PCC Update July 2022

Nichola Caveney writes ...
Bible and Prayer
The meeting opened with Georgia leading us in a period of reflection-thinking about what it means to be a courageous church.
We read Joshua 1:1-9. ‘Be strong and courageous’ is mentioned 3 times. We have the promise of God that He will be with us. We can be strong in the strength of the Lord, not in our own power.
We listened to ‘I will Fear No More’ by The Afters and this was then followed by a short time of prayer.

What 3 words? 
We talked about the proposed 3 words which we have discerned as mindsets that God wants us to focus on in the coming years:  
• Expectant
• Whole-hearted
• Courageous

The PCC talked about the best way of presenting information about what we believe, what we should be, what we do and what we strive to become.  We looked at several different visual interpretations and agreed that more work was needed!

Church Vision
Following on from the last PCC meeting, we looked at another draft of a proposed vision for the church. We spent time in groups discussing specific wording, but as there were a large number of PCC absences this month, it was decided to continue the discussion in September’s meeting.

Safeguarding
We discussed what activities need to be signposted to the Parish Safeguarding Dashboard (any activity endorsed by the church organised primarily for children, young people or vulnerable adults).
The PCC has asked for clarification on privacy in the Recruitment of Ex-Offenders Policy which was produced in accord with the Church of England practice guidance on safer recruitment.

18-35 Generation
Feedback was given by Laura who is part of a recently formed group to identify what we can do even better to help this age group engage with church more. The group have suggested an anonymous survey for anyone in the church/community to complete (in all age groups) so the group can find out exactly what is needed.

Pattern of Services
Following the brief presentation Dan did last month, we had the chance to feed back any comments and suggestions about the next steps.  Some key points of discussion were:
• Any changes need to be sustainable
• We shouldn’t be scared of not being able to please everyone
• Ideally, we need to make decisions early in the autumn term, ready to be put into place at the start of 2023.
• We should continue to canvas opinion from other members of the congregation (including those outside our immediate circle of friends)
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The meeting closed with a time of prayer and reflection.