In February, the Bishop announced 18 Area Partnerships, covering the whole Diocese. Our partnership covers Durham, Langley Moor, Coxhoe, Sedgefield, Trimdon and the West Durham family of parishes – 9 parishes with 11 churches and a weekly Mass attendance of about 2000. The partnership arrangements will start formally at Pentecost (4 June) and Fr. Andrew will be our Partnership Dean.
The FTiH representatives from across the partnership recently met with the clergy, to start getting to know each other’s parishes. We shared some of the information from the parish questionnaires which we all completed in 2015, and talked about the challenges of how we involve people in our parish life. We also shared information about some of the positive things which are happening in our area and agreed that there are real opportunities for sharing ideas and inviting our neighbours to join us for services and social events.
The next step is to set up a Partnership Development Group. This group will meet before Pentecost, and our priorities will be to look at how we communicate across the area, how we make clear links with the schools and to identify opportunities to join together for prayer and outreach. We will let you know who is representing this parish on the Partnership Development Group very shortly. Until this is confirmed, if you have any questions or ideas, please speak to Margaret Doyle (0191 3783660 or margaretdoyle1066@sky.com)