FEATURE STORY
FROM BURNED OUT TO FIRED UP FOR MISSION Phil Marsh, mission and ministry development officer in Ely diocese, shares his experiences of the Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) journey and the transformation it can bring. SOMETHING DIFFERENT
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first got involved with PMC 10 years ago, when Nigel Rooms (Partnership for Missional Church leader at CMS) introduced it to Southwell and Nottingham diocese. Our church was invited to be part of the very first cluster. I’ve been involved since then as a church leader and as a facilitator, and leading the team working with a cluster of churches in Ely diocese.
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I was looking for something different. I was burned out by ministry, by being the service provider, the events manager, the coordinator. Despite having a really collaborative ministry and wanting to raise up a team of lay folk, I just found it like pushing water uphill. And I was figuring there had to be a different way of helping congregations to engage in ministry. PMC offered a framework that would enable me to lead the congregation in the exploration of rethinking their missional culture without having to put the frame in place as well. It married up with where I was in my thinking and how I was seeking to lead. This isn’t an off-the-shelf programme in a book, this is about building a community of mission-mindedness.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT WILL LOOK LIKE” Everybody wanted to know what it was going to look like in five years’
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time. And all the time I was saying, “Well, I don’t really know. Because this is about what God is doing and how God is leading us.” Three things helped me through that. One was the PMC people leading us as a group of spiritual leaders. They invested in us both at the cluster weekends and in between – checking in and reflecting with us on what was going on. That relational element was key. The second was the spiritual practices of PMC. They were steadying and centring. They don’t just help us organise the congregation to do reflective and discerning work, they’re also personal spiritual practices. And the third is the impact I saw on individuals within the congregation. I saw people become much more outward looking. I saw their confidence build and grow. I saw formation happening in members of the congregation far more than after any sermon I had ever preached or any other course or activity we had undertaken. It wasn’t all done and dusted, but I realised they would be
