Parish of Bedford, St Andrew
« Mission Action Plan »

We set up a monthly community coffee morning in our foyer. It has grown and even raised money for local charities.
We established a team of welcomers at our Sunday services and regular teas for newcomers.
We appointed a new Youth and Children’s worker and this has helped to consolidate our work in this area.
We raised a team to assist with the Salvation Army night shelter.
We saw one person begin readership training and another has become an ordinand.

We did not move forward as quickly as we had hoped in respect of our environmental policy.

We welcome everyone to a community that lives out God’s love in Christ through mutual support.

We worship God reverently and joyfully.
We seek justice, freedom, and social well-being for all God’s world.

Enhancing the environment.
We will work to reduce our overall carbon footprint and enhance the habitat within our church grounds.
We will investigate the possibility of installing solar panels on the Church / Centre roofs.

We will work to qualify for a bronze Ecochurch award by September 2020 and a silver award by September 2022.

Enlarging our youth provision.
We will enlarge our youth provision by actively seeking ideas from our young people and their parents.
We will endeavour to involve parents in the planning and delivery of our youth work.

We will set up a bi-monthly series of social events for the youth, beginning in September 2019 and leading to a weekend away in September 2020.

Encouraging faith in others.
We will create more opportunities for learning and market them more proactively.
We will consider whether a small team of volunteers could be commissioned to go and assist a nearby parish for a 3-6 month period under a scheme being devised by the Diocesan Flourishing Churches Team.

We will formulate and deliver a cycle of five or six short courses for learning beginning in the first year of this MAP, beginning in September 2019.

We will experiment further with cafe church as an extension of our Coffee and Company initiative.

We will engage with the Diocesan “Growing Younger” initiative with a focus on those in their 20s and 30s.

Enriching our own discipleship and friendship (within St Andrew’s congregation)
We will seek ways to get to know each other better and deepen our own faith.

Twice a year will will encourage members to socialise and deepen friendships via potluck meals and safari suppers, namely at St Andrew’s tide and Eastertide.

We will endeavour to set up a formal rota for transport to the main 10.00am Sunday Service to launch at Advent 2019.

We will formulate a plan for a Big Church Weekend away in 2021 for consideration by the PCC. This will be presented to the PCC in March 2020.

Openly engage with our local community.
We will seek to create social opportunities to address loneliness.
We will look for opportunities to have a presence at local events (River Festival, school fetes, etc) – building on what our Fairtrade team already does.

We will research opportunities to participate in and/or assist with the delivery of a local community event in 2020.

We will restructure our summer fete to increase involvement and attendance from our local community.

We will pan events to celebrate the centenary of the Church Building (2021-2022) which intentionally engage our local community.