Ashwell, St Mary the Virgin version: 2

What progress have you made with the Goals from your previous MAP, and what do you want to celebrate?

• Establishing regular Advent and Lent Discussion groups. These are now well in place and well attended helping people considerably with enhancing their understanding of their faith and “Going Deeper into God”
• Re-establishment of the Mother’s Union - not a specific MAP objective and very much the brainchild of the current incumbent’s wife but a very welcome enhancement of fellowship, learning and practical action in support of others in need.
  

  The Newly Restored MU Banner

  Which Living God's Love theme do you think it represents?

  Transforming Communities

  ---

• Re-establishment of the junior choir leading to increased numbers of 7-12-year olds at Sunday morning services and the enhancement the junior choir has brought to TGIS (Monthly All Age Worship service).

What Goals did you set where you saw less progress than you would have liked?

• Re- ordering the back of the church to create a welcome area and generally make the church more “accessible” to visitors and occasional worshipers. Little progress has been made because the issue has been dependent on decisions over re-ordering of the west end of the church which are still ongoing.
• . Establishing a pastoral group

Things seen about our local community

• There is generally a high level of satisfaction with the current pattern of services and with the worship and teaching provided therein but peopl would like more variety - particularly on Sunday evenings.
• The church has an urgent need to do more to attract younger people / young families to become regular church members
• The is a perceived need for the church to strengthen its pastoral work (pastoral team etc)

How have you begun to engage with these concerns / needs / issues?

• We have established a church “Facebook” page and significantly enhanced the church’s page in “A Church Near You”
• We have introduced “Songs of Praise” in place of choral evensong on 5th Sundays.
• We are actively looking for someone to lead and organise the pastoral group

Vision (for five years' time)

St Mary's Church exists to share the love and life of Christ with all, through our worship, teaching and life together.

Current Situation

From our Parish Statistics for Mission, we see that we are / have...

Holding pour own in terms of regular worshippers but need to reverse the decline in attendance by children and young people

Priorities (for the next five years)

• Attracting more children and young families
• Establishing a pastoral group and expanding the pastoral ministry
• Re -ordering the west end of the church to provide better kitchen and toilet facilities ti enhance the building both as a place of worship and to facilitate hosting a wider range of activities

Goals (for the next year)

• 50% uplift on the regular involvement of children and young families. by 2021
• Securing agreement to, raising finance for and commencing work on a project to enhance the kitchen and toilet facilities by end 2020.
• 25% uplift in regular membership of the senior choir by end 2020
• Pastoral Group established and working by end 2019
• Having a clear and agreed scope of work and securing finance from HLF for the restoration of the tower by end 2021