Diocesan Synod met on Saturday 15 March at St Andrew's Church, Paddock Wood.
During his Presidential Address, Bishop Jonathan spoke about the enthusiastic way people have been responding to the refreshed Called Together vision at the various deanery synods he has been visiting over the last few months to raise awareness of the strategic plan.
He then invited Matthew Girt, Diocesan Secretary, to update Synod on the exciting news that the diocese is to be awarded £11 million to help support mission and ministry on the ground in parishes, as expressed in the vision and strategy. Read more
Bishop Jonathan noted that not every diocese that had applied had been successful, and so the award that Rochester Diocese had received was a sign of the strong confidence of the national church in the plan:
"The success of our bid is a huge vote of confidence in the strategy we have put together and a real endorsement of what was recognised to be a very carefully crafted and clearly evidence-based approach to growing the Church’s mission and ministry in this Diocese."
As part of his Address, Bishop Jonathan also took the opportunity to express concern about the outcome of the national church's Diocesan Finance Review, which formed part of the discussions at General Synod in February.
The Review was set up as a result of the major financial difficulties of many dioceses - around three-quarters of which are currently facing significant and unsustainable annual deficits.
Read Bishop Jonathan's address in full below.
Presidential Address to Rochester Diocesan Synod
15 March 2025
It has been a great pleasure for me to visit eleven of our Deanery Synods over the last few weeks to talk about the Diocesan Vision and Strategy which this Synod unanimously endorsed at our meeting on 7 December.
There are seven more Deanery Synods that I will be attending over the next few weeks.
Those of you who have been present will know that I have opened my presentation by expressing huge thanks to everyone, both clergy and lay, for all that they are doing to support the mission and ministry of our churches, not least during the last few very challenging years.
I have also taken the opportunity to say sorry for the failures of the Church of England nationally, especially in the area of safeguarding, recognising how difficult and demoralising this has been for those who have been working so hard in our parishes.
We will be returning to this subject in a separate item shortly.
More positively, I have gone on to speak about the very encouraging increase in attendance that many of our churches experienced over the Christmas season, and my belief that this is indicative of the way in which many people, not least in the younger generation, are beginning to look for spiritual answers to many of the challenges that we are facing in today’s world.
It has been such an encouragement – and indeed a real joy – to see how enthusiastically people across the Diocese have responded to the vision and how keen they are to engage with the strategy, building on the groundwork that has been laid by those who have worked so hard to put things together, leading up to the submission of our bid to the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board.
I am delighted now to invite Matthew to join me to give us the latest news about the progress of the bid. Read more about the Diocese's successful bid to the national church
This is fantastic news and represents a wonderful achievement on the part of everyone concerned – our huge thanks and congratulations must go to all those who have worked so hard to put things together, mentioning especially, Claire Boxall, to whom we bid farewell at our last Synod, Vanessa Curtis, the Called to Grow Project Manager, Allie Kerr and of course Matthew himself.
There are many others besides who have been involved, but these individuals deserve a very special thank you, for the blood, sweat and tears they have poured into this! I would invite Synod to join with me in expressing our thanks to them now in the traditional manner [applause followed].
Matthew will give some more details and outline next steps later in our agenda, but this means that we can proceed full ahead with putting in place the main elements of our strategy knowing that we have the resources we need to undertake the work that God has called us to do.
Please understand that this was by no means a foregone conclusion. Other dioceses have not received everything they asked for and some have been asked to go back and do more work on elements of their bid before they are reconsidered.
The success of our bid is a huge vote of confidence in the strategy we have put together and a real endorsement of what was recognised to be a very carefully crafted and clearly evidence-based approach to growing the Church’s mission and ministry in this Diocese.
The success of the bid means that we can now begin to implement all the different elements of our vision, which is summarized in these words:
Seeking first the kingdom of God, we are called together by God
to change, serve and grow with compassion, courage and creativity.
As you will remember, our primary objective is to grow missional churches with missional leaders and missional disciples. This is about joining in with the mission of God to the world – the God who so loved the world that he sent his only Son, so that whoever believes in him might have eternal life.
We are a people who are called and then sent out by God to bring the light and life of Christ to the people of the world. That is our primary calling as the Church of Jesus Christ.
Within that primary objective, you may also remember that we have committed to put growing safe and healthy culture at the centre of everything we do.
In response partly to the safeguarding scandals of recent months and years, we are making this the lens through which we must look at and plan all of our other activities.
We must do all we can to make our churches and other organisations safe and healthy places for all, and the Programme Board which will be overseeing the different workstreams within the strategy will have that as a constant reminder on the agenda of all its meetings.
Those workstreams, as outlined in the presentation to this and the other synods, are as follows:
- Missional Leadership Development
- Children and Young People
- Missionally healthy churches
- Revitalising fragile churches
It has been great to see how positively people have responded to these themes at our meeting over the last few weeks.
People have seen how they are both relevant and vital for the life of our parishes and other church communities, and also how they can provide a flexible framework and toolkit that can be explored and applied in different contexts, from metropolitan Bromley and Bexley, through the market towns and villages of Tonbridge and in the post-industrial context of the Medway Towns and the Archdeaconry of Rochester.
Today we have announced the success of the bid, and already a great deal of work has been going on behind the scenes to enable us to take things forward.
On Monday and Tuesday this week, we will be meeting with the Area Deans and also with the Bishop’s Advisers for Children and Young People, for women’s ministry, for racial justice, for disability issues and for community engagement, to explore how we can all play our part in shaping the future of our Diocese through the implementation of our shared vision and strategy.
This is about working together because we are called together by God to do this work.
Mention of racial justice leads me also to flag up some other good news, about which we will hear more in a few moments, and that concerns the funding we have attracted from the national church to develop our work on racial justice issues.
This is really exciting news in its own right, but I will leave it to others to say more shortly.
I am also delighted that we have been able to welcome several new colleagues - including Andrew Dunlop, Director of Mission and Ministry Develop, and Sandra McCalla and Nick Cornell into their new roles as Archdeacons.
Moving onto other issues, I would like to highlight a very significant topic that was discussed at General Synod, but which perhaps did not attract the same level of attention as those of safeguarding or the rules governing the workings of the Crown Nominations Commission.
This concerns in the first instance, the so-called Diocesan Finance Review, which was set up as a result of the major financial difficulties of many dioceses, around three quarters of which are currently facing significant and unsustainable annual deficits.
The statistics are complicated and the formulae on which the Review’s recommendations are based are difficult to discern, but the essence of what is being proposed is firstly that the Church Commissioners will make available short-term tapering funding to help dioceses address their immediate financial problems, and secondly that there will be a new round of funding to be made available through the SMMIB bidding process.
It is a matter of real concern to me, and to a good many of my colleagues in other dioceses, that this proposal does not meet the real ongoing needs of the dioceses to support ministry and mission in their parishes, because it is not sufficient in either quantity or longevity.
At the same time, the renewed and strengthened emphasis on SMMIB and the Diocesan Investment Programme, with resources going only to special projects approved by the Board, further exacerbates the sense of control by the centre.
That may have been a necessary adjustment at the time when the Strategic Development Fund was first set up, to reduce what was referred to as “subsidising decline” and to encourage a focus on promoting growth, but many of us feel that dioceses themselves are now much better placed and equipped to work out how and where the money would best be spent for the sake of mission locally.
It was therefore deeply regrettable that the debate on what became known as “the Hereford motion” on the redistribution of resources from the Church Commissioners directly to the dioceses, especially for the support of stipends and parochial ministry was bumped off the agenda until July because other business ran over.
Synod, this is actually a huge issue concerning the future of the Church of England.
It is to do with the concentration of assets with the Church Commissioners since dioceses agreed to take over future pension liabilities from the Commissioners at the start of 1998.
Everyone accepts that the Commissioners are brilliant at investing money and generating excellent returns. But the reality is that the resources they now hold represent a significant net transfer not only of assets but also of financial control from the dioceses to the national church, something which has become more and more evident over the last ten or so years.
We are now awaiting final news on how the Diocesan Finance Review will affect the Diocese of Rochester, and we are hopeful that this will be beneficial in the short term.
But this will not address the longer-term question of the viability of diocesan finances in many parts of the country, and most crucially on the ability of dioceses to maintain the number of stipendiary clergy in parochial ministry, something to which we are deeply committed in the Diocese of Rochester.
Unless this issue is addressed, whether through the Hereford motion at the July General Synod or in some other way, then the parochial system and the Church of England’s commitment to be present and ministering in every community will be under increasingly severe strain.
Synod, there are many challenges facing the Church of England at the moment, including some well-known ones that I have not named in this address! The biggest challenge of all is how to motivate and equip the people of our churches to bring the good news of Christ to every single person in this land and so to help grow the kingdom of God across this nation and in the wider world.
That is precisely what we are seeking to do through our vision and strategy, which is rooted in the life of our parish churches and other local expressions of church, such as our vibrant and creative chaplaincy ministries in a whole host of contexts.
I am so thrilled to have the privilege of serving as your Bishop and to be part of a diocese that is committed to supporting and growing the local church as the means by which God wants to bring hope to the people of our nation.
Thank you so much for your partnership in that adventure, as we move forward together by God’s grace to fulfil the shared vision that God has given to us:
Seeking first the kingdom of God, we are called together by God
to change, serve and grow with compassion, courage and creativity.
Thank you, Synod.
The Rt Revd Dr Jonathan Gibbs
Bishop of Rochester