Brief for a Working Group on a Curriculum for Congregational Life

1.Background

This brief addresses one of the six Priorities for Action identified in the Diocesan Review and its background is set out in the Strategic Review document. Relevant points from the Review include the following:

• Circumstances in individual congregations vary but most have seen falls in the levels of membership and/or attendance.

• Research with congregations and clergy revealed

  • concern about decline but little coherent focus on addressing it

  • a near universal desire for growth, but ambivalence about change

  • unclear aims, inconsistent or sometimes little leadership

  • only limited engagement with the community beyond the congregation

  • little recognition, awareness or spread of good-practice

• Development programmes – such as Mission 21 – may have slowed decline but they have not been able to reverse it.

• Most of our congregations don’t plan or act on a clear understanding of what a healthy, growth-orientated church should do and be.

Many of our congregations undertook the MYCMI programme as part of Mission 21. This introduced them to the idea that congregations could review their life together and take a strategic view of their future as the people of God. Where congregations feel vulnerable, they tend to move into ‘survival mode’. This in turn leads to a limited and inward-facing agenda. At the point at which they need to face outwards in mission, they risk becoming self-preoccupied and unable to do so. The need for a Year of Stewardship is symptomatic of the remedial action which becomes necessary when key aspects of congregational life ‘drop off the agenda’.

The task of this Working Group is to outline what the agenda or curriculum for the life of a congregation might be – the things which a congregation which seeks to be living, growing and attractive might need to do. The Working Group should also outline the process by which such an agenda could become imbedded in congregational life – possibly by three or five year plans – and identify the support which congregations would need to achieve that.

Additional input to this task will come from a one-off Workshop on “Sources of Growth” in October 2007.

2. Task

The task is to develop a plan for the implementation of a consistent curriculum for congregational life in our diocese, with indicators of a healthy, growth-oriented church.

The plan should

• Take a holistic view of congregational life

• Set out a coherent framework for what a healthy, growth-oriented church should do and be, covering, for example

  • Worship and spirituality

  • Education

  • Youth and children’s work

  • Stewardship

  • Community engagement

  • Inter-church activity

  • Peace and justice issues

  • Pastoral care

  • The identification of resources

• Provide a strategic process that congregations can use to plan, act and monitor progress in pursuing that curriculum

• Identify the appropriate accompanying support that congregations are likely to need and the possible sources from which that support might come

3. Envisaged approach

It is envisaged that the Group will adopt an approach along the following lines.

3.1. Develop a model

In its work the Group should begin by developing a view of what does or would constitute best-practice for a curriculum that is balanced but will foster congregational growth. This should draw on research-based evidence where available, and cover

• What congregations should do and be, in all aspects of congregational life

• Which aspects of congregational life have greatest impact on growth

• How health and growth-orientation can best and most helpfully be measured

• What factors are most important in enabling a congregation to establish a planned and evaluated approach to its life and work

There is a considerable body of published thinking on models of congregational life, on which the Group may wish to draw.

3.2. Assess the issues and opportunities

The Group should then move on to review the current situation in the diocese and identify where there are significant differences between actual and “ideal”. Findings from the research work carried out in the diocese in 2006 will provide some relevant background and insight.

3.3. Begin the process of consultation and planning

From that assessment, the work of formulating a plan should begin, focussing on how to establish the curriculum and associated strategic process as part of the life of every congregation in the diocese.

This will produce some recommendations for immediate change where that is obviously necessary and practicable.

It will also produce a mid- and longer-term plan for changes that will become more actionable over the next 5-10 years as resources and capabilities permit. The expectation is not that all congregations will immediately become active in all parts of the curriculum, but rather that they will adopt the curriculum as the basis for planning, prioritising and evaluating their work.

The key to this is good process. This means that we should not just consult people about changes which are proposed. We should so far as is possible and practicable involve clergy and people most affected in the actual process of identifying and exploring the options that exist for them within the curricular framework.

4. Initial response requested

The Working Group is asked to meet by early September 2007, consider the brief, and request further information from the Implementation Group as required. The Working Group Chair is invited to come back to the Implementation Group on September 11^th make a short (1 or 2 page) outline proposal to the Implementation Group on how the task will be approached. That outline should include an estimate of any resources – human, financial or other – envisaged as being necessary to do the work.

5. Reporting

The Working Group Chair is thereafter asked to follow a 2-stage approach:

1. By end November, come back to the Implementation Group with a short (ie a few pages) interim report on progress and emerging conclusions

2. By end February 2008 present a recommended plan.
   This might take the form of a short (c10 page) document and some PowerPoint slides describing the proposals - emerging, tentative and/or firm – together with rationale, evaluation of the financial implications of what is being done or proposed, and measures that can be used to monitor effectiveness.

Additionally, the Group is asked to confer with the Implementation Group at the end of each significant stage of its work.