Vision and Mission | St John & St Stephen's Church

OUR FIVE MISSION PRIORITIES

1. Community

To be more of a neighbourhood church.
For our fellowship to be more diverse.
To find ways to engage with the residents of the new apartments north of the Kennet.

2. School

To continue to strengthen our bond with the school and to support the leadership.

3. Families

To strengthen engagement with and nurture the children and young people connected to us, and their families.
To find the best ways to engage with emerging generations, so that living faith develops that is robust and sustainable amidst changing cultural patterns.

4. Pastoral care and spiritual growth

To give everyone in church a chance to go deeper with God through existing small groups, and emerging new ones.
To work towards a culture of nurture courses that can be available to those who are exploring faith at any level.

5. EcoChurch

To continue to pioneer and highlight green issues in our own congregational life, in our local area, and with our MPs nationally and
globally.

There are three important words that reflect our identity and our direction of travel

Caring

Caring for each other

We aspire to be a caring congregation and believe that without love we are nothing. We care through prayer and practical acts of kindness, especially when someone is in need, or feeling wounded by life and a bit broken.

Caring about our community

We seek to offer friendship and care for our community; individuals from our congregation are involved in social action projects locally such as Communicare, Contact Centre, Newtown Community Garden and as primary school governors.

Caring for creation

We are a Silver EcoChurch, working for the ongoing ‘greening’ of St John’s and in political activism for green issues. This reflects our belief that God’s creation is good and that we have a theological calling to be good stewards of what we have been given, striving for justice in how the world’s resources are shared.

Open

Open to ‘the Other’

Through attention and listening we aim to be open to one another and to the stranger, in the belief that we see Christ in our fellow human beings, however different we may look on the outside.

Open to the Spirit

We strive to be open to the Holy Spirit and to grow in depth through our Sunday worship and through exploring spiritual disciplines of silence, contemplative prayer, fellowship, study and accountability. Many of us benefit from being alongside a spiritual director or mentor and we offer the Diocesan PDP initiative to a number of people in the congregation.

Open to the neighbourhood

We are discerning ways to be more involved in mission, particularly with our neighbours in the new development across the Kennet, a part of our parish that has a less obvious connection to the church. We seek to be good news and to give and receive friendship.

Engaged

Engaged faith

We value Christian faith that is engaged with real issues, and Sunday talks where people are encouraged to ask questions and wrestle with God’s Word and with the complexities of following Jesus in the 21st century.

Engaged with culture

We value the integration of faith with daily life and the arts as a medium for exploring what’s valuable to all human beings, for example in our Lent Film Club and our ongoing connection with local artists that began with the Gas Tower Gallery art exhibition.

Engaged in society

We seek to be informed and equipped as Christians so we can be fully involved in society as ‘salt and light’ for the sake of the kingdom of God.