The Parish of Holy Trinity with St Columba, Fareham

Kairos Update - The East Fareham Partnership

December 2007

How Do Our Buildings Help Our Mission And Ministry?

Do our church buildings help or hinder our mission and ministry to our communities?
We will be asking that question in the next cycle of our diocese’s Kairos process. This time, it will involve looking at the theology behind church buildings, auditing what we have, and then deciding whether to open new churches and church halls, revamp the ones we have and whether any should close. (In our parish, we already have plans for a new St Columba complex designed to serve our local community better.)

However, the key behind our ‘Kairos: Buildings’ process is how our buildings affect our own discipleship and mission. Among the questions we’ll be asking are:

1. What part do our church buildings play in our ministry?
2. Does constant fundraising for our buildings exhaust our time and energy?
3. Are our churches sacred spaces that are valued by our communities or irrelevant and dilapidated?
4. Are there new solutions to the ownership and funding of our churches and church halls that would release time and money for mission?

The Bishop initially launched the Kairos initiative in February 2004 to address five issues: our ageing congregations, the national shortage of clergy, financial challenges, the cost of maintaining our buildings, and the lack of relevance of Christianity to many non-churchgoers.

Our eight deaneries developed five-year Kairos plans to help meet those challenges, which were presented to the Bishop in July 2005. In a progress report to our Bishop’s Council, our Diocesan Kairos Group concluded that the initial Kairos process had been both incredibly successful and yet fell short of the targets we had set ourselves. The successes included better collaboration between parishes and an impressive array of projects that aimed to meet genuine community needs.

However, at the same time, it had failed to impact significantly on the five issues that were initially identified. That’s why our diocese’s Bishop’s Council agreed that the next cycle of Kairos should specifically focus on one of those five challenges. Tackling the buildings issue is a way to tune in to what is important in our Christian faith. Buildings are both a blessing and a pain.

From 2008 onwards, deaneries will become involved the following phases:

1. 1. Exploring the problems connected with our buildings-research will be done in each deanery as to what our church buildings are currently used for, what other church buildings exist locally, and about the demand for each of them.
2. 2. Deaneries will make a response to the Bishop.
3. 3. The deanery plans for our buildings will then be implemented.

October 2006

At a meeting of the East Fareham Partnership on 18th October it was agreed to work up a plan for the possible reorganization of the Fareham Town Parishes into a new type of Team using a different model to what we know in this Parish.

It is hoped that the Western Ward Parishes will attempt a similar exercise so that definite proposals can be put to the Deanery next year.

December 2005

Last year a lot of time and energy went into producing a Deanery Plan for the future of the Anglican Church in the Fareham deanery. As you may remember the deanery split into two halves (or clusters) to complete the work ask of us through Kairos. Our cluster was made up of the three Fareham parishes of SS. Peter and Paul, St John’s and Holy Trinity with St Columba plus the parishes of Crofton and Portchester. To progress the recommendations made in the Deanery Plan these five parishes have formed a working relationship now known as the East Fareham Partnership (EFP). At the present time this partnership has no ‘legal’ standing but is a means of actively working together to achieve a number of important aims; all Legal Matters have to go to the Deanery Synod / Pastoral Committee and to PCC’s.

Membership

Each parish has one clergy and one lay representative at meetings except for Holy Trinity with St Columba, which has two clergy, and two lay reps. The current membership is as follows:

SS Peter & Paul	Revd Tony Marks	Debbie Anderson
Holy Trinity	Revd Frank Wright	Sue Hall
St Columba	Revd Jeremy Dussek #	David Easton
St John’s	Revd Peter Hall	Sue Lupton **
Crofton	Revd Stephen Girling *	Richard Binns
Portchester	Revd Michael Cooper	Richard Andrews
* Chair	** Vice-Chair	# Secretary

We will try to keep you regularly informed with progress reports but please talk to your representatives between bulletins!

Aims of the Partnership

To develop by the grace of God a Strategic Partnership that will best serve the Church’s ministry and mission to the people of the Cluster. In order to achieve this stated aim the Cluster Planning Group recognises the need to explore the following 13 points of consideration:

• Explore which of the following may best support a strategic partnership: a neighbourly agreement, a covenant agreement, a plurality, a group ministry, a team ministry, or a multi-parish benefice.
• Explore what things (projects, events, ministries, etc.) we can better do together and what we can better do as individual parishes. We will focus on four main areas of mission as we do this:

• Schools and Mission
• Social Concern and Mission
• Church Buildings and Mission
• Education, Spirituality and Mission

• Explore how we can develop working relationships with our ecumenical partner churches & ministers.
• Review what happens in the Fareham, Portchester and Stubbington fraternals and Churches Together working groups to ensure the most efficient working.
• Explore where the centres/places of worship and mission are best sited to serve the partnership communities including a review of current buildings.
• Explore the whole issue of clergy freehold / licence status including the new status of ‘common tenure’ being investigated by the central church.
• Continue to respect, maintain and encourage the diversity of traditions within the partnership churches; this diversity being a recognised strength.
• Explore clergy and church theological distinctives that will determine when we are able, and when we are not able, to exercise ministry in, and receive ministry from, other partnership parishes.
• Work towards a level of shared mission and ministry that will permit the deanery to absorb the loss of two stipendiary posts by 2015.
• Explore how money from stipends can be best redirected to the benefit of the mission and ministry of the deanery & partnership following the loss of these posts.
• Review clergy housing stock in the light of both current needs and the ability to respond most flexibly to future needs & opportunities.
• Review the relationship between the Deanery Synod, the Deanery Chapter and the Partnership to ensure there is not an extra level of bureaucracy added.
• Review and investigate the redrawing of parish boundaries to reflect socio-geographic changes in partnership communities.

Progress So Far

The EFP group has met on four occasions since its inauguration and progress has already been made in some of aims and goals.

The EFP clergy have also met on three occasions for lunch sharing their own faith stories and exploring some of their theological distinctives beginning with the ordination / consecration of women.

Peter Hancock, as Archdeacon will be helping us to explore which ‘legal’ form of partnership would best suit us so that in due course we can bring options to PCC’s for consideration.

Exploration of Youth & Children’s ministry has started and a Task Group needs now to be formed to progress this further.

In trying to unite the partnership churches and encourage fellowship we are investigating having clergy/reader ‘pulpit swaps’ during the year. Other possibilities in this area are having joint services on major Feast Days and an annual Cluster Service.

We are keen to keep church members informed with the progress of the EFP and so are planning to produce regular bulletins (this being the first!).

We have decided not to progress further in discussing changes to parish boundaries as it will be very time consuming and will not be a priority until the deployment and structure of the stipendiary ministry is known. Likewise after a meeting between clergy and a diocesan representative regarding ‘common tenure’ it has been decided that this should be considered only after General Synod have approved the scheme.

Much has still to be done but we have made an excellent start in seeing some of our aims become reality. Please give us feedback through your EFP representatives.

‘Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more that all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen’

(Ephesians 3:20-21)