Pershore and Evesham Deanery is on the south-east side of the Diocese and stretches from Hanbury in the north, to the edge of Worcester down into the Cotswolds and the top of Gloucestershire.
The Deanery has 64 churches – rural, towns, a lot of new housing planned, and a resourcing church in Evesham, though as the Revd Sarah Dangerfield, the Area Dean says: “I like to think of all churches as resourcing people to live their faith and discipleship and help to grow God’s Kingdom.”
Sarah intends for the new deanery to help facilitate such conversations between people within local groupings, the Deanery and the Diocese that will help enable people to use their gifts and talents to bring love, compassion, justice and freedom to and in whatever context God calls them to, and to tell others of the good news of the Gospel. “That can mean looking at the very practical steps that will free energy and time and financial resources to increase fruitfulness of our endeavours,” Sarah says, “and always discerned through prayer”.
Lay Chair, Robin Lunn is keen to ensure that the deanery is relevant with meetings that people want to come to. He said: “I’m optimistic about the new deanery structure. As we emerge from the pandemic, it seems the right time to make changes. I hope we can make deanery meetings informative and fun, combining physical and virtual meetings to enable a wider group of people to attend and offering purposeful, lively agendas with interesting speakers.”
“Through the pandemic, people’s patterns have changed, and trying new things is less of a challenge to comfort zones that it might have been previously,” said Robin. “We’re definitely moving away from very formalised, staid meetings to bring a range of people together for lively, informed debate in which everyone feels they can be involved.”
