Strategic underachievement and flourishing mission

Majors Mike and Lisa Lloyd-Jones share the May update from the Structure Co-ordination and Design Group

IN January 2023, as part of the process and structural changes in the territory, we were appointed to create and lead a new Central, Southern and Channel Islands Division – a division stretching across six counties and three islands. We felt completely overwhelmed – how could such a spread of geographical distance, regional diversity and experience make any sense!

Working It Out

Early on, we began to think through and map out the journey ahead. Our driving force was that simple internal structural changes would release local mission to flourish and we set about prioritising relationships.

Our Divisional Design Group (DDG) made recommendations for how local mission could flourish and we worked through these. We substituted divisional roles such as mission officer, personnel officer, etc, with divisional area officers (DAOs) and grouped mission expressions into areas to tackle the challenging geography. By July we will have two full-time DAOs and four practitioner DAOs, who are corps officers taking on this additional appointment. We will benefit from the practitioners’ current local mission experience, providing validity and insight for working alongside other mission expressions, as well as the practitioners gaining diversity and additional capability.

Localising DAOs, we can serve, support, resource and release local mission to flourish more easily. A closer working relationship allows for better communication and mutual accountability between headquarters and mission expressions and, most importantly, provides better insight into the challenges people face locally along with the opportunities being presented. Divisional leaders can’t be everywhere at once, so hands-on support and encouragement is vital. Additionally, ecumenical and safeguarding leads and candidates officers will be localised to share the load across the division.

Our divisional operations managers (DOMs) have begun picking up administrative tasks – ie property, finance and HR – and become the voice for our local mission expressions. This has relieved the burden from DAOs so they can focus on people and mission, not being bogged down in administration – a key goal for the structural change process. Our admin support team and DOMs continually show great professionalism and commitment.

Naturally, some of our corps are concerned about the capacity of practitioners, but we will work to ensure mission continues to flourish. We will learn and improve as we move ahead.

Strategic Underachieving

We are currently understaffed as we released an area officer to a division that needed support sooner and encouraged another to take a sabbatical ahead of the General Farewell. It was important for them to be released and we planned for this in our programme of ‘strategic underachieving’.

It was vital for us to prioritise tasks quickly, with permission to say ‘no’ or ‘we’ll get to that later’, recognising that this will help us flourish later on. We need to prioritise areas of work that are essential to ongoing support to mission expressions and officers in the next few months.

Not everything has been plain-sailing. There have been challenges as partners have struggled to flex processes and structures to support a large division, and we haven’t always known who to turn to or where to find information. Doubling the size of the division has brought practical challenges such as increasing the workload of meetings, inevitably slowing down taskcompletion. Our DDG reminded us to focus on simplicity and this has helped us tackle issues. We’re in the second iteration of our Divisional Operations Board, creating a simplified, accessible process that serves local mission delivery. Recently, a corps project needed a quick decision and sign-off; our newer processes have allowed us to meet that need promptly, moving that project closer to flourishing. We’re learning every day how to do things better!

COMMUNICATION IS KEY!

We have invested considerable time visiting all our spiritual leaders – only a handful of visits remain. Conversations have been pastoral for those bewildered by change, others brought challenge, insight, assurance and further drove development, refining and shaping ideas and plans.

Business days and retreats have allowed for time with officers and we have led meetings and worship in corps, keeping people informed of progress. We regularly share short update and reflection videos for mission expressions to use, and respond to comments, questions and concerns on our frequently updated divisional Facebook page. Consequently, we’ve had unanticipated levels of support and recognition that this is a ‘work in progress’ and continuous improvement is the key.

Our journey is complex, messy and occasionally strained, but we’re working hard at fulfilling the challenge of support, oversight and release with a deep sense of purpose as we strive to honour God.

Everything we do is covered by prayer – it’s challenging when we have to prayerfully consider the viability of mission expressions, but we’re equally prayerful and keep our eyes open for opportunities to pioneer and refresh local mission. Our divisional prayer co-ordinators bring intentionality to our prayer and remind us that, overall, this is about God’s work and our work is best when we are a praying people.