On 3 August 2023, the Church of England issued the Press Release Recommendations for collaboration between dioceses shared following consultation which is reproduced below along with extracts from the accompanying letter from Dame Caroline Spelman and Martin Seeley, Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich.
Press Release: Recommendations for collaboration between dioceses shared following consultation
03/08/2023
Recommendations outlined following ‘bishops and their ministries’ diocesan stakeholder consultations
The Church of England’s Dioceses Commission has shared outcome themes from a consultation looking at bishops and their ministries, as part of a series of listening exercises exploring how the Church of England can best serve the nation in the 2020s and beyond and make best use of resources.
Recommendations will include suggestions for new collaborations between dioceses in areas such as Net Zero, Racial Justice, Ministry Training and Education, either on a regional level or between a number of dioceses.
The consultation asked diocesan stakeholders for views and suggestions on how dioceses might cooperate to use resources better and on how The Church can best enable the important ministry of suffragan and area bishops, including whether any structural changes should be considered.
In the letter, Dame Caroline Spelman and Martin Seeley, Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich say that there will not be any centrally-led structural changes to dioceses, or combinations of dioceses as a result of the consultation.
Stakeholders are now invited to join an autumn workshop to look at practical steps for those who are either already leading inter-diocesan collaboration projects, or who are interested in exploring further.
Extracts from letter from Dame Caroline Spelman and Martin Seeley, Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich
2 August 2023
Executive Summary:
• No national centrally-led approach to restructuring or combining dioceses
• Proactively encourage inter-diocesan collaboration
• Invitation to an online workshop to look at inter-diocesan collaboration
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Having listened to the responses, the Dioceses Commission has agreed with the Archbishops that there will be no ‘big bang’ or centrally-led approach to restructuring or combining dioceses at this time. This would be a distraction from the mission and ministry that is underway across the country in parishes and dioceses, would absorb hard-pressed leadership time, and would be an additional burden on the already constrained resources of the Church at all levels.
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The Dioceses Commission is ready to support any diocese that wants to review its work and structures, including proactively looking at the possibilities for shared vision and closer working with another diocese. But we stress that this must be led locally, not centrally.
However, the Dioceses Commission would very much like to encourage and support inter-diocesan collaboration (though not imposing additional structures), and indeed there was some enthusiasm for this in many of the responses we received….Some of the suggested areas for collaboration have been Net Zero, Racial Justice, Ministry Training and Education, for example. This can be on a regional level between several dioceses, or between just two or three. There is evidence that operating at scale, pooling talent and sharing resourcing can deliver savings as well as increasing breadth and resilience, thus giving the opportunity to deliver more and better services to our parishes. We therefore strongly encourage dioceses to explore inter-diocesan collaboration and to integrate this into their diocesan strategies.
We want this form of collaboration to be the norm rather than the exception. To progress further we would like to gather together those who are already collaborating with other dioceses and those who are interested in exploring further. We would like to be able to share best practice in order to be able to support others to do more in future, and also to put our heads together to really think about what areas would work well for inter-diocesan collaboration and how this can be an effective way of enabling mission in our communities.
We therefore are inviting those leading on inter-diocesan collaboration projects and those who are interested in beginning or expanding projects to join us for an online workshop in the autumn this year. This can be in any topic area and any office-holder, be that Diocesan Secretaries, Bishops or another senior diocesan staff member. If you or a member of your team are able to help us in this way, please contact the Secretary to the Dioceses Commission, Jenny Axtell, via bishop.consultation@churchofengland.org.
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