The project at a glance

The aims are to ...

  1. Build on the strengths of rural community life.
  2. Develop sustainable patterns of mission and ministry within rural communities.
  3. Develop new forms of ministry in rural communities.
  4. Strengthen the partnership of the laity with clergy.
  5. Build new structures to support emerging ministries.
  6. Equip a new generation of rural ministry leaders who understand new ways decisions can be made in the local scene.
  7. Pray for a renewal and invigoration of faith and faithfulness in rural communities.
  8. Build health giving rural congregations who make a powerful contribution into the life of their local community.

The gift of time and leadership

The project gives parishes both time and a skilled mentor/ coach (the project Priest) to work through a very significant period of refocusing. The challenge will be to find the right balance between resourcing established patterns of pastoral ministry and investing in developing ministries for the future.
Pastoral and liturgical leadership

While the project Priest will initially have oversight of pastoral and liturgical ministries, the primary emphasis will be the equipping of local Christians to take responsibility. God may well bring from the community a person for ordination as an honorary priest within the parish. Certainly the Anglican tradition of lay reading of morning and evening prayer will be resourced by the project Priest.

The longer term goal will be to establish the honorary priest as the local Pastoral Priest who would assume oversight of pastoral and liturgical ministries working with the project team.

The gift of time

An ARC Development Project will have three stages. The life of a local project may be up to five years.

  1. Establishment Stage in which the partners carefully negotiate the aims of a particular project. This stage will conclude with the appointment of a Project Priest.
  2. A three year period of action and review led by the project priest, a local project team and the Parish Council. This period will be reviewed at the end of the second year for fine tuning in the third year.
  3. A possible extension of the project by two years in order to consolidate the new patterns within the parish.