Planning for mission

We've hit the ground running after Easter.

A busy week has included the school beginning of term service in church (providing another outing for Simon Hughes's lawyer's wig), wedding preparation for two couples, a deanery meeting about the use of church buildings at the Norweigan church, a funeral visit on the eighth floor of a Rotherhithe tower block, a colourful wedding in church with guests from Turkey and India, and the first two sessions of our new Bermondsey Christian Training course, Ready to Serve, on the theme of 'discovering your gifts' concluded with today's annual meeting at St James and a sermon by Adrian on the verse 'as the Father sent me, so I send you.'

Being a United Benefice of two parishes means we have two annual meetings. St Anne's took place on Palm Sunday, St James's was today. At both I shared a bit about a draft Mission Action Plan, which the PCCs will shortly consider in detail.

Then the MAP needs to be presented to the Bishop. Then it needs to be implemented - and that will be the theme of our joint PCC day at the Salmon Youth Centre on 17th May.

In the meantime the annual meeting heard just the beginning of our Mission Action Plan, the bit dealing with values, the kind of church we wanted to be. Our aim, I told the annual meeting, was to be two churches that were: (1) Bermondsey-focussed; (2) Bible-believing; (3) Disciple-making; (4) Compassion-sharing.

In due course there is more to come.