PCC Update - 12 June 2023

David Wagstaff read Revelation, chapter 4, which emphasised the awesomeness and holiness of God. We listened to Only a Holy God from City Alight. We then prayed that the church would reflect God's holiness, as well as praying for the meeting.
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Dan reminded us of the vision for the church: God is calling us to become a community who embrace different expressions of church in order to make disciple-making disciples who increasingly reflect the diversity of our local area. The main outcome is to make disciple-making disciples. If we do the disciple-making right, we will reflect the diversity of the local area.

Our buildings are a priority for this vision, as is leadership structure due to staff changes. To pursue the vision, the leadership structure needs to be broadened as having Dan as a bottle-neck is hindering our vision. Another priority is reaching younger people. We have made some work on this but it’s not complete. Dan shared that Josh, our youth worker, gave out donuts this week outside church to young people from Upper Shirley High and this led to conversations about God.

PCC members were assigned areas of mission to take an interest in based on preferences they had already specified, such as teaching, worship and communications. The idea being that PCC members would keep their ear to the ground and be aware of what was happening in the different areas during and outside of meetings. 

We discussed plans for parish hall. The congregation had previously wanted a 2-storey design but the council had indicated that wouldn’t be approved, partly due to the heritage of the building and the design not being an improvement to the area. The architects have now suggested a 1 ½ storey design which may be considered more suitable by the council. However, it represents a compromise for us and may still not get planning permission. The large hall is not as large as hoped for and is upstairs, which is far from the kitchen and may affect bookings. Architects fees etc are expensive and getting drawings to the quality needed for planning application would be significant. It was decided that Nick would communicate reservations to the buildings group.

Marie went through the budget for the year and the expenditure for the first four months of the year.

We approved pay rise for contracted admin staff and our cleaner from July.

Rosie gave us a safeguarding scenario.

We talked about potentially changing back to taking bread and wine separately in line with the latest guidance, and agreed that those that wanted to keep the current ‘dipping’ method could choose to do that whilst others could choose to take bread and wine separately.

We discussed choices for a new communion table. Nichola and Theresa agreed to give two options for the PCC to vote on in the next meeting.

Same sex relationship blessings – we talked about the importance of being sensitive when talking about this issue as it affects some members of the congregation deeply.