Welcome to this Newport Deanery planner for 2023-2030.
It should be viewed on a desktop or laptop with a landscape screen.
I hope benefices/PCCs will use this to remind themselves of options proposed in 2022, and some new plans,
and, if they wish, suggest their own option for the future. If the software does not work all the time, I apologise. Let me know.
Bishop Steven calls us to be
Christ-like, to be
Contemplative
(which can mean 'stop and think hard'). This webpage is just a tool to help thinking.
Compassionate - there are certainly churches with congregations and ministers in the benefice for which compassion is necessary, given the shortage of funds and the cost of
maintaining a substantial building.
Courageous - planning for the future is rarely comfortable. It means change, which can mean new, glorious life but there are times we wish for the past.
We have a worshiping congregation most Sundays of over 300 in some of 24 churches. 16 services are celebrated every Sunday in the deanery.
KEY TO SYMBOLS
| | Stipendiary priest |
| | Accredited preacher |
| | Retired or self-supporting priest |
| | Local lay minister/Reader |
| | Eucharist/communion services* |
| | Non-eucharistic services* |
* where there is a fraction like 12/8, it means there are 8 such planned Sunday services per 4-week month at the moment, and sufficient licenced people to provide 12 such services, so 12/8 is good but 4/8 would be a disaster!
TO USE
Click
on
View > Current Organisation and you will see what is going on in 2023. Let the cursor rest on parts of the map and there will be things to explore, over the text, and more data will appear.
- Click on a parish name in the table and
a graph of parish share shows requested (purple) and actually paid (red).
-
Put the cursor on the map and data about the parish will appear.
- Put the cursor on the black and red share bar and benefice payments will appear for the year you are looking at (in yellow)
- Put the cursor on the priest for more data about the benefice
- Check the staffing, workload or share boxes for more details
You can repaint the map. Click on one of the colour bars and then on a parish on the map and it will change
colour and reallocate that parish to a different benefice shown in changes to the table.
PLANNING
To make a plan which can be shared with other,
reset/start again button,
then
View > Current Organisation button, then click on
Make a plan > Planning Mode.
A Planning pop-up will appear with the list of activities. This already includes the possible retirement years of some of the clergy in the benefice.
If you now reallocate/paint a parish it will appear in the plan. It will ask 'When'
does the reallocation take place. You should click on one of the years next to the When?
If you make a mistake in the plan you can delete one of the activities by clicking on the X next to it.
You can
- Re-allocate a parish
- DELete a parish from the deanery
- Add a house for duty priest to a parish/benefice
- Add a 1.0=Full time or 0.5=Half time or... to a benefice
Each of these will ask When? for a year so that the plan can put together a timeline. The timeline can be seen by clicking on
View > Timeline.
You can move a stipendiary priest from one benefice to another (if you are, for example, combining benefices) by 'picking up' the coloured priest symbol and moving it to another coloured priest symbol. The
system will then ask 'When' and you should click a year when that would happen. Note that just because two benefices combine it doesn't automatically move the stipendiary priest(s).
SAVE A PLAN
You can save the plan to your computer (to your downloads folder) or share it with outhers by saving it to the web (where others can load it and see your thoughts). Equally you can load a plan from either your computer or the web.
VOTE
You can express your opinion on each plan, including your own plan, by givning it a thumbs up or not or 'OK', and add comments.
RURAL SUBSIDY
The deanery receives a rural subsidy because much of the deanery is rural and the proportion of churches to population is much higher so more has to be spent on buildings. Under
Cost settings you can
- see what happens if the subsidy is altered
- apply the subsidy only to the rural churches
MODELLING SHARE
Currently the share requested from the diocese is divided amongst the benefices according to the amount of Stipendiary Priest in the benfice. Then the benefice makes its own decision as to how that is split between the churches.
It has not changed since 2017, but populations have.
Click
Share allocation model > Model Share and you can bring in other factors in the share split, such as population, Sunday congregations, rural ministry, electoral roll etc., or if there is a mission plan in the church,
that too can be included. This modelling does not get saved
but if you have a preference you might like to suggest it to us. The proportions, in the pie chart, are variable by putting the cursor on a segment and using the up and down arrows.
Look - this is only a tool for thinking and sharing ideas - I hope you will find it useful. It has helped me to understand the organisation of the Deanery quickly, so I share it with you.
Best wishes
Adrian Low, Area Dean, rev.adrian.low@gmail.com, 07883717642
