The United Benefice of Wolvey, Copston Magna and Withybrook Parish Profile 2016 Page 1 of 15 BISHOP’S INTRODUCTION Wolvey is a lovely village in the north of Warwickshire, within easy travelling distance of the M6, M1 and M69 motorway systems. It is also very close to some nationally known Carp fishing lakes! The fishing analogy might be useful for this part-time role however, as the post provides an excellent opportunity to ‘fish’ spiritually in one major lake and two smaller lakes – the village of Wolvey and the two smaller villages of Copston Magna and Withybrook. The villages would benefit from a priest who will lovingly help the congregations begin the processes of change towards becoming inwardly and spiritually healthier, and also more outward-looking and growth oriented. The post has the advantage of Wolvey being a reasonably self-contained village with a Church of England school, so there are very positive opportunities for village ministry without having an unsustainable number of parishes to look after as well. We are being flexible with this post and look forward to applications from priests seeking a House for Duty, Self-supporting, or half-time post. I commend the post to you. With my prayers Page 2 of 15 DEANERY INTRODUCTION Nuneaton Deanery has one of the largest populations in the Church of England, and is also one of the largest for numbers of clergy, although we currently have a lot of vacant posts, mainly due to clergy retirements. It is also one of the poorer areas of Warwickshire and Coventry Diocese, and has often felt under-resourced considering the demographics of the area. The Deanery Chapter has a mixture of stipendiary, self-supporting and retired clergy, from a range of traditions, including evangelical, liberal Catholic, and Resolution C, with the majority being evangelical. We support each other by meeting for prayer and discussion, and sharing lunch together, taking turns to host our colleagues. We have an interesting mix of rural and suburban churches and we endeavour to support each other as much as we can. The Deanery is currently subsidised financially to the level of about 2.3 full-time posts by other Deaneries in the Diocese, but we are starting to take up the challenge of supporting each other rather than relying on financial help from outside. Rather than simply cut back on posts, however, we are strategically looking at opportunities for considerable growth, and we think that these parishes, especially St John the Baptist, Wolvey, have the potential for considerable growth and influence. We are therefore looking for a new vicar to help the parishes grow spiritually, numerically, and financially. The congregations have expressed a willingness to change and become more mission-focussed. Wolvey have plans to start a Messy Church in the autumn and there are potential areas for growth with links to the school and the Army Barracks. We look forward to welcoming the new vicar to the Wolvey Group and Nuneaton Deanery! Frank Seldon Area Dean Page 3 of 15 BACKGROUND TO POST Wolvey, Copston Magna and Withybrook are 3 small villages in North East Warwickshire in the Midlands. They lie close to the Midland motorway network, and for those interested in fishing, there are a number of excellent carp fishing lakes within the parish. The group used to be 4 villages, but one village Burton Hastings has now been linked with Bulkington. The largest village in the group is Wolvey, which is where the vicarage is located. The parishes have had a full-time stipendiary post for many years, subsidised by the Deanery and wider diocese. This level of resource for such small villages and small congregations, in what are comparatively wealthy areas compared to the rest of the deanery, is unsustainable. The post has therefore become a House for Duty, Self- supporting or 0.5 stipendiary post. The congregations have been fairly central in a Eucharistic tradition, but have been rather inward looking. They will need gently discipling into fuller expressions of Christian faith and mission in their particular rural context. Page 4 of 15 ROLE SPECIFICATION The role of the next vicar of the Wolvey group will be to deliver the Diocesan Mission Purpose of: Worshipping God Making New Disciples Transforming Communities. S/he will achieve this by developing the 8 Essential Qualities in the lives of the congregations: Empowering Leadership Gift-oriented Ministry Passionate Spirituality Inspiring Worship Holistic Small Groups Need-oriented Outreach Loving Relationships Functional Structures Further information on these qualities can be found at http://www.dioceseofcoventry.org/healthychurches PERSON SPECIFICATION We would welcome candidates who: Have an authentic and infectious love of Jesus and the Bible, and can help us catch this love too, and become more confident in building, expressing and sharing our faith in a rural context. Are able to identify leadership and other gifts in people, and train and develop people for all areas of Christian ministry. Can gently help us face and address the realities of necessary change for growth, including structurally and in worship, aware of the attachments people have to the present way of doing things. Have a track record in the development of small groups (preferably in a rural context). Page 5 of 15 THE CHURCHES AND THE 8 ESSENTIAL QUALITIES In order to assess where the Churches are in relation to the Natural Church Development (NCD) eight essential qualities for Healthy Growing Churches, each congregation conducted their own survey in the spring/summer of 2015. The following paragraphs are based on those results. Empowering Leadership There is a good sense of collaboration across all 3 churches, and the congregations appear to be happy with the level of lay leadership in the churches, including leading services, preaching, leading intercessions, fund raising, management of the Millennium Building, building and church yard maintenance, production and distribution of Church Magazine, choir, Lent and Advent Courses, and Confirmation preparation. However, across all 3 parishes there were identified weaknesses in our leaders not being concerned for those who did not know Jesus Christ, and worryingly low scores related to the lack of expectation in our leaders for growth. We therefore believe it to be imperative that our next vicar has a deep concern for helping people access Christian faith, and raising expectations and the reality of growth within our churches. Gift Based Ministry In Wolvey and Withybrook people seem to enjoy the tasks that they do in the Church and feel their tasks are a positive challenge to their faith. There are a number of groups that carry out these tasks (cleaning, flower arranging, choir, sacristry, serving at the altar, eucharistic ministry, church and church-yard maintenance, and fund- raising). They feel that God is using them, that they have had training for their tasks (though less so in Withybrook), feel supported and they experience the benefits of working in a team. However whilst people know what their gifts are they feel that the church does not always provide tasks that match those gifts. In Copston Magna, whilst people know what value their work brings to the church and that the church helps them to discover their gifts, people didn’t feel that their tasks in the church stretched their faith and this question even produced a negative result (very rare!). It appears they do not enjoy the tasks that they carry out either. As with the Empowering Leadership quality, most of people’s time, gifts and energies are spent within, rather than outside, the church. Page 6 of 15 Passionate Spirituality The NCD surveys present clear contrasts in the levels of spirituality across the benefice. In Wolvey people are enthusiastic about their church, and find times of prayer an inspiring experience for them; people experience the transforming influences of their faith on their lives and are willing to share with others the times when they have experienced something from God. At Copston Magna and Withybrook scores were generally low. The highest scores were relating to people’s enthusiasm for their local church, but otherwise the results indicate perhaps a lack of genuine enthusiasm in relation to faith itself. Copston achieved another negative score in relation to people believing that God will work even more powerfully in the church in coming years. This effectively means the congregation are expecting the church to decline. These churches have small congregations which may have influenced the results but clearly there is work to do here in helping people engage with the realities and vitality of Christian faith. Across all churches there are low scores in relation to enjoying reading the Bible on our own and the influence of the Bible in our everyday lives. We would welcome a vicar with an infectious Christian faith, who loves Jesus and the Bible, and who can help us catch this love too. Inspiring Worship At Wolvey and Withybrook people appear to enjoy and benefit from the worship, though the existing patterns of worship do not seem to attract un-churched visitors. The music at Wolvey is positive, with a very good organist and a small robed adult choir (mainly ladies and one man). People look forward to attending the worship, they listen to the sermons, they connect with God and feel that the worship has a positive influence on them. They say attending worship is an inspiring influence on them, and can explain why they come, and are also ready to participate in the service. At Copston Magna the scores followed a roughly similar pattern to those at Wolvey but a few low scores are of more concern. People cannot explain why they come to a service, the music for many does not help them to worship God (also true for Withybrook), for some attending worship is not an inspiring experience, and people do not seem to look forward to attending the services.