How to do Mission Action Planning: Prayer, process and practice

By Mike Chew and Mark Ireland

How to Do Mission Action Planning (SPCK, 2009) was the first book to appear on the MAP process, at a time when it was beginning to have a significant impact. In this fully revised and expanded edition, the authors offer further critical evaluation and theological reflection, by drawing on the experiences of people who have been using the MAP process in different contexts from their own:

Fr Damian Feeney, parish priest and Catholic Missioner of Lichfield diocese
Canon David Banbury, leader of Parish Mission Support, Blackburn diocese
The Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith, Bishop of St Albans
Dr Stephen Hance, Canon Missioner of Southwark diocese
Linda Rayner, the United Reformed Church co-ordinator for Fresh Expressions

‘This is a rare book – a refreshing meditation on planning for mission – and one that is rooted in spirituality. As the authors show, the church and its mission arise from our vision of God. And once that vision has been realised, churches are able to become more intentional about their mission. Our vocation to share God’s love is not an option or an afterthought. It is the heart and soul of our faith. Mission – and our planning of it – should not fill us with fear or foreboding. Rather, as the authors argue, the call to share God’s love can be evermore meaningful, even as mission becomes more methodical.’
The Very Revd Prof. Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford

‘This is a must-read for anyone using MAP. The rich theological reflection, the detailed unpacking of the 4 MAP phases and the learning offered by the 5 guest practitioners add up to an impressive offering. This book enables good questions to be asked, overflows with wise reflection and contains oodles of practical examples, ideas and resources. I commend it to all local church leaders who are seeking to discern how best to translate the prayer ‘your kingdom come’ into appropriate church and congregational action.’
John Dunnett, General Director, CPAS

'This timely revision is honest, well researched and carefully put together - an important contribution to the necessary change of culture required in today's Church.'
Julian Henderson, Bishop of Blackburn

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Jun 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9780281075652

Mike Chew

How to Do Mission Action Planning (SPCK, 2009) was the first book to appear on the MAP process, at a time when it was beginning to have a significant impact. In this fully revised and expanded edition, the authors offer further critical evaluation and theological reflection, by drawing on the experiences of people who have been using the MAP process in different contexts from their own: Fr Damian Feeney, parish priest and Catholic Missioner of Lichfield diocese Canon David Banbury, leader of Parish Mission Support, Blackburn diocese The Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith, Bishop of St Albans Dr Stephen Hance, Canon Missioner of Southwark diocese Linda Rayner, the United Reformed Church co-ordinator for Fresh Expressions ‘This is a rare book – a refreshing meditation on planning for mission – and one that is rooted in spirituality. As the authors show, the church and its mission arise from our vision of God. And once that vision has been realised, churches are able to become more intentional about their mission. Our vocation to share God’s love is not an option or an afterthought. It is the heart and soul of our faith. Mission – and our planning of it – should not fill us with fear or foreboding. Rather, as the authors argue, the call to share God’s love can be evermore meaningful, even as mission becomes more methodical.’ The Very Revd Prof. Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford ‘This is a must-read for anyone using MAP. The rich theological reflection, the detailed unpacking of the 4 MAP phases and the learning offered by the 5 guest practitioners add up to an impressive offering. This book enables good questions to be asked, overflows with wise reflection and contains oodles of practical examples, ideas and resources. I commend it to all local church leaders who are seeking to discern how best to translate the prayer ‘your kingdom come’ into appropriate church and congregational action.’ John Dunnett, General Director, CPAS 'This timely revision is honest, well researched and carefully put together - an important contribution to the necessary change of culture required in today's Church.' Julian Henderson, Bishop of Blackburn

Book preview

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Mark Ireland was ordained in Blackburn Cathedral and served as a curate and vicar in Lancashire for 14 years before becoming Diocesan Missioner for the Lichfield diocese. He returned to parish ministry as vicar of All Saints Wellington with Eyton, in Shropshire, and he is now Archdeacon of Blackburn. Mark has co-authored several other books, including Making New Disciples (SPCK, 2015). He has recently served on the Archbishops’ Council. He enjoys walking and skiing with his wife Gill, and is attempting to learn to sail.

Mike Chew has been the Business Excellence Director for Philips Lighting, and was responsible for the development and implementation of the Philips global improvement strategy process, while at the same time being churchwarden of an Anglican parish in Lancashire. He has served as MAP and growth strategy facilitator for the Blackburn diocese.

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First published in Great Britain in 2009

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

www.spck.org.uk

Reprinted five times

Revised and expanded edition published 2016

Copyright © Mark Ireland and Mike Chew 2009, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

SPCK does not necessarily endorse the individual views contained in its publications.

The author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the external website and email addresses included in this book are correct and up to date at the time of going to press. The author and publisher are not responsible for the content, quality or continuing accessibility of the sites.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Quotations marked

NIV

are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a member of the Hachette UK Group. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790.

Quotations marked

ESV

are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Extracts from The Book of Common Prayer, the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–0–281–07564–5

eBook ISBN 978–0–281–07565–2

eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Contents

List of illustrations

Foreword by Richard Chartres, Bishop of London

Preface

Acknowledgements

Part 1

INTRODUCTION TO MAP

1   MAP today

2   Towards a theology of MAP

3   How to produce a good MAP – step by step

Part 2

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

4    Prayer and desire

5   The Review phase

6   The Discern phase

7   The Plan phase

8   The Act phase

Part 3

CONCLUSIONS AND USEFUL RESOURCES

9   Conclusions and reflections

Appendix 1  The Methodist Church in Lancashire: Year of Evangelism Menu163

Appendix 2  MAP document template

Appendix 3  Healthy church self-assessment tool: Blackburn diocese174

Appendix 4  Two examples of a MAP

Notes

Bibliography

Illustrations

Figures

1.1   The MAP process, with ‘Desire’ added

1.2   Example of a MAP

2.1   The pastoral cycle

3.1   The key parts of the MAP process

3.2   The Desire phase

3.3   Extract from Sheffield diocese website

3.4   Front page of Methodist publication, ‘Year of Evangelism Menu’

3.5   The Review phase

3.6   The Discern phase

3.7   The Plan phase

3.8   From flipchart at a church workshop on deploying MAP actions

3.9   The Act phase

3.10   Illustrating similarities between the MAP process and the learning cycle

3.11   The MAP process expanded

4.1   Blackburn diocese annual MAP process cycle

5.1   A pictorial representation of the Review phase

7.1   A model for MAP from Southwark diocese

9.1   A learning model for mission competence

Tables

1.1   A possible action plan

3.1   All actions must clearly state ‘What’, ‘When’ and ‘Who’ is responsible

4.1   The tabular model

5.1   The effectiveness of LyCiG in halting decline and enabling growth

8.1   Teamwork questionnaire adapted from URC Elders’ training

8.2   Westbury Gardens URC vision statement

8.3   Westbury Gardens URC mission statement – the four priorities

8.4   St Ives Free Church mission statement

Foreword

The decline in the active membership of the Church of England and other denominations in the last quarter of the twentieth century was mirrored and exaggerated in London. Many of the congregations were ageing and found it difficult to engage the young people who were flooding into the capital from other parts of the UK and from abroad. At the same time the disproportionate rise in London house prices made flight from the capital increasingly alluring for many of the people who had been the backbone of the Church in the post-war period. This was an issue in most of the mainstream denominations and it is no coincidence that this period also saw the establishment and growth of many new ‘grass roots’ churches, freed from what they saw as the shackles of the traditional church structures.

By the late 1980s many Christians in the UK had internalized the all but universal view of the new establishment in the media that the story of God could have only one end: relegation to the leisure sector.

However, you will read in the first chapter of this timely book how the arrival of my predecessor, Bishop David Hope in 1991, helped to change both the spiritual atmosphere and the direction of travel. His parish visits greatly improved morale and his introduction of Mission Action Planning focused attention on growth rather than on the various divisive issues.

By the grace of God we have continued to see growth in the Diocese of London over the past decade or so and MAPs have become a part of our spiritual outworking of the gospel. I thank God that MAPs have also helped to reverse the decline in other dioceses and denominations. The various contributors to this volume rightly stress that MAPs, rather like Rules of Life for the religious, are ways of deepening our spiritual and prayer life, ways of enhancing our worship of the living God, ways of enabling us to proclaim the gospel afresh in each generation. In this post-denominational age I pray that this book will be used by many as a means of strengthening our mission and ministry and restoring our proper confidence in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Richard Chartres, Bishop of London

Preface

Seven years ago we wrote the original edition of How to Do Mission Action Planning,¹ the first book written about a process that was beginning to have a very significant impact: helping churches to listen to God, to focus on mission, to discern vision and priorities and to be effective in making new disciples. Since then we have been amazed by the growth of MAP across the churches, traditions and denominations, and have been encouraged by the responses of those who have found our book to be very useful and have requested us to write again. We are also aware of the need for more critical evaluation and theological reflection, drawing on the experience of those who have been using the MAP process in different contexts and theological traditions from our own. In this second edition we have addressed these points and taken the opportunity to bring the MAP process up to date and to include some more recent examples of parish MAPs.

There are three parts to the book.

Part 1 covers the fundamentals of MAP:

Chapter 1 is an introduction to MAP – its history and what it’s about.

Chapter 2 provides a theological perspective and also addresses the concerns that still keep some from using MAP – is the growth of MAP a sign of growing managerialism in the Church, or could it be something that the Spirit is using to call the Church back to focus on its mission?

Chapter 3 is a practical step-by-step guide for each of the phases of the process that result in a good MAP.

Part 2 provides more detail about the phases of the MAP process, written by guest practitioners from a variety of contexts and theological traditions, each sharing what they have learned from implementing MAP and also reflecting on one part of the MAP cycle:

Chapter 4 has been written by Fr Damian Feeney, parish priest and Catholic Missioner of Lichfield diocese, formerly Vice-Principal of St Stephen’s House. He covers the continuing need for prayer and the Desire phase.

Chapter 5 has been written by the Revd Canon David Banbury, Leader of the Parish Mission Support Department, Blackburn diocese, and one of the founders of Leading your Church into Growth (LyCiG).² He covers the Review phase and also comments on how the LyCiG process marries with the MAP process.

Chapter 6 has been written by the Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith, Bishop of St Albans diocese. He covers the Discern phase and also comments about MAP from the perspective of a denominational leader.

Chapter 7 has been written by the Revd Canon Dr Stephen Hance, Canon Missioner of Southwark diocese. He covers the Plan phase and also reflects on MAP from a diocesan missioner’s perspective.

Chapter 8 has been written by Linda Rayner, the United Reformed Church Coordinator for Fresh Expressions. She covers the Act phase and also comments from a URC lay training perspective.

Part 3 provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the above contributions, to draw conclusions and to explore whether MAP is primarily about growth or about God. We also offer some useful resources that may be helpful in implementing MAP.

In this second edition we also recognize that MAP is being used by a variety of traditions and denominations, and so we have included stories and examples from a wider base than in the first book. This has led to the need to define terms we have used in the book: for example, we have used the term ‘church council’ to mean the official leadership group of a church – usually called the Parochial Church Council in the Anglican Church, but with other names in other denominations – Elders’ Meeting, Church Meeting, Vestry Meeting and so on.

Acknowledgements

We are pleased to acknowledge our debt to all those practitioners of mission action planning who have so generously shared their wisdom and experience with us. Some of their stories are told in this book (with permission), but to all those whose names we have not mentioned but who have given us wonderful ideas and stimulated our thinking, we extend our grateful thanks.

This second edition is again dedicated to those amazing and patient people, our wives Gill and Gil, who allowed us to spend part of our holiday cruise brainstorming it!

Part 1

INTRODUCTION TO MAP

1

MAP today

The origins of MAP

The origins of the phrase ‘Mission Action Planning’ can be traced back to the arrival of the Rt Revd David Hope as the diocesan Bishop for London in the early 1990s. Faced with a huge diocese very divided over women priests and with acute money problems, Bishop David devised Agenda for Action, to establish four agreed mission priorities for the diocese. These were:

worship and prayer

care and service

teaching and nurture

mission and evangelism.

The staffing and finances of the diocese were then extensively refocused to resource these mission priorities at local level. Each deanery and parish was invited to follow a similar process and to choose a few realistic targets that they wanted to set themselves in the light of the overall diocesan vision. Bishop David wanted to hear what people on the ground wanted to do, so he invited parishes to send their plans to him. He planned to use their responses to further reshape the diocesan structures. For example, he noticed that some very good work with young people was going on in different places, and asked whether it was possible to bring the leaders together to share and learn from each other and to offer advice for other parishes – but not to create a central structure. In other areas of parish work also, he wanted groups from strong parishes to help weaker ones. His overall aim was to help people to get away from thinking of internal domestic things and move on to become a church on the move – a pilgrim people travelling light.

Listening was a key part of Bishop David’s strategy. Spending time in the parishes he encouraged them to be realistic about what they could achieve. He felt that the diocesan structure was a massive empire that needed to be dismantled, and after a process of visiting every deanery and listening to the parishes to learn what they believed they were being called to do, he then set about the task of restructuring the diocesan organization to serve the emerging vision. One of his key phrases was ‘Prune for growth’.

In 2008, before writing the first edition of this book, we arranged to interview Bishop David in his home to gain deeper insight into his thinking. We were interested to find that he encouraged a two-way dialogue, writing personally to those who had completed MAPs and producing a report after the first year, feeding back to the parishes what they had said. Acknowledging that some parishes wanted nothing to do with MAP he commented, ‘We didn’t force it: I thought – if it was good, it would spread by word of mouth.’¹

A key part of the MAP initiative was the half-day visits by senior clergy to each parish and deanery, followed by a return on the following Sunday to lead the people in worship – so that the bishops and archdeacons were seen to be listening to them and alongside them in mission. The parishes’ willingness to engage with the MAP process was in part a response to a personal relationship with the bishop or leader who had come to them. This incarnational ‘alongside’ dimension of Bishop David’s approach to MAP models something crucial about the leader as servant/coach rather than top-down manager, and helps to explain why 70 per cent of parishes responded to his invitation to produce a MAP, compared with the usual 40–50 per cent response to any request from the bishop.

During the above-mentioned interview, Bishop David reflected:

The London thing was very rudimentary – I was feeling my way a bit. What I really wanted to achieve was to give the diocese some sense of cohesion and coherence in terms of mission, and to try to change the whole ethos of the diocese. People had become disheartened, and were keen for a fresh vision and a change from arguments about women priests and gay priests.

Bishop David was only in London for four years before his move to York, but since that time the diocese has been blessed with sustained growth in terms of membership and attendance. When we asked about this evidence of growth, Bishop David reflected that MAP had contributed significantly to reversing the downward attendance spiral in the diocese – ‘It wouldn’t have happened without MAP.’

Today, the leadership of the MAP process has been continued by the current diocesan bishop, the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, and London diocese has continued to grow, with MAP still very much alive. In line with Capital Vision 2020, every parish is actively encouraged to have an up-to-date MAP. Each Episcopal Area has resources and strategies in place to support and encourage MAP. Indeed, we consider that London has more resources to support parishes with MAP than any other diocese. MAPs are regarded as prime documents for those involved in the development of parochial ministry.

MAP today

On page one of the first edition of How to do Mission Action Planning we introduced a MAP as:

a document which outlines the mission activities that a local church is going to do in the coming months and years. It is built on a clear sense of God’s ‘vision’ for the church – what people believe God is calling the church to be and to do. So a MAP provides exactly what it says on the tin – an action plan for mission.²

The church MAP is a summary of its mission plan. It is tailored to the particular circumstances of the individual church because it builds on the church’s ‘vision statement’ – its desired future. Priorities are discerned, and also those activities that are not as urgent are considered for pruning