The Parish of North Stoneham and Bassett, Southampton

The lively plans and hopes expressed in this vision show how the church community in North Stoneham & Bassett sees its purpose in the area

These ideas come frm many of you who have said what you would like to see in your church community

The vision described here is an inclusive one. We're all travellers. We're all finding new things along the road. The vision talks about exploring 'the spiritual side of life'. Jesus continues to attract lots of people who wouldn't describe themselves as full paid-up members of the Christian Church.

There's a lot of room in this vision for those just starting, as well as those who have a strong and committed faith.

I hope you'll be encouraged by what you read here.

And do consider whether you feel you can join this church family. Your beliefs and your attitudes matter.

With every prayer and good wish

John Owen

• Producing a welcome pack
• Exploring “Fresh Expressions of Church”
• Using music as an important and central tool
• Focussing on the needs of the elderly
• Strengthening links with those who use our buildings
• Providing opportunities for people to explore faith and to grow in faith
• Start a young people’s choir

• A small team of people to produce the welcome pack
• A small team of people prepared to distribute and maintain the welcome packs
• A small group of people to think creatively of new expressions of worship
• Someone to help with exploring further ways in which music may be engaged as a means of outreach
• Small group of people to think creatively on how to improve engagement with older people
• A small group to consider, select and run a course for those exploring the Christian faith
• A small group to design and run special events

• To make our presence known through special events,
• To make the most of special life events (births, marriages and deaths) to establish our presence in the community.
• To be open to providing a variety of worship experiences at different times and places. These need to be welcoming and comfortable to different needs within the community.
• To grab the attention of our community by an attractive external appearance to our buildings, and by an internally welcoming and comfortable atmosphere.
• To identify ways in which we can reach out to our local community, and meet its needs

• A small team identify key dates and design specific worship events
• A small team to promote the church life events to the community
• A small group to consider creatively new non church based worship
• The individual church guilds to propose improvements to external appearance of churches

• Developing creatively our existing services
• Improve targeting of worship styles to churches and times
• Create worship matched to key Christian events i.e. Candlemas
• Encourage diversity of styles across the 3 churches
• Encourage new expressions of worship

• We need a small group of people to review existing services and recommend improvements, reflective of different church styles
• We need a small group led by clergy to identify 12 key Christian events across the year and design suitable act of worship
• We need a small group of people to think creatively about new forms of worship and make recommendations

• Having a single parish wide communication process
• Build a comprehensive list of peoples details
• Define peoples preferences for communication eg. email or post or other
• To increase the readership of NSB News
• Standardising and improving the present internal and external noticeboards
• Providing consistent and standard spoken notices within the church services

• We need someone to write a formal communications process
• We need someone to own and maintain the contact list
• We need someone to manage the delivery of information
• We need someone to ensure we comply with the Data Protection Act
• We need someone to find new advertisers and readers for NSB News

• Explaining clearly to all how the parish is governed and how decisions are made
• Producing a diagram explaining the committee structure and the relevant powers of each committee
• Reducing to a minimum the number and size of committees but also increase the engagement of all in decision making
• Re-emphasising the PARISH as the key entity about which the vision is built
• Holding more regular whole parish meetings, perhaps quarterly, which focus strongly on how we are making progress in achieving the vision
• Strengthening the capability of the parish office

• We need someone to research and design the diagram
• We need someone to review each committee’s terms of reference ensuring there is no overlap, and make recommendations for reduction to the PCC
• We need to increase the working hours in the parish office
• We need those who minister in public, repeatedly to emphasise that we are a PARISH community, not just three church congregations

• Emphasising Christian giving rather than fundraising events
• Targeting a 50% increase in regular giving within one year
• Creating opportunities for targeted giving – for example new chairs
• Wherever possible enable giving to support people rather than buildings
• Communicating regularly and clearly the financial position of the parish

• We need regular biblical teaching on giving (Jesus wasn’t shy about it)
• We need to agree on three or four areas of targeted giving, say an overseas project, doubling the hours of the parish administrator, a parish youth worker, a children’s choir
• We need to co-ordinate the giving/spending of the guilds and the parish into one effort
• We need a monthly summary financial statement to go in the news sheet at the monthly parish Eucharist