METHODIST COUNCIL, 6-7 FEBRUARY, 2008 – a report by David Andrews
(9-Feb-2008)The February meeting usually receives drafts of many of the papers for Conference but there was less this year, leaving a lot of work for the April meeting.
We are still working through the outcome of the team focus process in the light of last conference’s decisions. We have now received three splendid multicoloured structural diagrams still with significant uncertainties. We remembered the connexional team in prayer. Appointments are being made but the final ones will not be until after conference this year.
We agreed the make up of the Governance Support Cluster (previously called the Leadership Support and Research Unit) which supports the Secretary of Conference role and, after long discussion, agreed to two full-time posts. One of these must be ordained and would be the Assistant and Deputy Secretary of the Conference; the other could be lay or ordained and will manage the cluster. It will also include other high profile areas such as safeguarding, faith and order, ecumenical relations and equalities and diversity. This last area was the subject of a major report on the richness of our heritage that will come to conference incorporating an equal opportunities policy that will then be rolled out throughout the church. Again, the personnel to support this are still to be finalised. One of the areas involved is gender and we were told the results of the consultation on charitable status for Network. We set up a joint group with Network to look at options before April.
We also looked at the state of ecumenical relations and approved the outline of what will go to Conference. There was little support for an independent national organisation and few people willing to serve it.
We agreed an outline for the Connexional Leadership Forum (previously Team), the meeting of chairs of districts, presidency, connexional secretaries and chairs of major committees for mutual support. We recommended Conference not to review the title of district chairs until we review districts around 2012.
We also agreed revised financial structures that will not fully be in place for next September. Most financial business comes in April with the draft budget but we discussed the position of a £6m underspend on initial ministerial training which has built up because numbers have been less than budgeted for. There was concern about how this had arisen and an assurance that the new structures being put in place would not allow it to happen again. This is no longer a designated fund but it was agreed that £1.4m would be used for urgent transitional costs of training and for the Extending discipleship and exploring vocation programme, with the fate of the remainder of the money decided as part of the budget process.
The Connexional team report reminded us of the large amount of ongoing work which continues despite the upheaval of reorganisation such as the two publications Buy Less, Live More credit card for Lent which has received publicity in the national press and Joy in Your Pocket, the third in the series of give away booklets. The report also identified the amount of work that districts and circuits are being asked to do as a result of connexional decisions, a discussion we have had in Policy committee, and a few of the ways we can be helped such as the introduction of the help desk in the spring, detailed templates for equal opportunities policies and more work on complaints and discipline training.
The Fresh expressions scheme was set up initially as a five year initiative up to 2009. We reviewed progress and agreed in principle to another, final five years on a similar basis to 2014, looking at the budget in April. It included the requirement that the church needs to allow ‘proper irresponsibility’ ie appropriate risk taking ventures.
A group of us from Council has been consulting with World church partners about future relationships and reported back. The future pattern of staffing has been influenced by this consultation (for example, by having named Partnership Officers for regions as an initial point of contact and modifying the proposal for “diplomats” as senior representatives of the British and Irish Methodist Churches becoming Companions.
We received progress towards revised arrangements for Methodist heritage sites that will come to Conference. And set up a group to look at the senior leadership of the church, particularly the presidency to report in 2009.
We agreed that last year’s decision to make District Development Enablers district employees should be changed, as we in Cumbria preferred, to make them connexional employees together with Training Officers. This was in part in the light of requests from half the districts but also means that current staff would remain with their existing employer for pay and pensions arrangements.
We shared the rebranding of NCH as “Always there for children”.
As ever, if members want any more information please ask me.
David Andrews