Category: Renewal and Reform

Newsletter after the Conference

This year’s conference was an exciting event! We hope you enjoyed it, and found it helpful. There was a great deal of energy around and a lot of interesting conversations.

We’re already starting to review the 2016 conference and think ahead to 2018. We would appreciate your feedback, so do take five minutes to fill in our very brief survey: Click Here

Downloads

We are still gathering all of the powerpoints and handouts from the speakers. Many are available already, so please check the website for videos, slides and notes.

These will keep appearing as more is sent to us, so please visit again in a week or so…

Feel free to share the links with colleagues in your deaneries. We have tried to make this easy to do, by posting material on the website, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The links for these can be found below…

Help us tell the story

We know that many people found the weekend helpful and will be writing reports for their dioceses, archdeaconries, deaneries, and parishes. If you are one of these people, please send your report in so we can use it on the NDN website. We would really appreciate your reflections, and it will help us to tell the story of the conference…

I was able to speak to a few people at the conference about our desire to build the network up so that it’s not just an event every two years. We would like to make it possible for people to share ideas, news and stories throughout the year. To do this, we need your input, so if you have anything that you could share, please send it in. Just email your news to us atmail@nationaldeaneries.net

It would be great if you could also encourage others to join the National Deaneries Network. People can sign up by following this link:join.nationaldeaneries.net

We hope to send regular emails keeping you up to date on the work of the Network. You can help by sending us news or stories from your area. Please contact us by email or Facebook.

The Next Conference…

The next conference has already been booked for the Hayes Conference Centre between 5th and 7th October 2018. We aren’t taking bookings yet, but you may wish to put it in your diary…

The Organising Group

The Organising Group will be meeting again in December. If you have any ideas for things that we should do or discuss, please drop us a line.

Renewal and Reform


(Audio only)

John Spence introduced the theme of Renewal and Reform (website). This emerged from a realisation that the Church of England was no-longer representing the whole of the nation, and that dioceses wanted to focus on growth – but didn’t have a strategy.

A key issue is maintaining the number of clergy, while releasing the talents of lay people. This means that we need a 50% increase in the pace of ordinations.

It was clear that the formula for distributing funds had lost its relevance. It rewarded failure. Fifty Million of funds can now be distributed to poorer parishes and to strategic development funding.

John payed tribute to deaneries, and to the commitment of people working across diverse areas.

The term “growth” is an issue. It must be used in a way that is relevant in diverse areas.

There is a report coming which will say something about the empowerment of all God’s people.