diocese of bath & wells education department
In response to God’s immense love for us we seek to be God’s people living and
telling the story of Jesus. Our vision and strategy speaks of the story of
Jesus; his life, teaching and work, his death and resurrection; the story which
is the context of our faith and the content of our message. We seek to live this
story as disciples of Jesus Christ in the world and to tell it, both in sharing
the good news and by the way in which our lives speak about Him. Priorities
Three priorities for action are at the centre of diocesan life in order to
enable every one of us to ‘live and tell the story of Jesus’. These priorities
reflect the way in which we seek to put the vision into practice and to address
the challenges we face across the diocese, challenges that have grown more stark
as a result of the Covid pandemic. To enable all of these to really flourish, we
seek to place prayer and worship at the heart of our life together and to build
a spirit of unity and generosity in living out our vision. To place mission and
evangelism at the heart of everything that we do This priority reminds us that
everything we do needs to be set within the context of sharing God’s love with
the world (living the story) and proclaiming the gospel (telling the story).We
will shape our life together to serve and embrace our communities better; we
will undertake more activities and initiatives with an explicitly missional
purpose and engage more proactively with our communities at a personal, parish,
deanery and diocesan level. To align our resources towards mission We will shift
the balance of the resources we deploy in time, people and buildings towards
mission and provide more resources for explicitly missional roles; that we will
invest in our communities and in initiatives in order to follow God’s missionary
purposes; and that we will seek numerical and spiritual growth as we trust in
the leading and guiding of God’s Holy Spirit. To identify, develop and release
the gifts of all people We will seek new ministry models that help us all to
make best use of the gifts and talents that God has given to his people; that we
will seek to build congregations that flourish through serving each other,
serving their communities and witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ.
