Never thought I’ve ever actually say these words … let alone write them down …. but … wait for this …. we had a really good Deanery Synod meeting last night! There … it’s out in the open. I enjoyed a Deanery Synod meeting!

A large part of last nights agenda was given over to each church having 3 minutes to tell us about it’s context and mission. I actually loved hearing what others were up to, what their challenges and passions were, and how they were dealing with them. This was a great way for the first meeting of the new synod to start because too often we can be caught up in our own locations to notice what others are doing. It’s great to hear how diverse and yet united a deanery we are.

As a team ministry of three churches we pooled our 3 minute allocations to take 8 mins and 45 secs (get us!) to talk about the mission priorities from our Mission Action Plan. This was quite an inspired idea from Margaret! People spoke specifically across the parish about Growing our Spiritual Life Together, Children and Young People and Loving Service to the Community. The fourth priority of Visibility was presented by each individual church.

In my 90 seconds I gave everyone different flavoured skittles in an envelope and asked them to eat one, then another and then other …. as an illustration that for HTGP our biggest challenge when we think visibility, or anything really, is how quickly this community changes it’s flavour …. with new people coming and others leaving what seems like every day, and how it will continue to do that for the next few years until the building stops.

At HTGP we attempt to better visibility by being around at community events and, for me personally, being present regularly in the community at school gate and coffee shops. In addition we tweet everything we do (well maybe not everything!) and do a lot of advertising and profile racing through our website and Facebook page …. so we may have a challenge with concrete visibility in terms of location, but in terms of social media I hope we have quite a big footprint.

So … I hope future Deanery Synods are as informative and engaging … from what I heard last night  I think there is a real possibility that could be so … (and big plus is that I have all those skittles in the pic left over … 🙂 )