East
Midlands Synod United Reformed Church
Synod
Mission Strategy Discussion Paper
Hope
We
all share the hope that our church will be renewed to be more
Christ-like. We believe that renewal will come from God through the
Spirit working within and among us. Our engaging with the Bible, our
prayers and worship together will all help us be the people God
wants us to be.
We
are all engaged in God's mission through our local church. How we
do mission is the challenge. We need to examine prayerfully together
in our church councils what God is calling us to and then put it
into practice with all the resources that God gives us.
This
strategy paper is for everyone in our local churches, to help us
think about how the Synod can help us fulfil our calling as God's
people in Christ.
The
Synod at Whetstone on 1st
November 2008 welcomed
the interim statement of the Synod Mission Strategy and referred it
for consideration to Synod Enabling Group (SEG) and local churches.
SEG has discussed possible outcomes, necessary resources, as well as
the process and timetable. This paper is now for local churches to
consider and send their responses back. A simple form is provided
for this purpose. Fuller and more detailed responses will also be
welcomed. Please send responses by the end of June 2009.
Process
We
would like all local churches to talk about these ideas. There will
be opportunities at Roadshows across the Synod in May, and Synod
Officers and staff can be invited to come to your church meetings.
Ministers meetings will also enable communication to be effective and
all details should be on the web-site.
Please use this return
form to summarize your feedback.
17.2.09
Mission
Encouragement
We
would like each local church to have a mission
plan.
This is usually achieved by working on the new version of the
Pastorate Profile. We are offering help to ministers and elders
through our Mission Enablers, Interim Moderators and members of the
Training Team. It would be good to have copies sent to the Synod
office then we could know how many churches have done it. We could
have a target of 40 by the end of 2009, 80 by the end of 2010, and
all by the end of 2011.
We
believe that being a Vision4Life
church will help improve our worship, our discipleship and our
confidence. So we would like half of our churches to be involved in
Vision4Life by the end of 2009, which is the start of the second
year - prayer and Spirituality.
We
would also like to be a growing
church,
in faith, in fellowship, in outreach and in numbers. We could
recognise this through sharing of stories of new initiatives,
encouraging events, new elders and members being received etc. Could
we hope and aim for a net increase of 1 member in each congregation
in 2009? In addition to the people already mentioned we have Synod
officers to help - Elizabeth Nash, Colin Udall and Derek Hopkins
at Crossways.
Mission
Funding
We
would like to be able to offer help to local churches in making
their buildings suitable for mission in the twenty-first century and
in having the personnel to help engage in mission activities. We
have two funds to provide help, the Outreach Fund which gives grants
typically of a few hundred pounds for evangelism. We could aim to
disburse £5,000 through the Outreach fund in each year between 2009
and 2011
The
Mission Fund gives grants of several thousand pounds for building
work or staff. We could aim to increase the present level of the
Mission Fund from £50,000 each year to £200,000 each year between
2009 and 2011. These Synod grants would match funding from local
church resources, either sale of parts of the site or from
investments, or grants from other sources
Ministry
Deployment
We
all share in the ministry of God's people. Our members are
dedicated and faithful and there is a lot of goodwill amongst
friends that are not yet members. So we need to encourage and equip
all the saints and learn how to use wisely our ministers, CRCWs, Lay
Preachers, Local Church Leaders and elders. We share our ministry
resources across the whole of the United Reformed Church. Our share
of stipendiary ministers for 2009 is 39 (full time equivalent -
FTE). But we know that it is not a good plan simply to have fewer
ministers covering more and more congregations. So we would like to
create Associations of Churches served by ministry teams, which
could include ministers, CRCWs, local church leaders and others.
Each
congregation would have at least one local leader - someone who is
recognised by the wider church, has some training and who has a role
description and is appointed for a period of say three years.
We
would like to have specialist ministers serving local churches
(Special Category Ministers - SCMs) and more Church Related
Community Workers (CRCW).
We
also want to encourage vocations and value each person's gifts. We
need more people to respond to the call to be Lay Preachers or
ministers.
We
will need helpers to run a programme to attract people to vocations
and to train them through TLS Lite, Certificate of Christian
Discipleship, TLS or other courses.
Crossways
Crossways
at Yardley Hastings could be a valuable resource to individuals and
local churches but we are not using it! We know that the
accommodation is ideal for children but not so suitable for
grandparents! We would like to invest in upgrading rooms to be en
suite so that a group of twenty adults can have a conference or
course whilst still being able to accommodate a school class of
forty. But our synod churches need to use it as much as Methodists
and churches from other synods!
Children and Young People
All of our churches would like to have children and young people as part of their life. So we would like to encourage churches with no children to engage with children in their community. Our Children and Youth Development Officer and young people themselves can help.
The young people themselves would like to be more involved in leading worship, praise parties and in other ways, so we would like to grow young people as leaders.
Justice
and Peace
We
have become a Fair Trade Synod and some local churches are engaged
in environmental projects like Operation Noah. We would like a
strong and effective network of committed enthusiasts who would
remind us of the needs of the poor and of the earth itself and
challenge us to action.
Belonging
to the World Church
We
are already in partnership with the Botswana Synod of the
Congregational Church of Southern Africa. We would like to have a
particular focus for the next three years including young people and
two exchanges of personnel each year, one a visit to Botswana and
the other hosting a visit from folk from Botswana.
With
our ecumenical partners we also have strong links with the Churches
of North and South India and some local churches also have their own
links with individuals, congregations or projects. We would like to
support and strengthen these links through prayer and sharing of
stories and perhaps grant support.
Celebration
Events
We
value the opportunities to come together to celebrate and learn that
we are part of the wider church. Energy4Life
on 11th
and 12th
July 2009 at Loughborough University is one such occasion and will
include a wide range of exciting workshops and speakers as well as
inspiring worship and Bible Study.
General
Assembly in July 2010 will be the first of the new style bi-annual
Assemblies also at Loughborough.
We
enjoyed the special June Synod at Bluecoat School Nottingham and
would like to repeat it perhaps in 2010.