife Sara, also ordained, who are working on the Leigh Park Estate in Havant, where an estimated 30,000 people live, and Rev Tim Watson, a pioneer minister in the Leesland area of Gosport, a traditionally ‘hard to reach’ area for the mission and ministry of the diocese.

Nicky Pybus, a lay pioneer minister, who serves St Philip’s Church in Cosham and St Peter & St Paul, Wymering, both in the northern side of Portsmouth will also be funded by the award.

Her plans include a café-style church from September with creative prayer and worship and a film club in the church hall.

“It often takes a long time to see the results in pioneering, it’s about engaging new people with church in new ways, and creating communities which won’t necessarily meet in church or look like conventional church,” she said.

“My work is about building relationships with people and breaking down misconceptions and saying we really care about our communities and we are here to serve you – this is about doing things with communities rather than to communities.

“Some of the projects will work, others won’t, but that’s all part of pioneering, it’s the freedom to try things and to take risks. I love the creativity and the freedom. It’s very exciting.”

Rev Tim Watson, who formerly worked in Crewe as a pioneer minister, has been working in the Leesland area since April.

“One of the exciting aspects of pioneer ministry is that sometimes you start something radically different, but quite often it is about making connections with people and agencies that are already at work in an area - relationships that have not been developed because those in ministry may not have been released to do this work.

“Right now, the Church has a wonderful opportunity to engage with communities creatively through mission. It’s exciting to be a part of this."

- Martha Linden, Senior Media Officer, Archbishops’ Council

David Jennings, senior strategy officer with the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops' Council, writes:

The grants were made as part of Strategic Development Funding, set up two years ago to support major projects intended to lead to a significant difference in the Church’s mission and awarded by the Spending Plans Task Group of the Church Commissioners and Archbishops’ Council.

This funding is now due to play a crucial role in the Renewal and Reform programme, expanding from next year to distribute half the money available from the Archbishops’ Council for dioceses to help fund investment in new growth opportunities.

 The other half, aimed at the support and development of mission work in the most deprived communities will reflect the number of people living in the poorest communities of the country, within and across the dioceses.

Together, these elements form the core of the 2015 Resourcing the Future Task Group recommendations, and will ensure income from the Church Commissioners’ funds helps dioceses to advance the Church’s goal of mission and growth more effectively.

Over the last three years, 2014-16, initial priority for Strategic Development Funding was given to the dioceses with the least resources per capita. All dioceses are now being encouraged to apply for this funding, with some of the least resourced dioceses, which secured funding in the first round, working up further applications.  

The Archbishops’ Council is not setting themes to guide funding applications, though it hopes a good number will seek to address the pressing need for the Church to engage with children, young people and young adults.

Many of the proposals being considered by dioceses include innovative and creative approaches, as well as those that are rooted in experience. Either way, there needs to be either evidence or clear logic as to how it is envisaged a project will deliver its desired outcomes; and, for all the projects, a key element of the funding is evaluating how the work has fared and capturing the learning from both successes and failures.

 Dioceses are also being encouraged, when putting forward a funding application, not to think of it as a one-off initiative, but part of a long-term “pipeline” of applications to help take forward their strategy. Proposals are assessed on whether they flow from a longer-term diocesan strategy and whether there is a robust delivery, to ensure the Church’s money will be spent effectively in advancing its mission and growth.

I was born and brought up in the Church of North India. I had no desire originally to come to the UK but came over exactly 10 years ago with our three sons to join my wife, a Registered Nurse, in June 2006. At the time, I was a teacher in an engineering college and had no interest or inclination to become an ordained priest. I refused and resisted God’s gentle overtures until he talked to me in a storm, à la Jonah. He spoke to me through adversity in a ‘Jonah in the Whale’ moment.

During my plane journey from India, my eldest son Siddhartha became very poorly and just slumped into bed on reaching home. The following day, he became seriously ill and was taken to hospital where we were horrified to find that he was in a diabetic coma. The doctors were keeping their fingers crossed, not sure whether he would come out of it intact, without damage to his brain. We were told that it could be 24 hours before we would find out. My wife, who is from a Hindu background, and after marriage had converted to Christianity through genuine conviction, prayed earnestly to God. Siddhartha came round after only two hours and is now in perfect health. This was followed by other events that jolted me – my younger sister died of breast cancer and my mother’s brain cancer deteriorated. Up until then, I had been a nominal Christian who attended church once in a blue moon.

Later that year, a neighbour of ours, a Pakistani Christian, asked me to come to an Anglican church in Leicester, where a group of Asian people – mainly from Pakistan and India – asked me if I’d like to be their ‘pastor.’ I said no – and protested that I was a teacher, not a preacher. They somehow persuaded me to lead them in a rented Methodist church closer to where they lived. We met in this free ‘Pentecostal’ church in the afternoon. In the morning, I went to St Theodore’s in Leicester, where the former Bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, confirmed our whole family, including our three sons, into the Church of England in 2008.

In early 2012, God spoke to me through Bishop Tim who asked us how the Church of England could help the South Asian community.  I asked if he could open the closed church of St Gabriel’s in Belgrave – it was duly reopened through Bishop’s Mission Order in June 2012 and rededicated as All Saints Church. I was sent to The Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham and underwent a Bishop’s Advisory Panel interview and was successful. I was made a deacon last year and will be ordained a priest on Saturday in Leicester Cathedral.

At All Saints, we have a congregation of more than 150 and since 2012 have baptised more than 70 people. We hold services for our mainly South Asian congregation in a number of languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati and English – the strapline of our church being “Multilingual Worship in a Multicultural Community.” I’m a Curate in Leicester Cathedral for half a week and at All Saints Church for the other half. My journey has taught me that storms are not always bad, and lending ears to the Lord definitely leads to a sense of direction and purpose in life.”

 -  Rev Sunny George, Curate in Leicester Cathedral and Minister of All Saints Church, Belgrave, Leicester, will be ordained a priest on Saturday in Leicester Cathedral.

Click here to find other blogs about people’s ministry and vocation

Watch Sunny George speak in this short video:

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Rev Phil Maries, a former lorry driver, was ordained priest at All Saints Parish Church, Normanton, West Yorkshire, at the weekend. He writes about how a CB radio broadcast by a vicar that he heard on the road to Glasgow changed the course of his life.

“I was brought up in a Christian family but I drifted away. I went to church as a child but I found it totally boring. I was given the option of finding something else to do so I played rugby which got me out of going to church.

“I left school with no qualifications and I was written off. I was going to go into the Army but that fell through and I ended up as a scaffolder earning a lot of money but playing hard and drinking hard. There was one event that made me realise that my life was going nowhere – I was in a fight in a pub, I took my friend out of the pub and then went back in and found someone had been stabbed. It was the realisation that I could have been the one who was stabbed or I could have been the one using the knife that made me review my life and start to realise what God was trying to say to me.

“I later took up a job as an HGV driver and was driving for 32 years all over Europe. I was doing specialist haulage and the company I worked for did a lot of work on petrochemical and nuclear industry. I was working for a lot of the time in big nuclear power stations but also small electrical sub stations. The longest I was on the road was for a month.

“When I first started driving I was travelling up the M6 just beyond Lancaster, there’s a truck stop at Carnforth and the local vicar used to go in there when CB radios were in use and do a ‘Pause for Thought’. I was travelling up to Glasgow when I caught about 90 seconds of what he was saying. He was talking about Psalm 116 and Psalm 113 and I really listened to what those two psalms were saying. I began searching for a local church but I didn’t really find anything suitable, but looking back, God was in all of this. I got together with my future wife Belinda, who worked in my company, after she invited me to teach map reading to guides. She was a guide captain and we were invited to church by the vicar where the guides were being presented with their badges. We ended up attending this church together.

“In the early 1990s Nigel McCulloch, the then Bishop of Wakefield, said that Wakefield was going to be a missionary diocese and the whole diocese was invited to run a mission. I was part of that team and I felt called to be an evangelist. Everyone kept mentioning ordination but I had it in my mind that I couldn’t do that because I had left school with no qualifications. I got involved with an organisation called Through Faith Missions and was going all over the country doing mission work for them, being an area evangelist team leader. I was encouraged to do Reader training. I started the training but struggled with the academic side. The Church persuaded me to get assessed and it turned out that I was dyslexic. I was able to get extra help and completed the course.

“I’ve now completed a full degree course and I’m going to take up a stipendiary post in Normanton, an ex mining town

“The vicar who spoke on the CB radio broadcast would not have known if he had reached anybody - but that was his calling, and it was a life-changing moment for me. Looking back, my life could have gone two ways – the way that it has done, or I could have ended up in prison or an alcoholic and in a very low place. The faithfulness of that vicar has had an enormous impact on my life and I want to pay that back and do the same for somebody else.”

- Phil Maries

Chris Sayburn, 33, left school without qualifications and became a Christian in 2001 at the annual Soul Survivor summer festival. He is being ordained a deacon in Manchester Cathedral on 26 June.

“I'm a Blackpool lad who grew up in a dysfunctional, but a now restored, family that deeply knows the grace of God.

“We can honestly say that it's because of Jesus that my mum and dad are still married. It's because of Jesus that we've been able to deal with mental health issues within the family and I've personally walked through depression and anxiety. It's because of Jesus that my sister who ran away when she was 15 and I was seven is now following Jesus and back in relationship with her family. I like to think that we as a family are testimonies of grace.

“I left school with no qualifications and became a Christian in 2001 aged 18 years old  at the annual summer festival for “Soul Survivor”.

“It was there that I heard the gospel. The headline good news of Jesus Christ, His life, death, resurrection, ascension and awaited return in accordance with the back story that brings about a new reality, hope and restoration (1 Cor 15). This gospel was irresistible to someone like me who had been left empty by the world over promising and under delivering.  

“Fast forward, I'm now married to Cat (we are coming up to 12 years, another testimony of grace from God, and my wife!) We have two kids Jacob, 10, and Bethany nearly seven and we genuinely love serving Jesus together as a family.

“Since becoming a Christian I've always served within Church of England parishes. It began at St Thomas’ in Blackpool, in the heart of an Urban Priority Area, then to a village church, St. Peter’s, Gildersome, in West Yorkshire, where people would take your washing in for you if it was raining - I thought someone was trying to nick our clothes at first! – and then to St George’s Church, Leeds, a vibrant and diverse city centre church. Through these churches, I’ve served a number of roles including youth worker, musical worship pastor, creative communications leader, evening service team leader, Alpha team leader, Missional events pastor, football outreach with offenders, prison ministry and line manager of interns.

“Throughout this time, people have consistently said that God was calling me to ordination. I always laughed it off saying, “no chance,” “Well He hasn’t told me!”

“My decision to seek ordination came after an extraordinary fortnight – with myself, my mother in law and my wife all dreaming that I was a vicar. During that time, I led musical worship at Spring Harvest and someone I didn’t know came up to me as said “I think you need to explore ordination”. Then someone within St George’s said the same thing. I then spoke to my Vicar, Jonathan, about it and he said “ah, Mary (his wife) and I were only saying the other day how we believe you need to explore ordination…. Arghh! I got the hint and went to the CofE vocations officer who sent me to the diocesan director of ordinations after three sessions.

“After completing contextual training with St Barnabas Theological Centre, I am now getting ready for my ordination when I get the privilege of serving as a pioneer deacon within the Manchester Diocese.

“The journey has been tough; at times I’ve questioned what the heck I’m doing, but through it all I know the call that God has placed on my life (and family), confirmed by the church and now being outworked through ordination.

“Even now, at 6ft 4ins tall and with full sleeve tattoos on my arms, when I put on a dog collar, people who don’t know me will probably think I’ve dressed up for a stag do.

“I will be serving at Saint Philip’s, Chapel Street, which is being launched in the Autumn as a “Resource church” aiming to reach out to young adults in the city centre.

“The diocese has identified that within a mile of the city centre more than 70% of the population is aged under 30, a number that will continue to rise as more housing developments are built.

“Relationship is really important to myself and my incumbent Gareth Robinson and I am so excited to learn from and serve under him.

“A resource church is about having a vision bigger than a “parish”. Whilst parish remains important, modern communities or networks (as they are often called) don't always work within a parish structure or geographical framework. Match this with the ongoing concerns with the trajectory of church attendance figures and indeed forecast clergy numbers within the UK, we are determined, by God’s grace, to play our small part in the revisiting and outworking of the Great commission and the great commandment.”

It might seem odd to have a post on Renewal and Reform from someone in Church House, claiming to look at it from a fresh perspective.  But as the new Secretary General, in post since 1 December, I come new to Renewal and Reform as much as any newly elected member of Synod, or anyone in a parish trying to get to grips with it.  Since being appointed to work for the Archbishops’ Council last summer, I have tried to make time to talk to a wide variety of people in the Church, in a range of roles, about the state of the Church generally, about the work of the national church institutions, and about Reform and Renewal (as it then was).  This has included talking to leaders of R&R task groups, staff working on the proposals, colleagues in dioceses, parishes and colleges working out what they might mean for them, and some colleagues who have been particularly critical of aspects of the proposals.  I hope I have learnt from all of them. 

This post comprises some reflections after a few months of such conversations. 

First of all, what is R&R?  I would describe it as a set of initiatives and activities intended to improve the support that the national church institutions can give to the Church proper (the Church in the dioceses, parishes, schools etc) in its work of mission.  It’s coming from the National Church Institutions because it’s about things that those institutions (the Church Commissioners, the General Synod, the Archbishops’ Council etc) can do.  But it comes from the national church institutions in response to what the dioceses said when members and staff from Church House asked what they wanted, to help the Church for the future.  And because it’s a response, it’s not a national plan or a national strategy for the Church. 

Secondly, what’s it for?  This bit’s easy.  For me, the purpose of R&R is to contribute to turning around the decades-long decline in the Church: a decline which we all know is there, on almost any measure we choose to look at – but also a decline which we know can be reversed, because in many places there are hopeful signs of how it can be done.  R&R can only be a contribution, because the Church exists in the parishes, not in Synods or Councils.  But Synods and Councils can contribute – and they can help work towards a hopeful future, in which we once again have a growing Church, with more people coming to faith, with more people deepening their faith and living Christian lives, and the Church doing more good for this country. 

Thirdly, why now?  If the question is “why not before now?”, I can’t answer that.  If it’s “why do we have to do it now?”, that’s because our Church is shrinking fast, and it could start diminishing faster at any moment without action. Only the Church of England has a national mission to be a Church for everyone, in every community.  Other denominations have shrunk and withdrawn from great swathes of the country.  And the reach of new churches is inevitably very patchy.  If we want the gospel of Christ still to be available everywhere, it’s our job to sustain that.  And to sustain it for our children and grandchildren in the second half of this century and beyond means putting things right now. 

Fourthly, what’s it about?  Well, it’s about the things which we can do to help: 

It’s about using the inherited money of the Church more wisely and deliberately: to spend half the money the Church Commissioners have free to distribute each year on low income areas.

And it’s about spending the other half of that money on projects which – based on evidence, but also trying new things – are deliberately intended to foster growth.   

This is in R&R terms, “Resourcing the Future”. 

It’s also about lifting some of the burdens on parishes by simplifying some of the 1400 pages of legislation (not to mention other rules) that weigh on the Church and sometimes tie us down unnecessarily. 

This bit is called “Simplification” 

It’s also about aiming to call many more candidates to ordination – trying to reach 600 a year by 2020, instead of 400 a year now, so that in future we will have enough priests to continue ministry across the whole country, rather than shrinking back more and more.  Even with a 50% increase in ordinations, the number of priests will go on falling for years to come, and only start to rise again after ten years or more 

Training a lot of new ordinands, at a time when the Church is still shrinking, will be a bold and costly investment in the future – but an essential one to reverse the decline eventually.  So it’s also about giving the dioceses the authority to plan how best to use the large sums which will be needed to pay for this training.  At the moment there is no central planning, at national or diocesan level, for how to use this money.  Instead, dioceses are just taxed for their share of the total cost, without having any significant say on how it is used.  One of the proposals is to give that say to dioceses. 

These bits are about Vocations, Ministry, and, specifically, “Resourcing Ministerial Education” 

Then there are other bits still at an earlier stage: work on finding ways to make more of lay leadership, to go alongside sustaining the number of ordained ministers; and work on discipleship, to help all church-goers develop their faith; work on how to make the best use of modern communications and social media; work on strengthening training for present and future leaders of the Church; and work on being more flexible about using our buildings, both for mission and for extended community use; 

And I think we also need to look more widely, at whether there are other aspects of mission where the national church institutions could do more to help the parishes (or simply get out of their way).

Fifth, isn’t all this a lot of jargon?  Well, it depends what you mean by jargon!  We all speak slightly different languages.  As someone coming into the Church from a different professional background, I confess to being a bit surprised to find what for me are everyday terms (“programme”, “strategy”, “planning”) sound like jargon to some who have spent their lives in the Church.  But I concede they can sound unfamiliar to some.  And we should try to keep things as clear and simple as we can.  Meanwhile I am becoming gradually familiar with a dictionary-load of Church-speak terms which sound to me just as much like jargon (“discernment”, “pathways”, “formation”, “intentional”, “fresh expressions”, “ecclesial”…).  That’s before I get onto different dialects of Church-speak (“priest”, “presbyter” or “ordained minister”, anyone?).  We could all do with making things clearer; the General Synod paper on (ironically) “Simplification” was – for a new reader – one of the hardest documents I can recall having to decipher! 

Sixth and finally, is it all worthwhile?  I believe it couldn’t be more important.  If we want our Church to be bringing the good news to as many people as we can, in as many places as we can, then I think we need – now – to invest in making that possible for the future.  Are we getting it right?  Almost certainly not.  There are things missing from Renewal and Reform, there are things which are imperfect in Renewal and Reform, and there are things we need to do a whole lot faster and harder if we possibly can.  Feedback and comments from dioceses and parishes can help us do that.  Everything done in Synod, or by the Church Commissioners, or by the Archbishops’ Council, can only be dedicated to supporting, not directing, the vital work done by the Church in all our communities.  Please help us do this better.

William Nye,  Secretary General

A few weeks ago someone introduced me at a conference and included the name of the church where long ago I was baptized.  At the first break a woman came to speak to me. “I was baptized at that church too” she said.  After a bit of a chat we realised that we had been christened just two months apart, lived on the same street and were in the same reception class! Today we are both ordained priests in the Church of England.  Maybe there was something in the water.. or maybe someone prayed down the years as the journey began. Neither of us came from active church-going families, and I don’t know what motivated my parents – apart from ‘getting the baby done’ as around half of families would have done in those years.

More than two thousand families each week, on average, are still making the same decision. There is no longer any cultural expectation, and yet still one in six children sets off on a life-time journey of faith, beginning with baptism. It’s a journey that may take all kinds of twists and turns, may be dormant for decades, but it is a journey to discover the grace and fullness of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ.  

Recent research commissioned by the Archbishops’ Council has given fresh insights into what motivates today’s families to bring their child to be baptised at a christening. It also reveals what parents expect – and what they actually experience on that day which is special to them and their child. From that research new materials and a new website have been developed and tried out with parishes over the past year, making a real impact on the involvement of families with church and helping to change understanding and expectation.

Now the messages from that research, together with practical tips about how to help families engage with the journey over the years, are being launched nationally at a series of one day conferences for everyone interested in seeing young families discover that they are loved by God and have a place with God’s people.   The conferences, called “Baptism Matters” take place throughout the country. Those who have attended similar days already have found them encouraging and inspiring:

“Hugely insightful into what families want and expect from the church, it makes us really stop and think.”

“Excellent day, in every way! It keyed into all my hopes for developing Baptism ministries and teams, and then added to them and challenged me further! Cannot praise the day enough.”

The baptism of a child is a special occasion – special for friends and family and special for the church who welcomes them all, and above all special for the child who starts the amazing journey of faith in Jesus.

The day costs £50 plus VAT and for every two places booked a third place is free.

Next available dates: February 23rd Solihull, March 8th Taunton, March 15th Bracknell

To book a place on one of these days go to www.baptismmatters.org for full details.  

When asked to write some reflections on the Strategic Leadership Development Learning Community, my first observation is that a lot has happened in a year!  On the days when the Church of England can feel like an oil tanker, to have set-up, discerned and launched a leadership programme in only twelve months is speedy (it reminds me of a friend who used to work in the oil industry and says you can turn an oil tanker round in six hours!). That said, lest I leave you with the impression it’s been thrown together, my experience of the programme is one of great spiritual depth and forethought which seeks to help us shun the anxiety prevalent in leadership, and instead help us to be centred on God’s grace and abundance.

Those who know the history will be aware of some of the controversy that surrounded its inception, with thoughtful and less thoughtful critiques around the nature of leadership and who will take part.  Whether the more prophetic of these have helped inform the process or not I don’t know, but my own experience of both the discernment process and being part of the learning community has been hugely encouraging, deeply challenging and wonderfully disruptive.  The discernment process felt like a desire to genuinely follow the Spirit’s leading, and gave great hope in what was to come.  Those expectations have been exceeded in two key ways: the faith/holiness of learning community participants and the quality/thoughtfulness of input.

In candour, and maybe especially in light of others fears about the narrowness of who might be selected, one might have expected a strutting group of monochromatic management sorts, with ‘Renewal and Reform’ tattoos and an uncontrollable urge to want to rename deaneries ‘synergistic collaborative thinkhubs’.  The reality has been different:  faith-filled people, looking to follow God in the vulnerability and pain of ministry, eager for the wider world to meet, love and follow Jesus.  On a darker day, when I wonder for the future of the church in England, seeing those God is calling to lead it renews my hope. That’s not to say all is perfect.  Clearly there is much more to do in encouraging BAME leadership, but for a first year it’s been an encouraging cross section whose stories have moved us to laughter, tears, prayer and hope that God is active.

Secondly, the quality of the input has been amongst the best I have experienced.  The times led by Jim McNeish have been superb – explicitly and unashamedly Christian whilst also drawing on some of the best the world may have to offer in the fields of both leading complex organisations and our own role and psychology as leaders. Another highlight was Archbishop Justin sharing wonderfully and personally about the cost of leadership, which I know left many of us moved and challenged to hold vulnerability within the mercy, strength and grace of God, to work harder to reject the temptation to work in our strength or for our ends, and to be aware of how subtly those temptations rear their heads.

So this learning community doesn’t do everything in leadership development – it doesn’t intend to and why should it when there are so many other excellent resources available - but what it does very effectively is to augment existing provision with something that goes deeper into some of the key wells of leadership development in areas we tend to spend less attention than we should.

Is it making me a more godly, reflective and missional leader? Well, you’ll have to ask those I work with (just ask for their e-mail addresses!) but I know I have changed as a result of even these first months, am certainly more reflective on the true nature of leadership, more aware of my own shortcomings and strengths (and slowly learning to live with both better), and how to encourage people with different styles and giftings. Most of all, I am renewed in hope that God is active, on the margins, in the centre and often in unexpected ways.

 - Barry Hill (@revbarryhill), Diocesan Mission Enabler, Diocese of Leicester