On Monday, 8 June, over 150 clergy came together for the annual gathering of stipendiary and self-supporting licensed clergy. The day was focused on missional opportunities, particularly engaging with children and young people.
After opening worship led by the Go Team, Bishop Michael reflected on the past year, sharing the annual review for 2025 which features inspiring stories from around our diocese, and some of the statistics that help us understand how well we are doing as we seek to be God’s people, living and telling the story of Jesus.
Bishop Michael said “It was inspiring to take part in this year’s clergy day. It was great to recognise all that’s being achieved around our diocese as we seek for God to grow our churches and transform our communities. Our speakers were first class and it was brilliant to hear from them. What encouraged me most were the findings they shared about young people’s openness to faith and to learning more about the Bible. We are presented with a time of opportunity. Our challenge is how to grasp the possibilities that are before us."
Clergy then heard from Dr Rhiannon McAleer, Director of Research and Impact for the Bible Society and Laura Hancock, National Ministries Director for Youth for Christ.
Dr Rhiannon shared some findings on the spiritual openness of Gen Z and Gen Alpha (current 14 to 29 year olds and 2 to 13 year olds respectively), including that in the last five years, the number of young people who consider themselves a following of Jesus, pray, and pray on a daily basis have increased by 12 percentage points.
Laura, who is responsible for overseeing Youth for Christ’s outreach and evangelism teams, talked about how we recognise the opportunities to engage with Gen Z and Gen Alpha across Bath and Wells that we already have.
In the afternoon session,clergy heard from Jonathan Philpott and Richard Priestley from the diocesan mission team who talked about resourcing mission in the local church, inviting clergy to consider what is required to enable our parishes/benefices and deaneries to grow so that they are increasingly missionally thriving and financially sustainable so we are better able to live and tell the story of Jesus in our communities. They also shared the latest thinking on the Missional Framework tool that will be shared across the diocese later in the year, and funding that will be coming available to support missional projects.
Bishop Fiona shared her reflections as she brought the day to a close. She said, “There were so many different threads that have come out of today but I think what they have all said is, ‘the gospel still works.’ And Jesus Christ is still in the business of calling people to know Him and to be transformed by Him and the Holy Spirit.”
“I’ve also heard that we need to take the young people that we have seriously. They are amazing mission partners to their own generation. They are not the church of the future, they are ambassadors to us from the future, telling us how we need to be preparing and changing now for when they are in the leadership positions we are in.”
“We need to be preparing now for the people who are coming to us in the near future. We need to be ready so that when young people come we are ready for them. Let me offer you an analogy. One parish I once knew taught many people in their congregation to sign, so there would be someone signing throughout the service. When someone commented, ‘I didn’t know we had lots of deaf people in our congregation’ the leader smiled and said, ‘We don’t, but we want them to know when they come that we were expecting them.’”