2013: Read Beverley Hollins’ account of her experience in this unique five-year appointment in a North Buckinghamshire deanery. Would your deanery benefit from a similar appointment?

2013: Subtitled “The Blessings of Powerlessness”, this short paper by John Cole offers a provocative and Biblically-based assessment of the place of leadership when the Church takes seriously the whole-life ministry of the members of the local Christian community.

Download the pdf: (download)

Also available:

1. A List of resources – books, quotations etc (download)
2. Lay Discipleship and Leadership – eight key issues identified by Hilary Ineson in 1999 and still relevant today! (download)

This compendium of papers was produced by members of the Parish & People editorial team for the final Deanery Resource Unit mailing.

1. Kingdom 119: Church 3
   – getting things back into proportion

2. Renewal from the Outside In
   – a review of our recent experience

3. Baptised for Ministry in God’s World
   – re-affirming the ‘laos’, Kingdom people

4. “Feed my Sheep”
   – taking other people’s spirituality seriously

5. Who (or what) do we think we are?
   – a challenge to the Church of England

Available as a pdf: (download)

2012: The Salisbury Diocesan Communications Team provides this exciting new toolkit to help local churches to communicate effectively with those around them.

(download)

by Sue Rodd – 2012: A study reveals a huge communications gap between the residents and their churches in a Wiltshire Village. How would your church fare in your local community?

(download)

All of us involved in parish and deanery activities find ourselves experiencing conflicts of time and priorities in the duties and activities that we undertake. We tend to feel guilty if we do not carry out each task perfectly – forgetting that usually ‘good enough’ will fit the bill. If we set our standards too high, and do not meet those standards, then stress will often be one result.

One relevant commentary on this is the Rule of Life from the Companions of St Lawrence:

“In order to live a fully rounded life, life as God intends it to be, we must include things other than our work. Almost inevitably this means leaving some things undone. For us, planned neglect will mean deliberately choosing which things we will leave undone or postpone, so that instead of being oppressed by a clutter of unfinished jobs, we think out our priorities under God and then accept without guilt or resentment the fact that much we had thought we ought to do we must leave. We shall often be tempted into guilty feelings when we do take time off, but we should then remind ourselves that such guilt is a sin against the generosity of the Spirit, and also extremely infectious.”

The Rule emphasises the importance of all our activities, whether paid work or volunteering, time off, family and relaxation, all of which must be taken into account when we decide how to spend our time. In these days of high unemployment, ‘Big Society’ and voluntary activity by synod members, whether retired or still in paid work, “How do you spend your time?” is an important question, as also is how we define ‘work’.

The exhortation to include things other than our work becomes doubly important when for many people a fully rounded life consists totally of voluntary or non-paid activities.

Having a clutter of unfinished jobs is a source of stress, and we can all recognise the problems caused by having ‘too many balls in the air’ at one time. The effect of analysing our current and pending tasks, and consciously deciding those that can be postponed, delegated to others, or done at a lesser level (‘good enough’), can be a tremendous relief. Of course the decision to not do something, or to do it to lesser standards, must be a conscious one, perhaps taken in discussion and with the agreement of others, and the reasons for the ‘good enough’ approach should be clearly explained and communicated.

Time off is an important aspect of ‘good enough’ or planned neglect. Time spent on our own, with the family, with God in prayer or contemplation is just as important as paid or voluntary activities within a fully rounded life, and we must make sure that the standards we adopt make allowance for this.

‘What should I/we stop doing?’

Download the pdf: (download)

As the Church of England struggles to reach a common mind
about ordaining women as bishops – and much else!

Wise words from China?

In the 1800s Christian missions from Europe and the Americas invaded China. In their baggage they imported and planted the diverse traditions and differing perceptions of the Gospel which were derived from fractious European church history. In May 1922 their Chinese Christian disciples met in Shanghai, and formed their own National Council of Churches with this maxim:

Agree to Differ
Resolve to Love
Unite to Serve

In reaching agreement the devil is in the detail, as the Church of England House of Bishops knows well. The Greeks had a word for ‘the one who throws one against another’ – the ‘diabolos’. So long as the diabolic spirit prevails, it shackles the spread of the good news of the self-giving God of Love.

In Liverpool, Hope Street links the Catholic and Anglican Cathedrals. Archbishop Derek Worlock and Bishop David Sheppard put on record how they fulfilled in Liverpool what those Chinese Christians had resolved in Shanghai, choosing for their co-authored book the title: ‘Better Together’.

Liverpool’s Chinatown has an ornate entrance arch as do Chinatowns worldwide. Sydney’s arch proclaims in Chinese: ‘All seas over, we are all sisters and brothers.’

May all meetings of Bishops, Clergy and Laity assembling separately or together, every PCC, Synod, Council of Churches and Lambeth Conference use and keep in mind the Chinese Christian arrow prayer ……

Agree to Differ, Resolve to Love, Unite to Serve –>

Download the pdf: (download)

Practical advice for those asked to lead intercessions

Download the pdf: (download)