2013 has been a time of building the foundations of our Mission Action Plan on previous years’ work. We started the year with the Mission Community Council setting up 5 Task & Finish Groups (T&F1-5) to move forward our agreed aims and objectives:

What has been the fruit of this work?

T&F 1 Discipleship

Lent Groups were written and led by ministry team
Use of child friendly communion liturgy at Baptisms
Use of Ugly Duckling material at men’s breakfast and Midweek service.
Foundational work to set up a framework for courses & groups to be rolled out in 2014

T&F 2 Vocations

What have we done?

Set up a network of Listening ears in the congregations
Written a pastoral care statement (yet to be published)
Inclusion of new members of the Pastoral group (Horrabridge)
Wings for worship course training for worship teams.
Beginnings of a worship team for St John’s Horrabridge
Someone is training for Reader Ministry

T&F 3 Stewardship etc

A Database is being set up to allow us to contact people much more easily
A Stewardship campaign set out the Financial Challenges across the Mission Community
‘Bus Lists’ have been worked on to map out who does what so we can move towards greater administrative coherence
We are working towards becoming a single United Benefice
We have been awarded Fair Trade certification
We are developing our ministry to Tourists and visitors
We have established a link with Thika Diocese Kenya
We began to develop a strategy for outreach to visitors
We are working towards becoming an eco-mission community to take seriously ‘green issues’We have re-vamped the Website 

T&F 4 Children & Young People

Clergy engage with Meavy & Walkhampton Schools weekly and Princetown and Horrabridge Schools monthly, reaching over 400 children each month.
[email protected] is growing and a similar style of service is being rolled out at Horrabridge
Yet we acknowledge that this remains an area of considerable challenge for 2014

T&F 5 Safeguarding

We have set up the Diocesan Safeguarding procedures
We are working through those who need to undergo the necessary safeguarding procedures in the Mission Community.

Re-packing our bags for 2014

We will refocus our Mission Action Plan to work with 4 themes in 2014:

1. Discipleship, Mission & Vocations (‘Deeper and Wider’)

What will ‘success’ look like?

• Lent Course: increased numbers attending on last year
• 1 or more Baptism Families continuing with at least irregular attendance perhaps at Nosh
• 5+ People on the inquirers course
• 2+ Confirmations
• 10+ People on the Discipleship course
• Small group meeting regularly
• Additional small group established
• Things in place for our areas still to be explored
• New people taking active part in running and leading the above
• Ways of encouraging Ministerial team beyond the training and meeting together that already happens
• Initiatives to promote licensed ministry
• Links to Thika expanded
• A plan for each church and the Mission Community on outreach to Visitors

2. Admin & Structural coherence – particularly our direction of travel towards a single united Benefice

What will ‘success’ look like?

• Progress to becoming a single united Benefice with soundings and discussions across the Mission Community as to how we can organise ourselves and have a first draft of the proposal 

  agreed with the Diocese in 2014 in terms of the legal structures for a Single United Benefice.

• Build on the work undertaken with the Management Consultants to streamline our admin

  3. Children & Young People

  Continue to engage with the Primary Schools in the area consolidating existing links.

• Building links with other youth organisations in the area

• What will ‘success’ look like?

• Taking steps to link in with Catalyst and the School Pastors scheme

• Putting on 2 youth related events

• 4. Communication

  This is a key objective for 2014 – improving the way in which we communicate with each other and those outside our church communities:

• Website roll out and development is key

• Using all our means of communication effectively …Weekly Bulletin…notice boards…

  What will ‘success’ look like?

  • A new website that is up to date and communicating effectively
  • Finding someone in each parish to champion communication and be proactive in promoting our presence