Introducing the diocesan Transformation Support Hub Team

Damian is responsible for supporting team members and ensuring plans stay on track. He is available to have conversations with churches about mission planning and how to shape funding applications as well as advising on the various funding streams available. Before joining the Diocese, Damian worked for the Church of England in Birmingham helping parishes develop their vision and strategy for mission. During his career, Damian has also been involved in different types of church plants and started a new worshipping community when he was working as a Children and Families Missioner.

Simon’s background is in youth ministry having served for 14 years in two parish roles before joining the diocesan team in Worcester. Simon’s role in the team is to help parishes find ways of reaching out to children, young people and families, either individually or by working with other churches in their benefice or deanery. In time, Simon’s work will mean that every deanery and cluster, has a mission and ministry plan for work amongst children and young people.

Simon also helps parishes recruit and support their employed children’s and youth workers and is also developing a network of employed workers and key volunteers across deaneries to serve parishes and schools in their area, and to form a community, sharing experiences and supporting each other.

Simon has a Master’s degree in Theology with research into hybrid youth ministry, using social media as a discipleship tool alongside ministry programmes.

Kim comes to us from the Diocese of Gloucester where she was a vicar of five rural churches and villages to the east of Cirencester. While working as a team vicar, her churches started two new youth clubs, a community meal and an outdoor eco-friendly family service. Before that Kim helped to open a drop-in centre in Cirencester called The Upper Room, which grew into a New Worshipping Community, and saw many people come to faith and be baptised and confirmed. 

Kim’s role is to provide help and support parishes across the Diocese who have started or are thinking about starting a New Worshipping Community (NWC), helping them explore what model might work best in their context. This will help ensure that alongside more traditional services, churches feel able to offer services that are more informal, creative or take place outside or in other venues that some people may find more accessible.

Clare works part-time to support Kim with the logistics of organising the Myriad Learning Pathway to aid with the development of New Worshipping Communities (NWCs) within the diocese. Together, with this first cohort, they are providing support to teams aiming to create 12 NWCs over the two-and-a-half-year programme.

Clare is also responsible for gaining the ‘wider picture’ of NWCs within the Diocese, which involves speaking with every benefice leader to listen to their plans and offer support where it is required. As the project moves forward, she will also be responsible for some data analysis.

Andrew works part-time with the diocese. His role is to work alongside, monitor and support all the Renewal churches (currently that’s seven churches) in delivering their five-year mission plans.

Each plan details various new staff posts and for some, improving their building, so that each church can deliver against agreed set targets with funding partners, to see more people becoming actively involved with each church.

Andrew has many years’ experience working in project management, strategic development and governance of organisations across the business and not for profit sectors.

Forming part of the diocesan Communications team, Ellie’s role two days a week is to share the journey and successes of the Transformation Support Hub and the churches whose activities will work towards achieving the new diocesan vision and priorities. Ellie can also support any church team needing help to improve their current website or looking to get a new website. She offers assistance with strategic planning, content creation and training on website content management systems.

Ellie has extensive experience of working in a variety of marketing, PR and communications roles in the public and not-for-profit sectors including the adult training and education sector. Ellie also has qualifications and comprehensive experience in website maintenance and project managing website builds.

Jo joined the Diocese in April 2018 and works four days a week as Project Finance Officer. She supports the resourcing churches and the renewal churches with their funding claims and processes the drawdown from Church Commissioners. 

For smaller church projects, she helps parishes access their approved grants from the Healthier Churches Fund. Jo also provides financial management support to those running diocesan strategic projects.

Before coming to the diocesan office, Jo worked in healthcare finance. 

Ian provides general administrative support across the whole team but will focus primarily on capturing data (both qualitative and quantitative) to monitor and evaluate the transformation programme and its priorities.

Ian has experience of running his own business, and in addition to being an active member in health & sustainability projects at his own church, this has given Ian a wealth of experience to bring to the table.