My dear friends,
The diocese has asked every parish in the diocese to engage with a Deanery Mission Action Plan and poses four aspects to which questions are linked:
More Open – How will your church provide worship and sustain faith?
More converted – How will your church nurture and grow the faith of your church community?
More Generous – How will your church pursue a radical, generous response to the self-giving of Jesus Christ to resource and sustain the church’s work?
More Engaged – How will your church care for, and impact upon, the wider community?
As Rural Dean, I must respond ultimately on behalf of the deanery in terms of how we would wish to see outreach and ministry developing within the next few years.
This initiative started before Covid, but the financial pressures experience by the Church nationally have sped this process up. It seems to me to be difficult to tackle this realistically when we still have no idea when a new ‘normal’ has been arrived at. That said, it is always good for churches to explore where they are and to seek to move forward. This is something I hope our new Parochial Church Council will do over the forthcoming months. We must examine where we are and decide if we can make our proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ ever more assessable to those we interact with.
Ours is the Faith in which there are no barriers to knowing the fulness of God’s love. Please pray for our endeavours to touch people’s lives with the knowledge of the grace we know in following Jesus Christ.
With love and blessings,
Michael