The autumn meeting of the United Reformed Church’s Mission Council opened at The Hayes Conference Centre, in Swanwick, Derbyshire, on 16 November 2018.

It began with worship led by the Revd David Coaker, Chaplain to Mr Derek Estill, Moderator of the General Assembly. The Revd Susan Durber led the first of three Bible studies from Philippians, this one about cultivating the virtue of joy, despite our circumstances, as Paul did in this letter from prison.

Session one:

Paper B1: Executive summary of children’s and youth work committee report, Paper B2: Children’s and youth work review report 2018, Paper B3: Children’s and youth work committee outline strategy
The Revd Jenny Mills, Convenor of the children’s and youth work committee (CYWC), and Dr Sam Richards, the Head of the URC children’s and youth work department, presented papers B1-B3. The aim of the review was to enable local churches, and the URC as a whole, to improve engagement with children and young people in meaningful ways. The review was conducted by a core group of four over eight months.

The group explored all aspects of the Church’s current involvement with children and young people. For example, the Church’s involvement with schools, further and higher education; local churches; synods; children youth development workers (CYDOs), input into available resources, and also spoke directly with children and young people themselves.

Ms Mills said: ‘I’m proud that such a good document has been produced in such a short space of time, led by Sam who has been in post for as long as the review has been going. This report looks to offer not a range of events but a resourcing of the URC. I offer the report to Mission Council with joy.’

Dr Richards went onto present the CYWC’s outline strategy which detailed the vision for the next five years of children’s and youth work in the URC.

The strategy aims to reunite all the parts of children’s and youth work using several methods including an integrated diary of events and connecting with other areas of the URC, such as the Joint Public Issues Team, Church Related Community Work, and the Free Churches Group to impact positively the lives of children and young people. It also aims to initiate deliberate culture change thorough Walking the Way, Stepwise, and resources like the prayer handbook. It also aims to: place a focus on churches where no children and young people are present; reshape Pilots and the CYDO programme; develop an accessible go-to resource bank with links to URC people and develop communication by reinvesting in face2face.

They then took it in turns to present the resolutions and answer questions from the floor.

Dr Richards added there were five key areas where work with children and young people could be strengthened. She named these as faith, community, identity, engagement and growth. Adding: ‘We need to encourage churches to risk some change and be creative … We already have the glowing embers, we just need to rekindle them.’

Mission Council was asked to reaffirm its longstanding commitment to enable children and young people to play their part in the mission of God; direct the children’s and youth work committee to strengthen and support local congregations in their engagement with children and young people through the proposed strategy; encourage all synods to play an active part in developing and delivering Assembly-level resources; authorise the CYWC to develop a fresh expression of Pilots.

There was further discussion around the wording for resolution five, around Mission Council reaffirming its commitment to the current level of resourcing and staffing for children’s and youth work.

A lively discussion was then held, with amendments made to resolution 1 and four.

The resolutions were then passed except for resolution five which was withdrawn.

Session two:

Paper H1: Ministries - explaining possible variations in operating a call to procedure
The Revd Paul Whittle presented Paper H1 which was based on a General Assembly request for the ministries committee to offer examples on the implementation of resolution 28, about how the call process could be exercised in a changing context.

Its paper to Mission Council reminded the meeting that the church exists in a fast-changing society and that the process of issuing a call aims to provide flexible and appropriate ministry, and that responsibilities change during the course of most ministries.

The exploration into the process wasn’t going to undermine the relationship between pastorates and synods but looked at how the Church can do things differently with a more missional focus.

The eight examples offered included:

• A group of three churches scoped at 75% having the synod add the remaining 25% as a scoped post as a transitional minister
• A group of four churches calling two ministers, using them according to their gifts
• A group of four churches becoming accredited as a Church Related Community Worker (CRCW) project, calling a CRCW on a shared basis
• A group of six churches calling two ministers, allowing them to work together with clearly defined pastoral roles
• A group of eight churches calling two ministers with specific churches assigned to each
• A group of 12 churches calling three ministers to a team ministry, with each church identifying a ‘primary’ minister, but with a sharing of particular gifts and specialisations
• A group of 14 churches calling two ministers along with four local leaders and two retired ministers willing to help, along with a Non-Stipendiary Minister (NSM) giving ten hours a week.

Mission Council received the report.

Session three:

Paper U1: Greenbelt festival
Mission Council advisory group

On Friday evening, Alan Yates, immediate past Moderator of General Assembly, presented a report on the future of the associate partnership between the United Reformed Church and Greenbelt festival. The report was produced for the Mission Council advisory group.

The URC/Greenbelt partnership was originally funded, from 2016 to 2017, by a one-off grant from the Legacy Fund; then, in 2018, a lower level of association was financed from various sources approached by the URC’s Greenbelt planning team – ‘money found down the back of the settee’, as Mr Yates put it.

This year, Mr Yates and the Revd Anne Sardeson produced a review of the partnership. One finding which Mr Yates particularly highlighted for Mission Council was that it appeared that 30% of the 12,000 non-URC visitors at Greenbelt were more aware of URC since attending the festival and saw the denomination in a good light as a result. Another key finding, he said, was that 50% of URC members at Greenbelt said the partnership had a positive impact on local churches.

The three resolutions attached to paper U1 propose that the partnership continue from 2019 to 2021, returning to a higher level of funding, financed from a sum included in the budget for inter-committee projects, and overseen by the mission committee on behalf of the Church. All three resolutions were passed by consensus.