PART FOUR: THE NEXT STEPS—FROM VISION TO REALITY
4.5 What we can ALL do
-
Foster a real sense of being a diocesan family where the strong support the weak.
-
Give thanks for God's many blessing to us, so that we are a truly eucharistic community.
-
Support our schools, and especially our church schools, and those schools that are seeking to become church schools.
-
Support the sisters at Tymawr. We are privileged to have contemplative nuns in our diocese, and they provide a spiritual powerhouse and a place of prayer and renewal, but they need more vocations and financial support.
-
Become a Fair Trade diocese so that our parishes take poverty and justice issues seriously.
-
Seek to maintain a worshipping presence in each parish.
-
[Anglicanism (unlike the Free Churches) is based on a parish/benefice system where we maintain a presence in each parish/benefice. We can only do this by sharing our financial and clergy resources and by encouraging non-stipendiary and lay ministry.]
-
Move from a clergy-dependent to a clergy-served church.
-
Move from managing decline to promoting growth.
-
Encourage a 'two-winged' approach to support both traditional and news ways of being the Church.
-
Encourage vocations—especially among the young.
-
Change our culture from being a pastoral church to being both a pastoral and mission focussed church.
-
Encourage a culture of learning among both clergy and laity.
-
Find ways of linking with the Diocese of the Highveld at parish, deanery and diocesan level.
-
Be committed to the people we serve, and see Christ in the poor, the sick and the marginalized.
-
Find opportunities of listening to God, and discerning what he is saying and where he is leading. This can be done by having a 'listener' at meetings who has the task of discernment and feeding back where God has been at work.
-
Work together for a Church that people will want to support enthusiastically and financially, and which will attract others to join us.