Guiding Principles
In collaboration with the Team Rector and PCC, the Local Leadership Teams will unite those within each local church to develop vision and mission priorities, in their local context. They will oversee the worship, mission, ministry and justice initiatives in their locality, encouraging people to use their gifts and talents in the life of their church. We are committed to: introducing people to Jesus, deepening discipleship, developing leaders and working for justice.
1. We discern our local vision and mission
With those who actively participate in the life of our local church, we will listen and prayerfully discern our vision and mission by creating our approach to worship, mission, ministry and justice in our mission plan.
2. We commit to work and grow together as a team
Within the context of genuine relationships, we will meet regularly to pray, develop our skills, plan, make decisions, manage conflict and celebrate what God is doing in our local church.
3. We commit to support our local leader
As our named clergy, lay minister, local missional leader, or lay reader guides our local church we commit to support their leadership through our prayers, clear communication and our efforts to fulfill our local mission. We will actively engage in the appointment of our leader with the Team Rector, the PCC, Archdeacon and Bishop.
4. We manage our local staff
We will collaborate to safely recruit, supervise and develop our local staff, with administrative support and guidance from the Diocese, who commit to fulfilling our church’s mission plan.
5. We ensure a welcoming and safe local church
We confirm our commitment to welcoming through hospitality and safety through safeguarding, with administrative support and guidance from the Diocese.
6. We steward our local church finances and building
We agree to promote stewardship of our finances and buildings to fulfill our church’s mission plan and our shared mission and ministry within the Larger Parish.
FAQs
In March 2024, local church PCCs who decided to engage in the Fit for Mission journey submitted key questions to be answered. Below you will find a summary of the questions and answers. Should you like to explore additional information you may access the FFM FAQ with over 200 responses or send an email to info@hopeparishliverpool.org.
Q: What can we expect in the future in terms of: Communication with the new PCC, Local Decision Making and Finances?
A: Communication with the PCC
While the larger parish PCC will function as the governing body, looking after governance matters (i.e. finance & buildings oversight employment and safeguarding), mission and ministry will be the work of local leadership teams.
To ensure communication between the PCC and individual churches and worshipping communities, the following things would happen:
- The PCC will have three sub-committees; Finance, Buildings and Safeguarding.
- Each church or worshipping community, will have a local leadership team focussing
on local mission and ministry. - On each local leadership team, there will be a named clergy person, who has
oversight for the church, or worshipping community. - Each church will have one person on each of the three PCC sub-committees above.
Each worshipping community will have access to a member of each sub-committee. - Each clergyperson will have a structured and accountable relationship with the
rector of the larger parish, who is the chair of the PCC. - Clergy will continue to meet together regularly, sharing support, accountability, and
a shared vision for the future. - In addition, a church may have someone on the PCC or someone co-opted.
Through these people the PCC will feel close and connected, not distant, as its trustees work for the benefit of all the churches and worshipping communities in the larger parish.
Decision Making
Fit for Mission is a vehicle for this journey to help us do best practice in mission and ministry across the whole of the larger parish. If we do the best we know how to do but do it everywhere, we will become a growing church. As deaneries and churches journey together, exploring what is possible, it will be local people, both clergy and lay leaders, who will make the decisions on the best way to move forward. The FfM team will help to implement the decisions once local people have made them, with the resources given to us by the Church Commissioners. There will be access to coaches to help clergy become a team who work to their skills, and there will be lay leader development and the joy of seeing growing congregations through Cultivate. There will be help and guidance about
the change through a deanery change facilitator, a surveyor to help with assessing buildings, help with administration, and much more. The feedback we have had from our Cohort 1 churches is that they hadn’t realised how much local decision-making would shape how their larger parish looked.
Finances
In a larger parish, each church will have its own fund in the internal finance system. This can be accessed at any time by their finance team member to see current income and expenditure against their budget (which has been previously agreed with their finance team member and the leadership team). Any income generated locally, from giving or events, will be recorded as income to that church, and any expenditure related to the church, will be recorded as such. All restricted funds will retain their existing restrictions, e.g. a gift given for use on church building A will only be able to be used on the fabric of church A.
The PCC finance sub-committee, the finance team, will be working to make sure finances work for all churches and worshipping communities.
Q: How will the way clergy and lay people work together change?
A: We hope that FfM enables all people more fully to live out God’s call on their lives. We hope for clergy that they are freed up from the massive expectations currently that they are everything to everyone and that they can get back closer to the Ordinal and understand their vocational call more fully in that context amid the current challenges. We hope that lay people are able more fully to express their gifts and step into spaces previously unoccupied or were seen as one of the tasks that clergy were expected to do. We know that the PCC will be a mix of lay and ordained; we know that the portfolio teams will be a mix of lay and ordained; we know that the Rector will be ordained. We will need to work carefully so that all people can understand who they are in God, where accountability and authority lies within the new structures and how we are all humble
before God and each other in our service and mutual support.
There will be greater opportunities for clergy and lay to work together in teams and therefore work more closely to strengths and passions.
Q: Can we continue to discern what God is saying to us as a church and start new initiatives or close things down?
A: Absolutely. This will be essential. But it will need to be done in a transparent, agreed and accountable way.