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Love at the Heart of the Community
St Bede’s, Brandwood and Urban Mission, 2001 - 2007

Please note that this is a rough draft and is bound to contain mistakes and inaccuracies. I would like to correct these and also to deepen the reflection. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. I would also ask that, until the paper is in final form, you do not quote from this without permission.

1. Introduction
This paper seeks to describe the development of urban mission in the parish of St Bede, Brandwood in Birmingham over the last six years. It has been written so that we might reflect on our work and mission so that we might continue it better, and also that we might offer what we believe to be a groundbreaking model to the wider Church.

Much of the raw material for this reflection came out of an Evaluation Day of our work held in June 2007. People from St Bede’s gathered to tell our story and to think through the high and low points of the journey so far. In order to write this, I have had to simplify events to make things manageable. I hope that in doing so I have not made things seem more coherent or planned than they were.

I would like to dedicate this to the people of St Bede’s, Brandwood and all those who work with us, with love and gratitude.

2. The Context
The parish of Brandwood is a largely residential district of South Birmingham between Kings Heath and Kings Norton. The housing, which was mainly built in the 1930’s and the 1950’s, consists of a mixture of small private housing and council housing which is of variable quality. Some of this has been recently regenerated, while 600 new homes are being built on the site of the former Monyhull Psychiatric Hospital. Canals, railway line and a cemetery split the parish into four distinct districts. There are few facilities within the parish.

St Bede’s Church was built in 1960, effectively as a Church Plant. The congregation, which has always been predominantly local, has had a strong record of engagement with the parish. The Electoral Roll is around 65, with average Sunday attendance being around 35. There are a number of weekly activities, either run by St Bede’s or hosted in our building - for details and pictures, or to contact us, please visit our website - http://www.stbedesbrandwood.org.uk

The original church building was built in 1960 and was intended to be the Hall. This was burned down in an arson attack in 1991 and has been rebuilt as a fine combined church and community facility. The fire was obviously very difficult, but it has meant that the community of faith have made a positive and costly decision to be in Brandwood. This has been very significant for mission and life here. An important part of our context has been a high turnover for clergy: I was the fourth incumbent in ten years and the eighth in forty. This has obviously had an effect on congregational size, growth . St Bede’s offers an interesting and rich blend of open evangelical, central and catholic spirituality, tradition and worship.

A key part of the context when I arrived as Vicar in September 2001 was the reduction from a full-time incumbent to half time (my work is combined with that of Chaplain with Deaf People in the Diocese). The reduction surprised the congregation, and had not been prepared for. This meant that I arrived in a situation where there was real concern for the future of St Bede’s, along with a significant lack of hope for the future. This was combined with Rosemary Reynolds being away for Ordination Training and not being expected to return. It should also be noted that, with some significant exceptions, there had been little culture of lay empowerment at St Bede’s. It should alsobe noted that Brandwood has often been characterized by bad community politics.

St Bede’s has had a chequered history of relating to the local community. It has often gone towards and then drawn back from the people who live in the parish and who are not members of the congregation. This has sometimes been because the relationship between serving or providing activities for the local community has got out of balance with the spiritual and devotional life of the congregation. The direction of this movement has usually, but not always depended on the priorities of the incumbent. This, and the character of the incumbent, has affected how people in the parish view the Church. For example, St Bede’s withdrawal from some of the early social groups in the late 1960’s is still remarked upon and not understood. It should though be noted though that St Bede’s has a heart for the local community and a commitment to the neighbourhood. It has had the chance to do other things, but has not. This is deep within the congregation and in St Bede’s relationship with God.

3. Urban Mission, 2001-2007
Preparing the Ground
When I arrived at St Bede’s in September 2001, the initial task for us seemed to be that of discerning what God wanted us to be doing. Key early events were two Parish Conferences where a good number of the congregation came together to discuss the future of St Bede’s. We have always tried to make this process as open and democratic as we can so that it is owned and shaped by the community of faith here at St Bede’s. In the first conference, we used our internal resources and the diocesan Called to a New Kingdom materials to consider what we felt God was calling us to do in terms of mission. In the second, Ken Leech visited us for a weekend to help us see how other Churches in situations similar to ours have responded to change and challenge. Ken pointed out to us that the work at this time at St Bede’s was that of Nehemiah 4:10, “There is too much rubbish, so that we are unable to work on the wall.” We had to clear the ground so that we could see.

This was necessarily a time of preparation. We were having to be very focussed on what was important, and disciplined in our thinking and praying so that we might discern what our vocation, our particular calling, as a parish was and then to work out how to live that vocation.

It is crucial to note that at this point we did not know what to do. We did not have any sort of plan up our sleeves of what we were going to do. Rather, it was vital to work from the principle that our vision and work were to be corporate and would be decided by all of us. In terms of priestly ministry, Daniel O’Leary has beautifully expressed this:

The calling of the priest, like it was for Jesus before him, like it is for the Church and the sacraments now, is not to introduce something new into God’s creation, but to reveal, purify and intensify what is already there

The discernment led to the vision that we should be using our resources to serve the community more effectively than we were. If we were to be faithful to God as we understood God, then our faithfulness was to be engaging with the local community, which we are of course part of, to try to improve Brandwood. We began by drawing on what was already there. St Bede’s has a long history of serving the community and a large proportion of the congregation were involved in serving the community corporately in activities such as our elderly people’s Lunch Club or individually as volunteers or through work. To honour and articulate all that we did, we carried out a congregational audit which we drew up in the form of a poster for everyone. This was very important and it would have been easy to neglect.

Why not a Project?

A small group of five committed individuals, under the auspices of St Bede’s Community Project, was formed to take this vision forward. The group was overseen by the PCC and reported back to it and the wider congregation. It became clear to us that we could not do things along the predominant Anglican urban model of establishing a Project, that is finding a need and then employing a worker to meet it. This simply did not fit our context. We do not have the resources to effectively manage someone; my being half time certainly means I cannot do it. As we were going through a process of empowering and building one another up, it did not seem right to hand over the responsibility for what we were doing to someone else. We also have worries about employing a worker when we know the realities of the Voluntary Sector mean that there funding will finish after three years.

Campaigning and Organizing: Another Model
We therefore had to work out another model which fitted our context and capacity. We were able to get vital help from outside of the parish. The Diocesan Community Regeneration Department has been consistently supportive. We joined the newly formed Birmingham Citizens broad based community organizing group. This has enabled us to see the importance of campaigning in our local community for positive change, the need to work with other organisations to be effective, and has been of great help in developing lay leadership at St Bede’s. We were successful in getting a small grant from BCEN which enabled us to employ Anita Guy, a well-respected consultant with good knowledge of and sympathy for Brandwood to help us to discover what we should be doing.

Anita steered us towards community organizing model. This would take the form of two stages. We would begin with researching the needs of our local community. An agenda for change and people to work with would emerge from this. The period from initially interviewing Anita to formally beginning the Listening Campaign with the local community took several months. There was a need for much careful preparation. The work needed to be owned by and carefully rooted in the congregation. Some people were worried about it. This was partially because it was a new model and we could not point to other Churches around us doing the same; what we were proposing was also something far harder to pin down, put your finger on and measure than traditional Church projects; it was also a method that was personally very demanding of people. To begin with they would be expected to formally talk to their neighbours or to the staff of groups and agencies, as representatives of the Church, to build relationships and find out about the area. There is no doubt that this is demanding. There was also concern about our capacity, which would clearly have to grow during the process. Previous consultation in the area carried out by the council or other groups had been done badly. There was an understandable worry at St Bede’s about disappointing people or letting them down.

We had stumbled upon a way of carrying out our mission, which is, insofar as we know, unique. This was very definitely a time for faith and trust: in God, in ourselves, and in the community in which we live. We were grasping the unexpected and going off in directions, which were unmapped. We necessarily had no idea of where we would end up. It is much to the credit of people at St Bede’s that they have responded so well to this challenge.

The preparation for the Listening Campaign involved training for those who were to take part in it so that they were clear on what they would have to do and confident in carrying it out. We had originally thought of carrying out a formal piece of research into need in Brandwood, but we opted for a much more organic approach. We would talk to all of the groups who operated within the parish or who impacted on it from outside, and as many local residents as we could. As well as finding information, we would build relations with others and develop leadership at St Bede’s.

This was a time of internal work at St Bede’s before we turned outwards. This corporate journey involved us in recognising that our vocation was to work with the local community to make life better for all of us. The work needed to be rooted in our theology and our spiritual life. There was concern about ensuring that it was rooted in all of the congregation, particularly avoiding an inner clique. We have tried to do this by communicating regularly through sermons and letters, and by having regular open meetings to reflect on what we were doing. At our Review Day in July 2007, most people felt we had got the balance of this about right. We had to be very disciplined in the whole of our life at St Bede’s and concentrate on this work as our key task. Our capacity also meant that help from outside St Bede’s was crucial. Input from our consultants, Anita Guy and Simon Nicholls, from Birmingham Citizens Organizers, and from Diocesan Staff meant that we were able to identify a way of working that was right for our situation. This also helped us to feel grounded in, and part of, the Body of Christ.

The Listening Campaign, 2005
Once PCC had formally backed the Listening Campaign, we launched it at the main Sunday service on the Feast of Christ the King. The Campaign was carefully explained to the congregation, it was prayed for and taken up into the life of worship at St Bede’s. The launch meant that we were able to bring it to the maximum number of people who had a good amount of time to ask any questions or express any concerns they had.

We then got going with a training session in January 2005. We had developed a simple form with seven questions which people could use as a basis for their conversations. Twenty people took part in the Listening Campaign. The fact that average Sunday attendance at the time was 26 adults, shows how well supported the Campaign was. Many other members, who were unable to take part, supported it in their prayers and interest.

We shared out the groups and agencies among us and then got on with the Campaign. We had monthly meetings to report back, support one another and see how we were doing. By May, issues were beginning to come to the fore. The needs of children and young people; of elderly people; cleaning up and improving our streets; helping people access the information they need; and lack of child bereavement services in the area were the key issues. I think we would have predicted the first four before the Campaign, and they are all issues which people at St Bede’s have energy to tackle. The lack of good local child bereavement services was a surprise. We were able to tackle this quickly and effectively by contacting the Beyond the Horizon Child Bereavement Agency who were wanting to expand. A relationship was quickly formed and we were able to offer free use of our building for their work. It was important for us to have a quick and concrete success like this.

On the whole the groups, agencies and residents were very happy to talk with us. We were able to meet with them in an appropriate way. For example, when we met the local councillors, a number of us met them, allowing us to get to know them, while we were able to tell them who we were, what we were seeking to do, and to ask for their support in our work in the future. Building relationships like this has been the key to our work.

The Brandwood Centre
A key relationship, which was formed at this time, was with the Brandwood Community Centre. This had been set up and begun by the Allens Croft Project, who were now launching it as a separate organization. I was asked to become Chair of Trustees, which at this point in our work seemed the right thing to do. Rosemary Reynolds has now succeeded me in this role and we see it as a core part of our ministry.

A close relationship between St Bede’s and the Centre has been formed, which helped St Bede’s profile, reputation and credibility. We have a trusted partner who is able to deliver services and employ staff, while St Bede’s input has been essential to the Centre’s survival and flourishing.

Supporting Families and Young People in Brandwood
We were now ready to act upon what we had learned from the Listening Campaign and the relationships we had formed. Our capacity meant that we chose to act upon the needs of children, young people and their families to begin with.

We began by planning a meeting for all the organisations and groups concerned with children and young people in the area, which was held in February 2006. Representatives of twenty-four agencies and groups attended the meeting, which was excellent. The meeting enabled us to communicate our vision and method for working and to allow people to share information about themselves and what they do. We ended by asking people if they would work with us and support us, which they unanimously agreed to. This has given St Bede’s a genuine mandate to work in the way we do within the community. It is incredibly valuable in giving us credibility with all sorts of institutions and in helping us to gain support and help when we need it. I am not sure it would be possible for us to work effectively if we were going it alone or had no trust.

The Big Meeting was followed up by another one in April, which was designed to determine what work would be done as a result of this consultation. There were thirteen groups present at this meeting. This was largely because we had been deliberately vague about what ‘Brandwood’ meant; those from the other end of the Ward opted out of the meeting. Two key decisions came out of this meeting. Firstly, that St Bede’s would work with Woodthorpe Primary School to consult the 180 children and families there on what they would like our community to be like; secondly, we would work with local voluntary sector groups, secondary schools and the Council Youth Service to look at how we could carry out a youth consultation.

A Difficult Time
This was followed by a difficult year for the work. The partnership with Woodthorpe was put on hold when the Head left. The idea of the youth consultation hit difficulties as it was decided that we needed a worker to carry this out, and then attempts to raise money for this came to nothing. People from St Bede’s felt very disconnected from the work, particularly as the attempts to employ a youth worker meant careful negotiation by one or two of us which could not be widely shared. It was a time when we did not know when things were going to happen, or even if they would. We had worked as a catalyst and were waiting to see the results. It was a possibility that there would be no positive results from our five years of work. This period was a real test of faith for all at St Bede’s.

During this period, regular meetings for those at St Bede’s, as well as the oversight of the PCC, meant that we were able to encourage one another. We did internal work, trying to ensure that everyone could feel involved. We spent time thinking and reflecting. The Faithful Cities Report was published, which was a useful tool in helping our reflection on our practice, particularly in rooting our work in the relationship between human beings and God, and encouraging us that our method was the right one.

Our need for regular meeting for communication and reflection is a strong one. It led to us starting a monthly Parish Meeting from October 2006 where we discuss an issue or a book together. If the community work is not the main focus, it is always an item for discussion.

The vital thing in this difficult year was that we were able to keep going. The advantage of Churches over other types of community group is that they have a very long-term commitment to their mission and can continue through discouragement. A sociological reason is that they have more than one focus to concentrate upon; a theological one is that they develop a spirituality of the long haul: they know that Passion and Crucifixion are part of Grace and Resurrection. Looking back at this time, we learned that we cannot force the pace and that we do not see all the results of what we are doing.

Working with Woodthorpe Primary School
Once the new head teacher was in place at Woodthorpe, the school responded very enthusiastically to working with us. Using an idea from the Children’s Society Leaves of Life Campaign, all of the children in the school thought of how they would like the local community to change, and then wrote these ideas on large paper leaves. St Bede’s then collated these under the local authority headings of Greener, Safer and Cleaner. The children’s ideas were extremely thoughtful. Interestingly, they closely reflected the concerns of local adults as shown in various consultation exercises.

We agreed with the school that members of St Bede’s would work closely with the School Council and the Year 5 Class to put some of the proposals into action. In February and March 2007, members of St Bede’s went into the school at least weekly. The children decided that they would campaign on more litterbins, bulbs in the verges of streets, and for a better security fence to prevent vandals getting onto the school site from an adjoining cemetery. To do this, we helped the children learn about the mechanics of power. They invited the MP, local councillors and council officers to talk to them. There has or will be success in all of these areas. A highlight was several children going to the Great Hall of Birmingham University to teach 900 assembled community activists about how to campaign. One of the children said that this was the best day of his life, something that makes all the work we have done extremely worthwhile.

This has been a wonderful partnership allowing the Church and school to work together to enhance the life of the local community and for the Church to earn a place for itself within the community. A key benefit is showing children that they can make positive changes in the community. This was a very labour intensive piece of work that was led by me. We are planning to repeat the work again next year, with other people at St Bede’s and the school now having more capacity to run it. My role will be more as a mentor and support to others.

A Place in Decision Making
As the work has continued, St Bede’s has become a trusted part of the community and is made up of people who care passionately about the local community. This has led to members of St Bede’s taking part in key Local Authority decision making bodies, notably the Local Strategic Partnership and the Ward Advisory Board. A member of St Bede’s chairs the meetings at which the police and councillors consult the local community about concerns; we also of course have a key role in the Brandwood Centre. This gives us a role in local decision-making and ensures that a faith voice is present. We are concerned to make sure that the people doing this represent St Bede’s and the local community rather than themselves, that they are supported, and that they are able to feedback. We will be holding regular meetings to ensure this.

A final part of our work is that we host regular meetings of local voluntary sector groups, along with the Youth Service. This enables us to build good relationships, as well as sharing information about work and the local community; at the very least it means we should not be accidentally treading on one another’s toes.

What Do We Call It?
For most of the time we have referred to our work as St Bede’s Community Project. This was largely because of our charity with the same name. However, as Rosemary Reynolds has pointed out, this is not a correct title for what we are doing. Our work with the community is something that has affected the entire culture of the Church. I have therefore referred to “our work” or “our mission” throughout this document. It would be very useful if someone could think of an appropriate description, not least for self-description in our continuing life at St Bede’s.

4. Drawing out the Theology
A lot of our working theology is implicit in the above account of our work. Our model of the Church, for example, is one of service through being an agent for change in the community. The parables that speak most to us are those of yeast and salt and light. We see both the Incarnation and the Cross as underpinning our understanding of our motivations for the work.

In the following reflection, I would like to pay attention to some of the concrete things have emerged for us along the way. These are particularly our Values Statement and our use of questions. I will also look at our times of darkness and fragility, as well as he empowerment of people as important ways in which our working and thinking have revealed and reflected God.

The Values Statement
It is important to pay attention to this. It was written quickly in 2005 at one of the evening meetings with Anita. It was drawn up in order that we might articulate the faith that underpins and finds it’s outworking in our mission. The values give expression to a corporate, practical, working theology.

Under the headings of The Church working with the community, seeking a better quality of life for all and Love at the heart of the community, the Statement is:

Our Values - Living Life Jesus' Way:
- showing God's love
- welcoming and listening
- working in partnership with like minded people
- standing up for what is right
- being effective in all we do
- making a difference in the community
- supporting one another
- respecting our differences
- being honest, trusting and trustworthy
- this life flows from the praying and worshipping life of St Bede's

For me, these show a deep love and commitment to the world, which God created, and particularly that part in which we live. They show an inclusive and open spirituality, which is passionately concerned with the justice of the Kingdom of God. It is happy to work with all people of good will and it is determined to be effective. It demands integrity of it’s people, who know that this work is demanding and difficult, and who are therefore prepared to support one another and live with difference; they know most importantly that they can only do this because they are held by God in the corporate life of prayer and worship of their Parish Church.

At the same time, we wrote our vision for the parish. Half of this was concerned with the sort of concrete changes in the local community, which we have been working for. The others are more directly concerned with how non-Christian people in the community see St Bede’s. There is a desire to grow as a Church, but also we saw:

• People seeing the Church as a place to congregate and meet people
• People seeing the Church as a welcome and safe place and a good place to be
• People seeing the Church as a beacon of light
• People seeing the Church as taking action and getting things done in the community.

There would seem to be several conclusions to draw from this vision. It is a generous vision. Bishop John Austin sees generosity as the essential ingredient, which Churches can bring to regeneration:

An entirely different dimension which is crucial to our humanity and therefore crucial to creating communities in which human beings can flourish. Generosity touches on how neighbours look on each other. It speaks of respect and acceptance, and of welcome given to the diversities of people who live in any neighbourhood. It speaks of hospitality and welcome. In a city as diverse as Birmingham, that is so vital.

Although we do want St Bede’s to grow and to be a vibrant, loving, faithful community, it has been noted that our work is generous; the motivation is clearly not what we can get out of it. I think this is valued by the local community, where we are increasingly seen as an organisation who are honest and who do not have a hidden agenda. Through the commitment to partnership working, we would also see ourselves as being a sort of spiritual glue in the community. At some periods of our history, Taize services have been held at St Bede’s. I hope that the deeper spirituality of Taize has affected us, to be a place where a welcome is made, that St Bede’s is a place of trust and of springtime.

One of the criticisms of ourselves, which we raised at our recent Evaluation Day, was that we have not kept these values and this vision at the forefront of our work. It will be important to return to them in the future. John Austin sees this challenge of articulating and living the values of the Kingdom as having enormous implications for the life of the Church:

It means that everything we do in the way we worship needs to be tested for how it nurtures us in the values of the Kingdom: trust, generosity, affirmation, compassion and forgiveness. There also needs to be space in our worship for the anger, despair and grief of communities and people to be brought into the realm of God’s generosity and forgiveness that they may be transformed into new confident and flourishing human beings. Do we have the faith and trust that what for us is impossible is nonetheless possible for God?

A task for us in the future is to think hard about the ways in which our mission has affected our worship and especially to look hard at our worship to see where it might need to reflect the changes in us and our understandings of God and ourselves which are among the fruits of the last few years.

Questions and Discussions
One of the key ways in which we have lived theology together is through regularly meeting for the purpose of asking questions and discussing what we are up to. To begin with, there were open meetings as we worked out what we should be doing and reflected on how the work was going. These have now been incorporated into a regular Parish Meeting. It should also be noted that asking questions and discussing issues is part of life at St Bede’s. Preaching is often in the form of dialogue or discussion, which involves people more in the Liturgy of the Word, and is a more effective form of learning. When we get it right, our culture is one where we are equipped and encouraged to freely raise our concerns.

One example of how we work with questions was when we came together in June 2006 to discuss the Faithful Cities Report. Between us, we arrived at the discussion with the following:

• What is the Holy Spirit asking us through Faithful Cities?
• What areas of our faith were encouraged, challenged or missed out?
• How are we encouraged or challenged in our common life?
• The Report tells us to love the stranger; who is our neighbour?
• How do we raise the profile of the Christian Church?
• Do we agree with what the council and other bodies do on our behalf?

One of the hallmarks of St Bede’s has been a very careful discernment of what we believe God is calling us to do, and trying to be faithful to that call. This discernment has come about by paying attention to God and our context by prayer, our engagement with the Bible and Christian tradition, our faithfulness to the story of St Bede’s, and paying attention to the signs of the times. The importance of the latter may be seen in our attitude to the council and other bodies who affect the area. We work closely with them through bodies like the LSP and seek to make them take action through our campaigning work. We have found our overall approach fits in well with their strategy, which we have seen as a support and strength. We are aware, though, that we must keep a critical distance and be prepared for our approaches to diverge or conflict. We are also aware that a problematic area of the current Voluntary and Faith Sectors is for these groups to do work, which should be performed by the State. The vision and practice that have emerged from this process of discernment reflect the mind of St Bede’s.

Brokenness and Faithfulness – the Spirituality of the Long Haul
Section 1.18 of Faithful Cities spoke encouragingly but realistically to us:

There are still many churches of place with strong local connections. This local rootedness is often very longstanding, encouraging a commitment to people that is tolerant of slow progress and assigns importance to particular relationships and the needs of specific people and groups … People of faith spoke of the importance recognizing and accepting fallibility and failure and of responding with patience and perseverance – given hope by their belief in ultimate love, justice and reconciliation.

I think that the single most important reason for our mission strategy is that we needed to think very carefully about how we would work because our capacity meant that we could not have a Project and workers. We were a small Church with a half-time priest. We were and are a small and vulnerable group. We certainly did not start from a position of security and strength. We were unable to rely on ourselves. We needed help from outside.

The position and attitude of weakness and poverty that we have worked from is one that we perceive to be close to the values of the Gospels. A central part of Jesus’ teaching is: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” A key insight recovered in recent decades by liberation theology is that the Bible consistently privileges people in situations of poverty because poverty means they will trust and rely on God; if a person has possessions, they will rely on them and themselves instead. We know too that if we are to be faithful to the Lord, we must follow Him in the Way that leads through Passion and Crucifixion before Resurrection. This speaks against theological notions of success that seem to have more to do with societal norms than Christian discipleship. Indeed, the whole question of success needs to be put under theological scrutiny. We have been influenced by Archbishop Sentamu’s comment to Birmingham clergy that God does not want successful Churches; rather God wants faithful ones.

Of course we do need to assess how effective our mission is. We do not want to fall into the dangers of frittering away our energy and messing vulnerable people around. This has been difficult. Some of the most important things we have done, such as educating children about their ability to make positive change, seem to be vitally important, yet how do we go about assessing the outcomes of this? Equally, it is easy to become disheartened when things are not going well. The year between the Big Meetings and the work with Woodthorpe was especially hard. We had agitated to start change locally to the best of our ability and were waiting for partners to help us make concrete change. But rather like the bulbs we are about to plant growing in secret under the ground, developments were happening that we could not see at the time. It is therefore of the utmost importance to take a long-term view, to exercise patience and perseverance, to support one another: in short, to demonstrate faith. We have also taken the view that we have to dare to fail and make mistakes.

Our approach has mean that we have often had to work in the darkness. We have not had maps or models to follow; sometimes we have not known the best way forward or what the outcome will be. We have therefore had to live with not knowing and with ambiguity. We have also had to face the darkness of sin, especially the structural sin that affects the quality of life of so many people. There has been a frustration that our capacity means that we are only able to make a small difference; we are passionate and eager for change.

One of the fruits of the work has been growth in the numbers of people who belong to St Bede’s. In the words of Ann Morisy, this has come about in an oblique way, as it was not our primary intention. I would identify the growth, which although small and fragile has led to an increase in more 20% of average Sunday attendance, as being because our whole culture has developed so that we are an outward looking, dynamic and attractive Church: we obviously have good news. This and the attendant growth in numbers mean that we have a future.

An Empowered People
One of the most humbling and gratifying parts of the work for me has been seeing people really grow and flourish in their confidence and in their capacity to take part in things. This has been all sorts of ways, from involvement in the Listening Campaign to work at school. We have had to make sure that people are given confidence and any training that they need, but a key factor has been nurturing a culture where people can make mistakes. We know that we are all likely to get it wrong from time to time, but the Vicar and the institution will back people if they do. This empowerment has not been confined to St Bede’s. It is clear that the Brandwood Centre and Woodthorpe School have more capacity for their work in the community as a result of our working together.

Helping people to meet God and to flourish is a key part of our theology and practice. We would see St Irenaeus’ insight that the glory of God is a human being fully alive as a touchstone. For us, people are of the utmost importance; they are made in the image and likeness of God, they are our brothers and sisters. We are therefore concerned to encourage all that makes human beings flourish and to remove all that gets in the way of this. We seek to serve God’s Kingdom.

- Andy Delmege, September 2007