Ad Clerum: March 2020 Dear Friends I hope the season of Lent has begun profitably for you, as we seek to grow in holiness, to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow our crucified Saviour. In my lengthy Ad Clerum issued in February, I undertook to write a monthly update, in the first week of every month. Forgive me, please, for missing the very first deadline by a few days: as many of you know I spent the first week of March in our link Diocese of Argentina, and this is the earliest opportunity I have had to write to you all since my return. But I bring you greetings from our brothers and sisters in Christ in Latin America! When I last wrote, as I explained in paragraph 3 of the summary of developments, we were early in a two month period (ie February and March), where Area Deans and Deanery Lay Chairs were facilitating local consultation in each pair of deaneries. This was being carried out with respective Deanery Mission & Pastoral Committees, Chapters, Deanery Synods and PCCs, to gather responses to both the proposed ‘mission areas’ and the proposed deployment of stipendiary oversight ministers. As I write today, that process is still ongoing — and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Area Deans and Deanery Lay Chairs for all they have done so far to facilitate this. We are looking forward to receiving responses by the end of this month. Again, when I last wrote, we had not yet announced the appointments of a new Archdeacon of Doncaster and a new Diocesan Secretary. Those announcements have now been made and I trust you already know that: The new Archdeacon of Doncaster is to be the Revd Canon Javaid Iqbal, currently Team Rector in the parishes of Aldenham, Radlett and Shenley in the Diocese of St Albans, where he has been since 2013. Javaid will be installed at a service in Sheffield Cathedral on Saturday 16 May. The new Diocesan Secretary and CEO to the Diocesan Board of Finance in the Diocese of Sheffield is to be Mrs Katie Bell, currently working for the Salvation Army with responsibility for the strategic development of the three divisions in the Leeds Service Centre Region. Katie will take up her new role on 27 April 2020. I am genuinely delighted with these appointments and am grateful to the Lord for calling such gifted colleagues to join us. Please do be praying for them as they prepare to take up their new responsibilities, as I trust you are also praying for Canon Sophie Jelley in these last weeks before she is consecrated at York Minster on the Feast of the Annunciation (Wednesday 25 March) at 11am and then installed in Sheffield Cathedral on Saturday 28th March at 2pm. She and her family are due to move into temporary accommodation in the vicarage at Kirk Sandall this week, while the new permanent bishop’s house is made ready in Bessacar. Sophie and Chris have three children: one at university and two still at school. The youngest will transfer to a Doncaster school in the summer, but the middle child, now in year 12, will remain at school in Durham to the end of sixth form. For the next 18 months, therefore, the family will be in two locations, keeping a base in Durham as well as Doncaster — and they will be especially grateful for your prayers as they manage this transition. Meanwhile, we have arranged a series of six ‘clergy transition workshops’ (one for each pair of twinned deaneries), which will soon be underway. Held between Monday 23 March and Thursday 2 April, these have been designed to create a safe place for clergy to talk about the challenges and opportunities of the transition we are making together across the Diocese. Each workshop will be externally facilitated. In each case, a member of the senior staff team will be present at the start of the day, to welcome participants, but will then depart to leave a secure and confidential opportunity for clergy to take counsel together. We hope and pray these sessions will prove to be an effective support. About 100 clergy have signed into the workshops in all. There is one piece of substantial progress to report this month — and it is very good news indeed. In February, I said that we have been working closely with colleagues from the national church to ensure that a bid to the Diocesan Sustainability Fund (now called Strategic Transformation Funding) will provide some additional resources to enable our transition to sustainability. We had been exploring a proposal to submit a phase 1 bid imminently, with a fully-fledged phase 2 towards the end of this year. The Archbishops’ Council duly agreed to let us submit a phase 1 bid ahead of the fully-fledged version, and then considered it at the meeting of the Strategic Investment Board at the end of February. I am delighted to report that they have supported our plans in full, approving £1.74m of funding. Part of this is so-called ‘capacity funding’, is to enable us to devote the time and energy which will be necessary to work up the fully-fledged bid in the second half of the year: it includes funding for some additional capacity in communications, finance and project management. However, part of the funding is related to the substantial challenge of moving the Diocese to a position of sustainability. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of this funding relates to stipends. We have successfully argued that in certain circumstances, a strategic parochial appointment can itself be a step towards Diocesan sustainability if it enables us to make an appointment we could not otherwise afford to a parish which could realistically become a net contributor to the Common Fund. The SIB has approved our request to fund five such posts for a five-year period. These posts will be identified by the bishops in consultation with the senior staff and with area deans — and will be additional to the 77 posts identified in the indication deployment plans being discussed pairs of deaneries at present. (Some of you will know that although we sought to create a model based around only 75 posts, it proved just too difficult — so our draft deployment plan assumes 77 stipendiary incumbents.) I am immensely grateful to members of my senior staff team (especially Mark Cockayne, LJ Buxton, Christine Gore and our Interim Diocesan Secretary, Andy Brookes), as well as to Alex Shilkoff at Church House for all the effort which has gone into this fruitful work with the Strategic Investment Board. There will be more information about this ‘phase 1’ bid and the proposed phase 2 bid planned for later this year in subsequent communications. I hope this news will encourage you. The fact that the funding approved last week by the Strategic Investment Board makes us the very first beneficiaries of the Strategic Transformation Fund created by the Archbishops’ Council last summer is really not important — it is not a competition! The important thing is the confidence that it indicates the Archbishops’ Council has in us as we seek, under God, ‘to grow a sustainable network of Christ-like, lively and diverse Christian communities in every place, which are effective in making disciples and in seeking to transform our society and God’s world’. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3.20-21 With every blessing in Christ The Rt Revd Dr Pete Wilcox Bishop of Sheffield .