Thank you to everyone who took time and care to respond to our recent Mission Action Plan review. We received over 7,000 words of feedback, which the PCC read and digested, and took with them to our strategy day on 26th January. Below, Ian and Jenny reflect on that day.
Jenny Tomlinson writes:
On a beautiful sunny day members of the PCC gathered at Christ Church, Bedford, for a day of reviewing and planning for the next 3 years of our shared life at St Andrew’s. Armed with the 23 page analysis of the MAP (Mission Action Plan) consultation with the congregation, we felt a weight of responsibility to do justice to the hugely rich feedback received.
We listened to the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4-15) and prayed for discernment. After identifying the intentions for the day, we were invited to individually comment on the feedback.
At St Andrew’s…where is our joy? Our fruitfulness? Our light? Where are the needs? Where is the Holy Spirit leading us? What enormous value there was in really listening to each person’s views, without comment, or opinion, or interruption….we received each contribution in silence. There was a palpable sense of great thoughtfulness and insightfulness as each one of us spoke.
At this point we shared our thoughts with our own allocated/self-selected group. I was pleased to be in the Worship group. We were asked to dream….of what we would like to achieve based on the findings of the consultation. How quickly our flip chart paper filled up! Our next task was to consider and log the impact of each or our ideas against the resources and effort needed to achieve them. We then shared all our ideas…oh my goodness! We were buzzing with enthusiasm and energy as we started to prioritise all the ideas…..and then it was time for lunch.
This was a great time to relax and share a meal together. Although PCC meets bi-monthly we don’t do a lot of socialising as a big group (and we missed a few valued members who couldn’t be with us). So we chatted and enjoyed getting to know each other a bit better.
Our final session involved understanding the financial resources available to us over the next 3 years if we want to put our ideas into practice. Church finances are not my strong point, but it was helpful to have clarity about our need to grow our income, make savings or use our reserves over the next three years in order to realise our priorities.
Our day ended with a communion service – and a re-reading of the Parable of the Sower. Will our plans fall on ‘good soil’ and ‘grow, and produce a hundredfold’? We had been expertly led by Ann Collins, Lucy and Ian and I left feeling energised, excited and motivated to share our thoughts and ideas beyond the PCC.
Ian Riches writes:
I’m guessing I may not have been alone in facing the Strategy Day with a mixture of fear and excitement. How would we work as a team? Would we be able to discern a Spirit-led way forward? Would there be enough quiche? On all three counts, I should have had more faith. Anne Collins did an excellent job of enabling everyone’s voice to be heard, and we were humbled by the depth, breadth and Spirit-infused thoughtfulness of the comments made by the congregation during the consultation exercise. Thank you all of you – adults and children alike – who took the time to let us know what you were hearing God say to us. There were many, many excellent ideas and suggestions. Amongst all of these, three strands seemed to stand out for me personally as they day evolved, which I hope and pray we will develop during the coming year. These were:
A desire to keep building on our children’s ministry, with a particular focus on ensuring that we give our teenagers and soon-to-be-teenagers all the opportunities they need to flourish in their faith, as well to develop their gifts and serve both the church family and wider community.
An enthusiasm to see an expanded Coffee and Company-style ministry to meet the needs of the retired and those around during the day, both from our congregation and those that we do not see at our services.
A commitment to keep moving forward in our aim to achieve net zero carbon emissions, and to share what knowledge and expertise we have with others.
We talked about much, much more, including the huge role that music plays in life at St. Andrew’s and the possibility of providing more opportunities for us to study the bible and “do life” together.
I left tired, very well fed, but overall exceedingly enthused for all that the Spirit is doing amongst and through us. It should be an exciting year!
Natasha Vaughan writes:
I arrived at the PCC away day with some trepidation. There had been such a wealth of comments from the congregation that it felt like a huge responsibility to be part of a group discerning where God was calling us as a church. At the start of the day, we were asked what we saw as the risks for the day, and it seems others too were worried we might not hear all the voices of St Andrews or not be able to find a clear path forward. However, with Ann’s and Lucy’s help, we continued on our path.
We started with being asked where joy was at St Andrews and what our needs are. We had been split into groups for each of the five “ships” and had reviewed all the comments from the congregation in advance. It was amazing how swiftly some themes started to come out like the abundance of love at St Andrews, wanting to support the lonely and connecting with the wider community and learning as a church. This led us onto our next question “Where is the Spirit leading us?” and to me it felt like it was leading us outward into the community. We were asked to give three words for what we wanted St Andrews to be and mine were: connected, relevant and caring.
Now we had some core themes, we started to write down ideas for what we would do for each of our "ships" if we had limitless resources. Then we plotted these on a grid of impact against effort to help us look at where we should be directing our energies and resources as a church to make the biggest impact. The Parable of the Sower helped us to reflect on how we use our resources and then very democratically armed with sticky dots we indicated which actions, we’d generated earlier in the day, we thought St Andrews should be investing in. We finished the day in worship and it really felt quite emotional to reflect on what we had achieved together, both as a PCC that day but also as a whole church in the fuller process of answering the question of what God’s mission is for St Andrews now.
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