Agenda Volume 3 - Methodist Conference

57. The Fruitful Field Project
since the creation of Training and Development Officers in 1996. We also
acknowledged the ethos of connexionalism which undergirds the provision of
such officers, funded from connexional resources and distributed with a degree
of parity across the Connexion. We also acknowledged a crucial role for a
dispersed staff function in supporting a desire to enable greater learning and
development in Circuits and local communities.
113.14 We considered maintaining the status quo, acknowledging that doing so would
see the District Development Enabler and Participation Project Manager posts
cease at the end of the 2012/2013 connexional year. We believed that wider
change should be considered in order not to lose an emphasis on development,
change and growth within our connexional learning resources. We also believed
that wider change was required in order to seek to bring together our tutors and
our dispersed staff within one network. Maintaining the status quo would risk
maintaining an existing divide between ‘tutors’ and ‘trainers’.
113.15 We considered alternative patterns of coordination. We acknowledged that there
would always be a tension between connexional coordination and more local
management patterns. We believed that grouping dispersed staff in regional
teams, while ensuring that those teams were also part of a connexional
network alongside tutorial staff, would sustain the links with local needs
while also enabling involvement in the development and implementation of
connexional pathways and policies. We emphasised the importance of drawing
on the experience of good and weak coordinating practice over recent years.
Places
113.16 We should seek to establish a single connexional hub on one site.
Why?
113.17 Connexional: We envisage a hub which is focused on the priorities of the
Church – focused on equipping the Church, equipping the Methodist movement,
and equipping God’s people. We envisage a hub which is configured to equip,
support and challenge Circuits in their work of discipleship and mission. We
envisage a hub which is responsive and accountable to the Conference – and
whose well-being is also the responsibility of the Conference. We envisage
a hub of which the Methodist people can be proud – and a hub, at the heart
of a network of learning, which can worthily appeal to the generosity of the
Methodist people for support. We acknowledge that such a hub will play a new
684 Conference Agenda 2012