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Renewing Hope, 3 Years On: 'How is it for you?'
Shortly after his arrival in 2011 Bishop Nicholas engaged the Diocese in a careful and prayerful process of exploration and discernment. Through the process of ‘Let us Talk’ and a series of deanery visits he invited us to explore who we are as a Diocese, where we are going and how God wants us to move forward. In 2015 he visited all Deaneries, met over 2,000 people and distributed nearly 20,000 prayer cards. In doing so he left local churches with three challenges:
What do you pray for? Whom do you serve? How will you grow? The resulting vision – Renewing Hope: Pray, Serve, Grow – was endorsed by Diocesan Synod in 2016 and has since informed priorities in a number of important areas of our common life:
Prayer Making prayer central whenever we meet Creating more opportunities to pray together Providing resources to help parishes and individuals to develop their prayer lives
Serve Increasing the support and resources for promoting social justice
Grow Increasing the training and support for nurturing disciples Increasing vocations to ordained ministry by 60% Increasing the training and support for rural ministry Supporting new forms or expressions of church and worship Providing direct support to help parishes grow Aiming to grow church membership by 10% over the next 10 years To help us evaluate Renewing Hope, Bishop John Gladwin, retired Bishop of Chelmsford, will be carrying out an independent, interim review throughout February and March. I want to invite you to help by completing the Renewing Hope questionnaire.