On Saturday 25 November nearly 40 parishioners of All Saints Oakham met to start the process of discerning what our hopes are and our vision for the direction of our church life in the future under the leadership of a new Team Rector. The afternoon was led by Revd David Newman, Warden of Launde Abbey.

We began by considering our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, by splitting into four groups, each considering one of those aspects and reporting back afterwards.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Priorities for the Future

We then went on to consider what our priorities are for the next 5 years – groups were invited to write what they felt were important priorities on a Post-it note, which were then grouped together as appropriate:

Some themes to emerge were:

• Work with young families
• Development of lay leadership & ministry and encouragement of volunteers
• Developing a learning community, including preaching and small groups
• Developing pastoral care
• Sustaining our diverse nature
• Developing the use of technology and social media
• Ensuring our financial stability
• Outreach to children, families, the town, schools and the deanery

Our New Team Rector

We then considered what qualities we would like to see in our new Team Rector, and we were encouraged to appreciate that no one person could be good at all of these things. Everyone was asked to identify their top three quailities as listed below, with the results as shown:

Where do we go from here?

The discussion from the day will feed into the Parish Profile which the Churchwardens and PCC will be producing, together with other views that are made known. If you would like to contribute to the discussion with any comments on the day or other thoughts you can do so by adding a comment to this page.