People & Places is the framework in which Church of England Birmingham operates to enable its leaders and to live out its vision for 'growing churches at the heart of each community'.
The priorities for 2022, detailed below, enabled us to achieve our goals of creating a SUSTAINABLE platform for GROWTH, FAIRNESS when sharing resources and building a CAPABLE church, with clergy and lay, leading together in teams
1. Agree the Oversight Map in each Deanery
Conversations are underway in all of our 6 deaneries, to discern where the Oversight Areas will be. The Area Dean is/will be leading discussions with the Deanery Project Team, Chapter, PCCs, Synod etc to understand where the existing or future missional opportunities exist. The aim is to agree the Oversight map which will be used to form the Oversight Areas in each deanery.
2. Start the formation of Oversight Areas
Once the map is agreed, we will start to form the first cohort of Oversight Areas - these will be areas that are already functioning like an Oversight Area or have been appointed over the past 18 months to do so. It is expected that we have 20-25 of these types of Oversight Areas within the diocese. The second stage will be the remaining Oversight Areas. These are the ones that require more work before we can officially form them (new partnerships, in vacancy, areas where there is no obvious Oversight Minister etc.)
3. Develop TCAPs and start to create the Deanery Plan
Transforming Church Action Plans (TCAPs) are integral to People & Places. Forming a TCAP takes parishes through a journey of reflection, stopping along the way to consider who they are, who their community thinks they are and where God is calling for particular attention over the coming months. Put simply, a TCAP is a proposed route to help our church, parish or Oversight Area on a missional journey from where we are, towards where we believe God is calling us to head for.
The TCAPs will form a key part of the Deanery Plan. The creation of the Deanery Plan will hold the vision for the new Deanery going forward.
4. Continue the rollout of Pathways
The Pathways programme is to support ministry leadership development and support began in April 2020. To date, the following have been developed:
- 13 Pathways to licensed, commissioned ministry and discipleship
- Signposts (links) to 7 organisations or Church of England courses
- 4 key foundational pathways
- Over 30 modules which can be accessed alone or with other pathways
The next step will be to focus on deepening engagement with leadership learning on existing pathways and the development of key ministry formation pathways - local ministry, oversight ministry and pastoral care - and other leadership pathways.