Living Faith for the Future - Revised - Shaping confident, collaborative leadership

5. Shaping confident, collaborative leadership

This is about developing leadership using all the resources available to the local church. It would involve consolidation in some parishes and new work in others to build up shared ministry in teams, with appropriate training and support.

In a parish/benefice this could mean:

• As above, working more intentionally on the setting up, shaping and supporting of Shared Ministry Teams.
• Working towards having a 'focal Christian person'in each community who acts as the recognizable face of the church for purposes of contact and information. Depending on whether that person is a priest, LLM, churchwarden or senior church member, different tasks would attach to the role – pastoral, sacramental, leading of worship, administration – but the person would always operate in the context of a parish or benefice ministry team.

In a deanery this could mean:

• Encouraging Deanery Pastoral Committees to consider whether the concept of the 'mission community'would offer them a helpful tool to allow more flexible and consistent planning of mission and ministry. The 'mission community'would be a natural grouping of parishes for mission, taking into account the need for sufficient resources of people, finance, facilities, skills.
• Recognising and supporting the work of Area Deans and Lay Chairs as key to the task of fitting the church for the future. There will need to be greater flexibility in the appointment of Area Deans and some imaginative sharing of responsibilities.
• Shared training and sharing of ideas for churchwardens, parish treasurers, administrators, PCC secretaries and members.
• Developing teams across the deanery for eg care of older people, communications, evangelism, youth and children's work.
• Induction and mentor support for new clergy in the deanery.

In the diocese this could mean:

• Consolidating ordination training as offered in three modes – residential, Oxford Ministry Course, and the Local Ministry Programme (with the possibility of mixed-mode between them), and incorporating this into a reconfiguring of training as Initial Ministerial Education 1-7 (years in length, extending post-ordination).
• Recognising and supporting the role of clergy as increasingly 'epsicopal', in the sense of being ministries of oversight of the ministries of others. This has implications for all initial and continuing clergy training.