Support for local church leaders
Flourishing Together in Church Leadership is for everyone who exercises a leadership role in the local church, whatever it may be.
It is our prayer that this resource will encourage and support you with examples of good practice in shared leadership, so that you can flourish within your role, and we can together work in a vibrant, Christ-like church for the sake of God’s world. This resource sits alongside Flourishing in Ministry, a booklet for clergy and licensed lay ministers, published in 2018.
Flourishing Together is primarily written for churchwardens, PCC members, deanery lay chairs and others in recognised leadership roles in their churches. It will also, we hope, be a useful resource for those in other church leadership roles and those considering taking up a leadership role in their local church.
The booklet offers resources and suggestions for good practice in sharing leadership with ordained colleagues and guidance as to what parishes can reasonably expect of their clergy and lay ministers.
The links below take you to the resources recommended in Flourishing Together.
If you have suggestions of additional resources which could be useful to others, please let us know.
Request a printed edition of the booklet (A5, 40pp)
Websites referenced in Flourishing Together
Using the book with your leadership team
To discuss how you might use this new resource within your parish, benefice or deanery, contact Gill Lovell (CMD Adviser) or email flourish@oxford.anglican.org.
Sharing good practice
Contact us if you have resources to share or want to recommend practices that might be useful to others in church leadership teams.
Salt in a Secular Society
This short book, written by one of our LLMs, Dr Jacki Thomas, might be a useful further resource. The Revd Tina Molyneux, Head of Discipleship and Social Justice, says,
"It was a great read, easy to follow and helpful. I really enjoyed it and will recommend to others. Chapter 5 was particularly pertinent to the Everyday Faith/Setting God’s People Free thinking that I’m working on."
The Big Conversation
The Church of England launched a Big Conversation in 2020 to address clergy care and wellbeing. Flourishing Together in Church Leadership will help you to contribute to that conversation, as well as addressing the care and wellbeing of lay leaders in our parishes.