In June 2024, it was announced that the Diocese of Southwark would receive £29 million over nine years from the Church of England for its whole-diocese transformation programme. This programme – known as the Diocesan Investment Programme (DIP) will facilitate mission and growth projects throughout South London and East Surrey, none of which will be at the expense of core funding for our parishes.
What’s the aim of the Diocesan Investment Programme?
The Diocesan Investment Programme seeks to address the four main missional challenges that have been identified by our Diocesan Synod:
- Growing church attendance
- Doubling the number of churches with more than 25 children and young people
- Reaching and resourcing estates parishes
- Growing our pipelines to ministry (lay and ordained) and increase the diversity of our leadership
How are we going to address these challenges?
To address these challenges, we are developing an integrated programme with a number of workstreams that will resource and enable churches of varying sizes and kinds to flourish and grow - and then share their learning to benefit other parishes across our diocese. In planning this work, it has been vital to us as a diverse diocese to ensure that parishes of different traditions, contexts and socio-economic needs were included in our application.
The key elements of our successful bid application include:
Fresh Expressions grants
The national Church recognises our expertise and growth in this area and is doubling our ability to make grants to individual churches.
Innovation grants
We have a significant grant that we can award once every three years to a church that presents an innovative mission idea that they can develop and share with other churches to grow our parishes. More details about how any church can apply for this grant will be shared this autumn.
Parish Development and Renewal Programme
Valuing our parishes, in all their glorious diversity, is a key part of the Parish Renewal and Development Programme (PDRP) as we learn from and with each other.
This new two-year learning initiative is for churches that feel ready to see how they can create the right environment for even more fruitful ministry in their own contexts. Groups of lay and ordained leaders will work with a number of other parishes to learn from one another.
Parishes of all sizes, locations and churchmanship will be able to benefit from the programme, which will roll out across our diocese over the next 9 years. Together we will learn and make immediate use of various methods and tools to help understand the lives of our congregations, parishes, and communities. Together we will pray, and get to know each other as we build connections across the Diocese.
We’re currently busy finalising the first cohort to pilot the Programme, which will be reviewed and reshaped in light of that pilot. To find out more, please contact Jeremy Clark-King and to register an interest in your parish participating in future cohorts, please contact either Jeremy or your Archdeacon.
Apprenticeship-style training scheme
This aims to help address our need for more children and young people’s workers. We will train paid apprentices in CYP work to help them to develop and gain the qualifications and experience they need to pursue a vocation to this work – and to create a pathway for trained CYP workers.
CYP Mission Practitioners
Could you be involved in shaping the the future of Children, Youth and/or Family ministry in our Diocese?
As part of our exciting Diocesan Investment Plan, we’re launching Mission Practitioners, a bold new initiative focused on Children, Young People and their families (CYPF). This is one of the key steps in our journey towards realising our Vision of becoming a younger and more diverse Diocese. Find out more here.
Research on diversity in lay and ordained vocations
We want to consolidate work done in the past to encourage vocations amongst those of Global Majority Heritage and from culturally diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds to better identify and address the barriers to realising people’s vocations.
Canon Roxanne Eversley is meeting with individuals and groups to discuss ways for us increasing cultural diversity across our Lay and Ordained leadership. Encouraging Vocations Researcher, Anne O’Neil, is building a team to interview people who have experienced our vocation and discernment processes – to explore how these have been, what impact they’re having on individuals, and how we can ensure that people from under-represented communities are not hindered those from participating.
We want to find out:
- What inspires and encourages?
- What barriers are there?
- How can we improve how we nurture lay and ordained vocations?
To invite us to visit your parish please contact Anne – and to learn more, get in touch with Jeremy Clark-King or Roxanne Eversley.
New Hub and Resourcing Churches
In terms of Hub Churches we are looking for churches who have developed something new that can be shared with other parishes to help them grow and thrive. Resourcing Churches will be those that, in generosity, can give to other churches to renew and develop for fruitful ministry.
The first tranche of these has already been identified:
Croydon Episcopal Area
- Springfield Church Wallington (Hub – estates focus)
- St Matthew Redhill, with St John’s Caterham Valley (Hub – Flourish initiative)
- St John Upper Norwood (Hub – children & young people focus)
- St Michael Croydon (Hub – Parish Nurse initiative)
Kingston Episcopal Area
- St Mary Putney (Hub Church – Youth Ministry in Communion)
- All Saints Kingston (with St Mary Newington) (Hub – creating fresh expressions of Church using choirs)
- St Mark’s Mitcham (resourced by Holy Trinity Clapham)
- St Andrew & St Michael Stockwell (resourced by King’s Cross Church)
Woolwich Episcopal Area
- St Giles Camberwell (supported by St John the Divine Kennington)
There will be capacity for more Hub and Resourcing Churches from 2027.
How can parishes get involved?
We are excited at all the opportunities that this new resourcing offers to help us to meet the missional challenges of our time – none of which will be at the expense of core funding for our parishes. We know that many of our parishes share this excitement and are keen to get involved. Over Summer, 2024, Ruth Martin (our Bishops Lead for Strategic Development) and the team at Trinity House have been working hard to get the structures and processes in place for these strands of work to begin to get underway and we will soon be offering opportunities for you to engage through Episcopal Area meetings and Roadshows with members of the team. The first of these will offer the opportunity to hear more about how churches can bid for Innovation Grant funding – more details will be shared on this page and through diocesan communication channels in due course.
If you have any questions about the Diocesan Investment Programme, and wish to express interest in these plans , please don’t hesitate to speak with your Archdeacon and Area Dean in the first instance.
