Agenda Volume 2 - Methodist Conference

35. Larger than Circuit
different experiences. The review
offered some initial reflections and
suggested that account needed to be
taken of the following:
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circuits vary enormously in size,
access to resources, staffing
and ways of working;
this would make greater
demands on circuit leadership
and the Connexional Team;
the relationship with each other
as churches and circuits in
connexion is a valuable part of
our ecclesiology;
the work currently undertaken
by District Policy Committees
or their equivalents enables us
to ‘bear one another’s burdens’
and ‘watch over one another
in love’;
the district is connexionally
enabling in matters such as
candidating and probation;
circuits alone could too
easily revert to hierarchical
models of leadership,
especially in the exercise of
the Superintendent’s role,
and would have no easy
external mechanism for
resolving conflicts of interest or
competition for resources;
districts offer effective
resource sharing on a human
scale built on relationships and
dialogue;
the office of District Chair
offers support, challenge
and encouragement to
Superintendents, ensuring they
do not stand alone;
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the Chairs’ stationing role (with
lay stationing representatives)
on behalf of the Conference
offers proper oversight and
connexional deployment of
the important resource of the
ordained amongst us.
73. It was concluded that “some
elements of ‘beyond circuit’ could
be delivered on an appropriate
regional basis covering a large area.
This would offer functional, task
orientated aspects of our work. It
would be appropriate for those tasks
alone but not for the relationshipbased
togetherness we call
connexion.”
74. This approach was considered in
detail by the working group that has
been exploring the closer working
together of the four Yorkshire
districts. They produced a helpful
table that identified the tasks of a
district and considered where, in
their experience, they would be best
undertaken. The current working
party is grateful to have been
able to draw upon this table as an
example of how these questions
can be addressed, and a version of
it appears in Figure 1 in Appendix 4
below. In undertaking this piece of
work, the question of what should
happen ‘beyond circuit’ was asked
by the Yorkshire group and the report
concludes, “there is no one size at
which everything ‘between’ circuits
and connexion functions optimally
... some activities would be better
co-ordinated over the wider area
Conference Agenda 2013
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