Dear friends
January marks the beginning of our Diocesan Year of Engagement. Let me explain, in case this conjures up images of medieval betrothals with year-long festivities.
Our core values as the Diocese of Hereford are prayerfulness, Christ-likeness, and engagement. In 2023, our Year of Prayer, we explored how to deepen our prayerfulness. In 2024, our Year of Faith, we were given opportunities through teaching events and local gatherings to deepen our confidence in the Bible and our Christian faith and challenge ourselves to tell our own story of faith.
Now, in 2025, we hope and pray that the foundations of those two years will come together in a Year of Engagement, during which we consciously pray for and take opportunities to reach out and engage in mission in our parishes.
For some, the idea of missional work is frankly terrifying. For others, it seems to be an arrogant and outdated way of going about things. It can conjure up images of Victorians in pith helmets, or people standing on street corners with enormous black Bibles haranguing passers-by or knocking on doors asking people if they’ve been “washed in the blood of the Lamb?”
Let me reassure you that none of those is what we mean by our Year of Engagement. Our prayer is simply that each parish in the diocese will take time during 2025 prayerfully to reflect on the needs of the community around them and on the gospel and work out how the needs of one and the joy of the other could meet – and then to begin to implement that mission. We’ll be using the Church of England’s Five Marks of Mission as the framework for Engagement in our parishes:
- To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To transform unjust structures of society
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth
Look for announcements in eNews and other communications about Year of Engagement events, and sign up or visit our web page.
Another recent Church of England vision statement challenged us all to be a simpler, humbler, and bolder church. Our Year of Engagement gives us the collective opportunity to be bolder in our sharing of Jesus Christ and the transformation of lives and communities that comes when His Good News is shared.
AD Fiona