Church of England Birmingham is committed to having a Community Regeneration team because we believe that Christians are called to play their part in responding to issues of poverty and working with others to transform the communities around us. We believe that this is integral to God’s mission and at the heart of the CofE Birmingham vision.
The purpose of the Community Regeneration department and its partner charity, Thrive Together Birmingham, is to encourage and support Christians and churches to participate in activities that help to transform the lives of people living in their local neighbourhoods and particularly to support Christian activity that alleviates poverty and disadvantage.
The Community Regeneration team’s work is inspired and shaped by the Anglican Church’s Five Marks of Mission:
- To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
Our mission statement reflects this comprehensive understanding of God’s mission: “To enable the Church to be a pro-active and effective partner in building cohesive communities and flourishing neighbourhoods.”
Our goal is to work with people: “Our task is not simply to pull drowning people out of the river, but to go upstream and find out who or what is pushing them in”
Jim Wallis - Sojourners
Central to this approach is a view that the activity we are engaged in is not merely ‘social action’ but at the heart of the church’s mission and ministry and should be valued as such.
We are here to help local churches by:
- Offering a support service to churches, projects and individuals to enable them to tackle issues of poverty and disadvantage
- Encouraging churches to develop a vision for how they might have a greater impact on the lives of people in their local communities and to develop strategies to better engage with their local community
- Exploring how church buildings can be developed as community resources to better serve their local neighbourhoods
- Offering or connecting churches to advise on issues such as employment of staff, organisational policies, financial management and governance
- Helping churches to secure resources to support their community engagement work
- Raising the profile of the work that Christians and churches do with their local communities particularly with local authorities and statutory bodies
