The Mission and Pastoral Measure lays down the general
principle that it is the duty of any person or body carrying out
functions under the Measure" to have due regard to the furtherance
of the mission of the Church of England".
Mission means "the whole mission of the Church of England,
pastoral, evangelistic, social and ecumenical."
These pages outline some of the possibilities under legislation
to provide for "mission initiatives" and innovative and unusual
types of pastoral reorganisation.
The Toyne Report (A Measure for Measures, GS1528) commented that
the Pastoral Measure 1983 offered more scope for innovative and
unusual types of pastoral reorganisation than is sometimes
understood. This page aims to provide information about such
arrangements.
The arrangements are mostly based on actual examples of pastoral
reorganisation which have taken place to meet particular needs,
although a few emerged from discussion in the Toyne Group itself
about how the Measure might be used to address specific
problems. We have mocked up examples which
are not necessarily exhaustive and we are happy to explore
suggestions for arrangements which might be appropriate in other
circumstances.
The examples are based on two imaginary deaneries, one urban and
one rural which are shown diagrammatically as pages 2 and 28.
However, this is not to say that particular examples necessarily
apply only to an urban or a rural situation. The emphasis in any
locality should be on "what is the best arrangement for our needs?"
In many cases this will be a more common arrangement such as a
united benefice or a team or group ministry but in some cases more
innovative solutions may be appropriate and in others a combination
of the two.
The ten scenarios are summarised on the contents
page. Those for the urban deanery (pages 3-24) are generally
concerned with forms of cross-boundary working and each consists of
a group of three pages, the first outlining a problem, the second
showing the possible solution diagrammatically and the third
describing its significant features. At the deanery level it is
unlikely that all these scenarios would occur in one deanery at the
same time but this illustrates the range of possibilities
available.
For the rural deanery, page 29 describes the initial benefices
and their staffing. Three scenarios, which are generally concerned
with various forms of co-operative cross boundary working by a
combination of a team and group ministry with a "network" parish,
are developed in the subsequent pages.
A glossary covering terms used is on pages 40-43 and a grid
showing some of the implications of arrangements arising from this
presentation is on pages 37-39.
Pages 1-36 are also available as a PowerPoint presentation which
can be sent to you by email or on a CD on request. Please
email or telephone Peter Wagon for this or if you
wish to discuss a particular scenario in more detail or to explore
other possibilities or to make any suggestions or offer feedback.
We are also very ready to give a presentation using this material
to deaneries or dioceses and to discuss the issues and
possibilities in more details.
If you have a general enquiry or comments about these web
pages please contact Fiona McKenzie.