Strategic Leadership

CONTEXT – If you want to see change happen, it requires knowing your context. To know your context, you must be curious and keep listening to God, to other people, to those we serve. It’s a journey of constantly learning and adapting and being flexible.

I saw this in action when I visited 2 Growing Faith hubs in Salisbury and Guildford Diocese. Both fantastic projects, that worked well for their context: In Salisbury, the new Sherbourne youth council, that feeds ideas into the local town council, fits perfectly it’s local historic and geographic context of being a market town. Here, local church leaders facilitate the forum where local primary and secondary (Church of England) schools to gather. The shape of this project wouldn’t work where I live in London, but the guiding principles might.

In Guildford, the project linking the church and school in Basingstoke, fits with the local demographics of a young population, an enthusiastic priest, good church-school relationships, and parents who are eager to see their children perform in church. The project fits that context.

Back to my ‘How do I’ question – I realise that my Messy Church in southeast London operates in a very different context to a Messy Church in for example, Somerset. I am used to living in a diverse multicultural community and want my Messy Church team to reflect all the different people that come along, making sure everyone has the same opportunity to be involved. I’ve worked with Southwark Diocese, which has developed an anti-racist charter, so I’ve been thinking, reading, reflecting on this area for several years. However, this is not the case for all Messy Church leaders, particularly those in more rural settings. They have a very different context. I realise I’ve got to take people on a journey. What’s obvious for me, is not obvious to others, because their contexts are different. It’s a slow journey, but over time we have included new writers for Get Messy! magazine. February’s ‘Learning to live together’, was written by our first ethnically diverse team.

What we’re doing is starting to get noticed. I received an angry complaint from a Messy Church leader in a rural setting, that the national Messy Church team has gone ‘Woke’, as I had mentioned Black History Month and our ‘Learning to live together’ session in October’s newsletter. As requested, I removed them from future emails, and realised that not everyone will want to travel on this train. If you want to see change happen, then know your context and seek to understand other people’s contexts.