Kairos report

KAIROS is the name of the Bishop's initiative to examine how every parish in the Diocese of Portsmouth ministers to its community. Over the last year members of our "cluster" of Churches have been working together to research what is needed in, and how best to serve, our communities. At April's Deanery Synod meeting, the "cluster plans" were presented by Andy Minchin, from Christchurch, Portsdown.

I am representing the Crookhorn, Portsdown, Purbrook and Waterlooville Cluster and I shall describe the thinking and rationale behind our plans.

At each stage in our work, we have been careful to remember to check that what we are doing is going to achieve the declared KAIROS objectives, the most important of which is to: Increase the relevance of the church in the world today.

In our cluster we have conducted in-depth research, followed by detailed analysis of the research information, which has resulted in a set of plans or rather steps towards our final vision, in which we imagine a world where we need more and more spaces, resources, energy and support, because we are overwhelmed by the number of people wanting to follow Jesus.

You can imagine it for yourselves; a promised land, full of happy smiling faces, people who have turned to Christ, people who want to be full members of our church family.

Before I start to describe the plans there are two Principles, which underpin the achievement of our vision.

Firstly 1.) That we still maintain our existing focus, energy and drive on external and overseas mission - beyond our local boundaries. We need to do this, otherwise we shall not get the support we deserve and need from our church family for our local community plans.

Secondly. 2). That our research shows that we have four thriving churches and that based on the demographics and significant needs in the cluster we are unanimously of the view that all four churches in the cluster should retain full time clergy. That will ensure that we maintain and grow the vision of KAIROS.

As I said earlier, we are not presenting a set of separate plans but embarking on a carefully constructed journey, which step, by step, increases our capability to demonstrate the relevance of our church to the real world in the local community on a day-to-day basis - in a sustainable manner - for the long term.

We have decided to embark on steps 1 to 4 in the first year of our journey because we believe that this is achievable with the resources we already have to hand. These are Plans 1 to 4 in your papers.

Subsequent steps are more difficult and require more time to arrange staff training, additional spaces, and more energy, funding resources and planning. Therefore we shall tackle those plans later.

Now I shall summarise each of the steps 1 to 4 in more detail explaining the benefit of each stage.

I start from the basis that you have read the material provided and I will elaborate on the rationale or thinking behind the plans and the benefits of each stage.

Note that all of our plans are shared and implemented across the whole cluster.

Plan 1 is about using the strength of our core ministry teams to grow people at all levels so that we have more Christians for our later work, specifically at the level supporting our clergy teams. We need to achieve this step across the whole cluster for the subsequent plans to succeed.

The benefit is that we shall then have more resource available or 'power to our elbow' when we roll into the next plans.

Plan 2 is to develop co-operation across the cluster on two fronts.

The first is to develop and share worship and ministry experiences in carefully constructed and coordinated plan with increasing pace and vigour.

The second is to construct a semi formal model for operating the cluster. This will cover the governance of cluster meetings (currently every six weeks) and social events and will also propose how the formal links will be established with existing bodies such as PCC's, Deanery Synod and Pastoral Committee, and the various Diocesan Committees.

Without this plan in place and working, we believe that the work of the KAIROS initiative will fizzle out and die at the cluster level.

Plan 3 reflects directly our research findings. We have established that the good work of the local civic community organisations such as the Havant Borough Council and the National Health Service is rather disjointed from the separate activities of our various church groups.

The result is a picture of overlap in some cases but more importantly, there are alarming gaps appearing in community care as for example the NHS starts to withdraw services due to lack of funding ™ the potential for further lack of care for some of our people is most worrying.

By working together in the community at the organisational and implementation level the gain is potentially huge. I believe this is truly a case where one and one can make three.

Plan 4 In our research we have discovered that we have a number of people who just do not know what to do when they get into difficulty. Where to go for help. Normally, the help they need is available and to hand. Typically, these specific people are completely at a loss and just do not know how to get access to the help they need.

This plan delivers the means by which we can connect "lost" people with the service they need in a simple and effective manner. That summarises the plan for year one of our journey.

Years two and three plans will follow and will provide solutions to the problems of lack of spaces; support for older people and parents, and lack of transportation.

We also plan to celebrate success regularly within the cluster with "big bang fun events". Our vision is that by the time we reach the end of our journey, if not before we shall look out and see crowds of people trying to join us on our journey of faith.

In fact, we will have, metaphorically speaking, to leave our buildings and work outside because we need more space for those people desperate to get inside!

But we must not forget our two first principles, which are:

1. To maintain focus on our outward mission.

2. To retain four full time clergy in the cluster so that we can move forward with vigour and strength towards our KAIROS vision."

Andy Minchin