The Methodist Church

WANTAGE AND ABINGDON CIRCUIT

CIRCUIT POLICY


The Our recent “Shaping Circuit Policy” process has revealed some of the vision and creative thinking present in our churches. In particular concern for our worship life, our relationship with the wider community, a desire to share our faith and the desire to be flexible and to find new, more effective ways of fulfilling our mission have strong echoes of the Connexional Priorities of the Methodist Church. It is encouraging that these themes are running through the life of the church and we need to respond to these in the area of Circuit policy too.

The Circuit Meeting on 18 September 2007 agreed to the following :

  1. The Circuit is the primary unit in Methodism (SO.500)

    • We will encourage Circuit identity and a sense of shared mission.

    • Circuit staff will be deployed in order to further the mission of the whole Circuit.

    • We will encourage more people to respond to the call to be Local Preachers and Worship Leaders.

    • We will encourage churches to see the Circuit Assessment as missionary giving not as an unwelcome imposition.

  2. Our two LEPs give us particular opportunities to work ecumenically.

    • We are committed to these and

    • will look for other ecumenical opportunities whether through formal relationships or through joining in specific pieces of work.

  3. As a Circuit we

    • will give priority to resourcing the four centres (the four towns) which will continue to be, and will hopefully develop as, strong bases for our work. If the town churches are not nurtured and built up we risk losing those key bases. This prioritising will be reflected in the deployment of staff and in the funding of building schemes which will enhance our work.

  4. As a Circuit we

    • will also give priority to those places where major new housing developments are taking place, in particular: Didcot and Grove. Again this will be reflected through staffing and appropriate church building schemes.

  5. Our village churches

    • will be supported as long as the members of those churches wish to continue their work in those villages.

    • New initiatives will be supported.

    • If help is needed with specific tasks from members of other churches in the Circuit this will be facilitated if possible.

    However, we will not

    • commit large sums of money or large numbers of people to retain buildings in places where the life of a church is no longer sustainable.

    • resist requests to close if Church Councils seek permission.

  6. Circuit staff

    • We will arrange the future staffing of the Circuit to reflect these policies.

    In order to encourage our sense of being a Circuit (see 1.)

    • We will avoid sections consisting of one church.


From September 2008 we propose an arrangement which will reflect the policies above, encourage sections to be less water-tight and bring in particular expertise.

The Methodist Church and other churches are facing a time of great change and our Circuit will not be unaffected. The prospect of change can be alarming but it is also exciting. The whole church is going to look very different in a few years from now, and so will our Circuit. We have an opportunity now not to be merely the victims of change but to take the initiative under God in order to serve him better in the future as far as we can plan.