The parish of Gornal and Sedgley in Greater Dudley Deanery have worked with their Mission Accompanier to create a vision statement for their churches. They hope it will help them to have a clear focus as they strive to grow in health and sustainability.
Their Mission Accompanier, Chris Sheehan, has journeyed alongside them for about the last 18 months and has helped them develop the vision as a way of focussing on their core purpose to go out and make new disciples.
Acting Rector, Catherine Mitchell, said: “Even before Chris joined us, we had been asking the questions of who we were and why we were here. Chris has been working with a focussed group of people from across our churches to help us discern where God is leading us. Having that input from someone outside of our parish has been invaluable in understanding what direction we should take to help our churches grow in health and sustainability.”
The parish ‘hub group’ developed a survey which the congregation was encouraged to fill in, asking questions such as ‘what would you say to someone who asked why you came to church?’, ‘what is the purpose of our church and what should be our priorities?’ They received an amazing 76 responses, which were then used to create a second survey which explored the types of words which might be used in a vision statement.
“Chris really coached us through the process, asking pertinent questions and helping us to set up an online survey and to analyse the data. From our second survey, we developed three different vision options, which were tweaked further following additional feedback from our congregations. We’ve landed on the statement ‘worshipping God, welcoming all, serving our community’, which really encapsulates all that we are and want to be as a parish.”
Over the next few months, this will be communicated to all the churches through postcards and posters to help the vision to become embedded into everything the parish does. Catherine will also be referring to it in sermons.
“We want it to become part of our DNA and something which helps to give more focus on our core purpose,” said Catherine. “We’ll be looking at existing and new activities through this lens to ensure that whatever we do sits under one of these core values. As we live by our new vision statement, hopefully we will start to see what God might be doing in us and in our ministry and mission.”
Their Mission Accompanier Chris has also supported them in a number of other areas as Gornal and Sedgley have developed their family service, improved communication across the parish and looked to run social activities to bring people together and to which people could invite their friends.
“It’s been a really useful process,” said Catherine. “The hub group meets every couple of months and Chris has really helped us to think about things differently as well as encouraging us to focus on those things that will help us to be healthy and sustainable in the future.”
