On December 7th the Revd Celia Rees came and formally presented our Local Ministry Team Review Report to a joint meeting of Churchwardens and members of the Local Ministry Team. The Review Report is the result of the conversations that Celia has shared with members of the Local Ministry Team, questions that the LMT had looked at together and the results of the questionnaires that were completed by congregations during the autumn. I hope that by now most of you have had the chance to read the report, but if you have missed it please ask Julie in the Team Office for a copy or you can find it on the website.
The report is important for many reasons. It celebrates all that has happened since Pentecost 2004 when the Local Ministry Team was called out. As well as training, meeting and praying together the LMT has tried to exercise shared leadership across our Team Ministry. The sharing in the leading of worship and the many other examples of ministry that are undertaken by members of the LMT that are found in the report are an outworking of this shared leadership. At its heart, shared leadership is about a group of lay and ordained people working closely together, making decisions together and living out their faith together to further the Church’s mission and ministry for the Kingdom. Shared leadership is also about trying to encourage as much shared ministry as possible. The LMT isn’t a super-team that wants to do everything or who collectively acts as ‘stand-in Vicars’. The LMT in its ministry is trying to encourage the ministry of all the people of God. In response to the priorities that were set by our local communities the report details where this ministry has gone well, where ministry has grown and where there might be gaps in ministry to look at in the future.
Celebrating what has happened is important, but now we look to the future. As a Team Ministry we are committed to working out in our context the Diocesan strategy for Local Ministry. With Celia’s guidance we hope to start in early 2010 a new process of calling out and discernment of some new members for the LMT. Our Team Ministry has grown since 2004 and there is a need for the LMT to reflect as much as it can the many different communities of our Team. After a period of teaching and preaching on local ministry and our own prayerful consideration everyone in our congregations will be invited to prayerfully and confidentially nominate who they think could be on the LMT. There will then be a time of mutual discernment after which we will hopefully have an LMT that can be re-commissioned by one of our bishops at a Team Service. There will be more details about this process as soon as they are confirmed.
The review report ends with a section called ‘Moving Forward’, which suggests areas of ministry and ways of working that the LMT might engage with in the next four years and beyond. But they are not just for the LMT, they are for all of us to look at and engage with as we work out what it means to be God’s people in this place. The last five years have been an exciting time, let us hope and pray that the next five years will be just as good!
Happy New Year! Claire