Print | Change Text Size: A- | A+ | A
Growing Healthy Churches
From the Bishops of Chichester, Horsham and Lewes to all PCC’s
12 March 2004
We are writing as your bishops to every church under our pastoral care to ask you to seriously consider conducting a Growing Healthy Churches checklist exercise as a means of identifying key priorities for mission and renewal in your Christian community.
We write obedient to the ongoing challenge of our diocesan Life Together vision, which speaks of “what we must be if we are to be a diocese faithful to Christ”. Bridging the gap between where we are as a church and where God in Christ wants us to be is the essential task outlined in the vision document, which has brought inspiration at all levels in the diocese over the last two and a half years.
It is the experience of a growing number of our churches of gathering congregational wisdom and distilling it down into a mission action plan through the Growing Healthy Churches reflective exercise that gives us confidence to commend this resource to your church. Given the various demands put upon you at this time, conducting an exercise that establishes a consensus under God of the things most needful of attention in your situation is in everyone’s interest. It is a means of attending to the “bridging the gap” Life Together speaks of through the renewing and concentrating of apostolic energies. The Chichester Magazine article explains the detailed process.
We are asking every church in the diocese to engage with Growing Healthy Churches over the next two or three years if they have not done so already.