Deanery Synod Autumn 2022
- Details
- Published: Thursday, 24 November 2022 11:15
The Autumn 2022 meeting of the Lyndhurst Deanery Synod was held in St Wins, Totton, on Wednesday October 5.
Apart from the general business of the Deanery, there were two presentations, one on the ‘Benefice of the Future’ by Canon Gary Phillbrick, and the other describing the re-birth of St Wins in Totton, by its Rector, the Rev’d Ali Hill. Both were interesting and encouraging.
Gary’s presentation centered on the experience in the Avon Valley of moving from a Benefice of seven separate parish churches to a single parish Benefice. It is especially relevant to us, as our PCC has recently been asked to re-consider the issue of a ‘single parish Benefice’. I will pass on the PowerPoint slides of the presentation to anyone interested, together with a more detailed description of the talk. Please ask me direcrtly, or email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. However, I do include here a link to a Handbook that Avon Churches developed, which may be of real value to us. It is https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6007152f9b0ea11b37a3a72e/t/61374807f6f13b0e8710357e/1631012874814/AVC+PCC+Handbook-Ed+GP-Jy21-Final.pdf See page 19 for Communications!
Ali’s presentation gave an insight into how our Anglican Church is planning to deal with the decline in urban Church attendances. A significant amount of money has been made available over a five year period to carry out the renovations. The building itself has been entirely revamped (it was visually a rather horrid concrete post war building, but now is inviting, light and equipped for sound and light presentations). Real progress is being made towards goals of increased attendances. Perhaps less relevant to our specific interests than the presentation of Gary Phillbrick, but nonetheless very interesting.
In the general business of the Synod there was an interesting reference to interaction with the Diocese. The minutes record:- ‘the Synod Standing Committee met with Colin Harbidge to talk about what’s going on in the Diocese and to ask for comments and feedback. There is a change in culture – more listening from the Diocese. Colin had talked about pressures and challenges and also wanted to listen to us.: We told him about the challenge of paying CMF and that we want to invest in the parishes e.g., in C & F workers. We also talked of future challenges – lots of building issues and asked what the diocesan strategy is about these.’
Peter J Melhuish
Deanery Synod Rep, Beaulieu PCC