Communication to be made to St. Peter’s Church Family on Sunday 15th
March (and to other congregations in the Oadby-Great Glen Team Ministry)
Since the departure of Liz Wilson as team vicar at St.
Peter’s in October, the St. Peter’s PCC has with the support of the Archdeacon
been preparing for a new team vicar appointment process with the development of
a parish profile to advertise the vacant role.
At the same time some of the support for Sunday services at St. Peter’s
has been provided by Sami Lindsey the vicar of St. John’s Clarendon Park and
his curate Jon Tearne.
At its meeting on Thursday the St. Peter’s PCC decided to
pause the process towards advertising the team vicar role, in order to explore the
alternative of a partnership with St. John’s Clarendon Park involving the
continued involvement at St. Peter’s of Jon Tearne on a full-time basis with
oversight and support from Sami Lindsey and the wider Oadby-Great Glen Team
Ministry.
The aims of this resourcing church partnership would be to
revitalise St. Peter’s, in particular to grow St. Peter’s mission among
children and young families, young people and young adults (including students)
and to enable St. Peter’s to be a planting church establishing new worshipping
communities in Oadby. At the same time the aim would be to continue
developing the civic role of St. Peter’s with its links to the local community.
A document has been agreed setting out these partnership
aims, the resources that would be deployed to achieve them and the consultation
within the wider Team Ministry and patrons that would be followed to enable Jon
formally to join the Team Ministry
full-time with oversight and support from Sami, hopefully in the early
summer. This arrangement would then continue
for two and a half years until the end of Jon’s time as curate when there would
be further discernment about future provision of ordained ministry. The Team Ministry would meanwhile continue to
be led by Steve Bailey as Team Rector.
The information in this announcement will be shared in next
week’s noticesheet and then on Sunday 29th March after the 10am
morning service Sami, Jon and Steve will be present for an informal time with
the St. Peter’s congregations during which any questions may be asked of them about
the proposed partnership.
