Red RGB:165-29-47 CMYK: 20-99-82-21 Gold RGB: 226-181-116 CMYK: 16-46-91-1 Blue RGB: 39-47-146 CMYK: 92-86-1-0 Annual Report 2018 Published 12 June 2019 Ely Diocesan Board of Finance We pray to be generous and visible people of Jesus Christ. Nurture a confident people of God Develop healthy churches Serve the community Re-imagine our buildings Target support to key areas TO ENGAGE FULLY AND COURAGEOUSLY WITH THE NEEDS OF OUR COMMUNITIES, LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY TO GROW GOD’S CHURCH BY FINDING DISCIPLES AND NURTURING LEADERS TO DEEPEN OUR COMMITMENT TO GOD THROUGH WORD, WORSHIP AND PRAYER. ENGAGE • GROW • DEEPEN | 3 Contents 04 Foreword from Bishop Stephen 05 Ely2025 – A Review 06 Safeguarding 09 Ministry 11 Mothers' Union 12 Mission 15 Retreat Centre 16 Church Buildings and Pastoral Department 20 Secretariat 21 Programme Management Office 23 Changing Market Towns 24 Parish Giving Scheme 25 Contactless Giving (Card Readers) 26 Communications and Database 29 Education 32 Finance 34 Houses Sub-Committee 35 Diocesan Assets Sub-Committee 37 Ministry Share Tables 4 | ENGAGE • GROW • DEEPEN Foreword from Bishop Stephen As a Diocese we are seeking to be People Fully Alive, as we One of the most important ways in which we serve our pray to be generous and visible people of Jesus Christ. We communities is through the Diocesan family of schools, as we are seeking to do this as we engage with our communities educate over 15,000 children. These are challenging times for locally and globally, as we grow in faith, and as we deepen in the education sector and especially for small and rural schools. knowledge and love of our Lord Jesus Christ. The aim is that Our vision of People Fully Alive is as true for children as for all we do and are should be part of our seeking to live the adults – we want our children and young people to know life Way of Life and grow in holiness; we love because God first in all its fullness, and we want to serve the common good, and loved us. We seek to be fully alive, and for that life to exist, as especially in some of our most challenged communities. I led Irenaeus wrote, in the vision of God. the House of Bishops unanimously to sponsor the Growing Faith agenda to support children as witnesses and disciples That is the vision. The strategy, as we know, is structured of Jesus in their own right at home, in church and at school around five levers of change. These are to ‘Nurture a confident with their families. That agenda is already beginning to be people of God’, to ‘Develop healthy churches’, to ‘Serve the addressed. community’, to ‘Re-imagine our buildings’ and to ‘Target support to key areas’. The report which follows is a snapshot of Towards the end of last year, a group from the Diocese took all the ways in which the life of the Diocese during the last year part in the first meeting of the cohort of our Strategic Learning was directed towards helping us, by grace, to seek to realise Community, organised by the national church. In those two that vision. days we recognised how far we have come with the Ely 2025 and how much there is yet to do. We focussed particularly on 2018 was a year when we saw significant change. Bishop David the need to ‘raise the spiritual temperature’, the imperative and Jean retired in October; the departures from the Mission that undergirds the whole of our common life of faith and Department of Peter Wood, Ed Olsworth-Peter and Rachael discipleship. All our work and activity as a Diocese only has Heffer meant we needed to reflect on the shape of that value if it is rooted in our daily turn to Christ and in our desire department, and especially its close connection to Ministry, to grow in holiness and into deeper relationship with God. and the teams have now been brought together under Linda Church’s leadership. Even in the midst of this change, we were We do all this together, as lay and ordained colleagues, in all delighted to host the National Fresh Expressions Conference the places we are set across the Diocese, in parishes, schools, in Ely in November. Our vision for a Blended economy of chaplaincies, fresh expressions and the cathedral. I am traditional and fresh expressions of church has now been immensely grateful for all the work that is done to sustain and taken-up nationally, and that is exciting to see. grow the life of the church, to maintain and re-imagine our buildings, to make our churches safe places for everyone who New discipline and focus was brought to our efforts to deliver might come to them, as companions together with Christ to the strategy with the establishment of the Programme whom we look as faithful companion and fellow traveller and Management Office, incorporating Communications and in whom we seek and find life in all its fullness. the Changing Market Towns project. The award in the summer of Strategic Development Funding from the Church The Right Revd Commissioners for that project provided us with both Stephen Conway enormous possibility and equal challenge – we are seeking nothing less than the transformation of whole communities Bishop of Ely according to the vision of the Kingdom of God. We are seeking communities fully alive in Christ. It is encouraging to see the fruits this is already bearing across the Diocese, and we are all learning lessons about how we might be more purposeful and rigorous in what we do; and about how we assess the outcomes of what we are doing. We need to find more opportunities for mutual learning and mentoring, for sharing of good news and good practice, as we engage, grow and deepen in faith together. ENGAGE • GROW • DEEPEN | 5 Red RGB:165-29-47 CMYK: 20-99-82-21 Gold RGB: 226-181-116 CMYK: 16-46-91-1 – a Review Blue RGB: 39-47-146 CMYK: 92-86-1-0 The Ven Hugh McCurdy, Archdeacon of Huntingdon and Wisbech, Co-Chair of the Ely 2025 Project Board A friend of mine has a new car. One feature of this new car is To pursue my earlier metaphor of “driving” for Ely 2025, 2018 its ability to “read” the road. The camera on the windscreen also had a bump in the road when Ed Olsworth-Peter (Fresh somehow reads the street signs and tells you what speed you Expression of Church and Young Adults Adviser) announced should be doing, if you are too close to the car in front and if that he was moving to another post. Shortly after that, Peter you are veering over a white line. For example, if you forget to Wood (Director of Mission), also announced that he too was indicate whilst overtaking and you cross the white line, the car leaving to move back to Scotland. At the same time Rachael will bleep and steer you back to the centre of the road. The car Heffer, (Youth Adviser) also left for a new role. This meant that likes to travel between the white lines, it likes to keep to the the Mission team was severely depleted, with the inevitable designated route. slow-down in much of what could be delivered. One of the advantages of People Fully Alive: Ely 2025, is that However, this did provide us with the opportunity to reshape it gives us not only a direction of travel, but provides the the Departments of Mission and Ministry and create one Team, equivalent of the white lines - we operate within those lines. Ely under the leadership of the Revd Canon Linda Church. Both 2025 sets the boundaries and establishes the parameters along Departments had been working together, so it made sense to which we work. formally recognise this. We now also look forward to welcoming the new Mission Lead for Fresh Expressions and the new Mission In this Annual Report you will read about the major work that Lead for Inherited Church. is being done as we continue the Ely 2025 journey. Some highlights that my colleagues will touch on later in this Report The direction of travel remains the same, the lines set by Ely include: 2025 continue and in 2019 we look forward to the journey picking up speed once again. • REACH Ely; a project led by Geoffrey Hunter, Church Buildings Consultant, re-imagining our buildings • Our successful Changing Market Towns bid and the investment we are making in under-resourced areas of our Diocese The Ven Hugh McCurdy • The extraordinary amount of targeted training events Archdeacon of the Ministry and Mission teams have delivered, with ever Huntingdon and increasing numbers of people attending Wisbech • The new provision of 'Sunday Morning Resources' for those leading a Service of the Word • The work the Mission team have been supporting, including Starting Rite and Thrive. 6 | ENGAGE • GROW • DEEPEN Safeguarding Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser (DSA): Rebecca Boswell The Ely Safeguarding Team seeks to contribute to ‘People Fully Alive: Ely 2025’ in its strategic aims of developing healthy churches and serving the community. We aspire to strengthen and integrate concepts of ‘safeguarding’ and ‘protecting the vulnerable’ within the culture and everyday practice of all those working, volunteering or worshipping across the Diocese. This preventative aspect of our work includes raising • Parish Safeguarding Handbook (2018) awareness of the various ways in which abuse may be manifested, the processes by which it should be managed • Responding to Safeguarding Concerns or Allegations that and how it may impact on survivors.