Have you recently been elected to your PCC or Deanery Synod? Are you finding church brings some impenetrable jargon into your life? Or are you just curious to find out more about the Church of England? This workshop session may be just what you’re looking for. In response to requests from parishes and deaneries, Doug Chaplin and Sam Setchell will be leading this summer workshop. While it will be particularly helpful for people newly elected to PCCs and Deanery Synods (or thinking of joining them), or those new to the Church of England, anyone is welcome and will find something of interest.
The Church of England is a complicated body, and it is dispersed across lots of different structures and contexts. Even just understanding some of the features of your parish organisation can be hard enough. We have our own organisational language: parish, benefice, team ministry, deanery, diocese, synod, to which we’ve now added oversight ministry, pioneers, new worshipping communities and a whole host of other things. Then there’s the alphabet soup: PCC, DCC, BMO, DBF and so on.
In this session, Sam and Doug hope to demystify as much of the Church of England as possible, and answer your questions. Do let us know in advance if you have particular questions you want answering, or aspects of church life you particularly want to understand better.
Sam is the Diocesan Director of Communications, and Doug is the Discipleship and Lay Training Officer.