Discipleship and the people called Methodists - BEH District

people. Some of the assessment goes to resource the ministry of districts, which
in recent years have been given greater roles and responsibilities in Methodism,
and increased resources to undertake them. Some of the assessment goes
to resource connexional structures such as training colleges and the annual
Conference. Some of the assessment resources the work of the Connexional
Team, a group of people employed or appointed to provide services and resources
on behalf of the whole connexion.
The Connexional Team can be understood as the servant of the whole
connexion, doing some of the work that a large organisation with more than
three quarters of a million people passing through its doors each week, over a
quarter of a million members, about ten thousand local preachers, two thousand
active ministers, several hundred lay employees in circuits, districts and abroad
as mission partners, and around five thousand seven hundred church properties
requires. There are some things that the Connexional Team can and must do, in
the name and for the sake of the whole connexion. These are often things where
it would be unreasonable or impossible to expect every church or circuit, or even
district or ‘region’ to provide their own source of expertise or input.
But the Connexional Team is also required to help lead the Connexion, by
developing strategies through which the Connexion can fulfil its mission, suggesting
alternative ways of achieving things, preparing resources for the whole Church, not
least its governance bodies, taking its part, alongside others in the connexional
responsibility of being a Methodism fit for God’s purposes today.
Like what? The list below gives a flavour of the kind of things the connexion
instructs or invites the Connexional Team to undertake, along with others, on its
behalf.
Website, helpdesk, finance, budgeting, pensions, world Church partnerships,
grants and property matters, a press and publicity service, expertise in
safeguarding, personnel, well-being and constitutional matters, overseeing
the processes for candidating for ministry, speaking for the whole Church,
for example in the public square, to Government and to ecumenical partners;
developing thinking on what authorised ministries are needed and how they
should be equipped; undertaking limited term projects to explore intensively
issues of key significance to the Church’s mission, and much more…