Laying Groundwork

The last time Swanvale Halt church did a round of Mission Planning was several years ago. We loyally got everyone involved in it, and took the PCC to a nearby church to talk through it all and narrow our mass of ideas down to a few achievable, measurable examples. I suspected at the time that we'd gone for the ones that were slightly too easy to achieve, and as a result had ended up with not a lot to show for all our efforts. We were beginning another round when the pandemic intervened and put a stop to everything apart from keeping going. Now we are off again! 

I, Grant the churchwarden and Ceri from the congregation (a relatively new member, who volunteered) met with the lady from the Mission Enabling section at the Diocese a few weeks ago, an encounter which genuinely helped (sometimes I think despite itself) to clarify the way forward in my mind: previous meetings had left me somewhat bewildered as to how exactly the process was supposed to work. Now I had a clear steer, to focus on putting in place some of the conditions for moving forward rather than picking on grand schemes, and to keep it small-scale but open-ended, as opposed to the very 'closed' tasks that emerged the last time we went through this exercise: so, for instance, rather than trying to find the money to pay a musical director (an ambitious scheme which may not work), setting up a group to pray for the mission of the church (which may bring some insight as to whether that's what God would have us do). 

The PCC liked the single-page document I came up with. Not surprisingly, as my initials are next to most of the action points. But those action points are, initially, to find laypeople to do the actual work. They don't get off that easily!