The Joy in Enough team met for a working weekend recently. John Payne tells us what was on the agenda:
Ten members of the Joy in Enough (JiE) Enabling Group met for a weekend away, from 20-22nd July, at the beautiful guest house near Witney, Oxfordshire run by the Community of St Clare. The task was to plan the future focus and next actions of the Programme.
Among others, some key achievements of the weekend were the creation of a clear Theory of Change for the programme, with agreement on the key problem we were trying to solve: that within the Church there is no clear vision currently of a sustainable economy and no widespread recognition that the Church has a unique vision to offer in this area.
The group clarified that the core audience for the Programme was the Church, including leaders (institutional and congregational, todays and tomorrows), congregations, individual Christians, and those churches which can or want to prefigure the kingdom economy by using their land and buildings for the good of the local and wider community.
The work continues on the outputs for the programme around the following action areas:
- Cafe conversations – the Plenty! programme
- A declaration for church leaders to sign
- Stories and case studies
- Partner networks
- coaching and mentoring
- theological formation
- political initiatives
Next steps were agreed for the café conversation modules, programme budgets and resources, the use of volunteers and key documents for church leaders. Time was also created to talk through the importance of a people ‘movement’ in the Programme – focusing on praying, subscribing to the Programme, connecting together for encouragement, and action at personal, parochial, and political levels.
The weekend was an intense one – on Saturday evening discussion went on till 9pm! But there was sufficient time for worship and prayer in the beautiful Community chapel, and all came away with new energy and motivation.
Joy in Enough 