The United Reformed Church has been exploring game-changing new ways with mission, and how to fund them. Mike Hart of the URC’s North Western Synod, Nneoma Chima, Clerk of Thames North Synod, and Jamie Kissack, Moderator of Yorkshire Synod, tell Reform what’s new

Mike Hart
I’m the Transformation Director for North Western Synod. I support local churches in change, particularly around the use of resources, buildings and governance.

Where did that job come from?
We started a number of projects, including our anti-poverty strategy, where the synod felt they needed dedicated resources. But it also comes out of an experience, post Covid, where churches closed quite suddenly and then said, ‘All this really good community work goes on in our building. Can you do something about it?’ And it was too late. So it is about trying to get upstream of churches with strong community activities who are struggling to manage the responsibilities, and looking at how we can organise things differently.

It comes out of seven years of reinvesting proceeds of the sale of buildings, not simply in building improvement but in employing staff, both in the synod and in local churches to facilitate what needs to be done…

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This is an extract from an article published in the September 2024 edition of Reform