Part of the Shaped By God Together journey involves planning how our worshipping communities and schools can realise our five strategic priorities and continue to be shaped by our Three Key Questions. Revd Barry Hill is leading the work to help us discern and develop our medium and longer-term strategy, and plan how this can be best supported and resourced.
In the video below, Bishop Martyn shares more about what our strategy as a diocese is and the why behind it, emphasising that our vision remains the Kingdom of God.
The strategy development work seeks to build on the strategic priorities and Minster Community process which emerged from an extensive Diocese-wide listening exercise in 2020 and were agreed by Diocesan Synod in 2021. These priorities and relationships have been set to help the diocese attend to, and properly resource, areas to which we have discerned God is calling to us but which either historically have been under-resourced or can be overlooked amongst the demands of the day-to-day.
The strategy development work seeks to invest in the work in these areas and support Minster Communities as they integrate them into their mission and ministry.
This Autumn, Diocesan Synod has been invited to reflect on three questions:
- What do you think the Church of England across Leicester & Leicestershire will look like in 10 years?
- How do you feel about that?
- How would you propose approaching the challenges and opportunities facing us?
Anyone in the diocese is invited to contribute their thoughts on these or any other part of strategy development direct to Barry Hill (barry.hill@leicestercofe.org). In addition, we will continue to draw heavily on the extensive feedback offered from across the Diocese during the range of recent consultations.
Based on these findings, an outline of the longer term strategy will be shared at a joint meeting of Diocesan Synod, Bishops Council, Diocesan Trustees, Area Deans, Lay Chairs, representatives of the Bishops Children and Youth Council and the Bishop’s Leadership Team at the end of January. More detailed proposals, shaped by the feedback received at that meeting, will then be discussed by the same group in June before formally coming to Diocesan Synod for approval in September. The strategy will also include a ten-year Diocesan Investment Proposal for additional support from the national church.
One of the papers which will be considered by November’s Synod is a reflection written by Barry about the scale of challenges facing us. You can read that paper here.