PCC Away Day – 1 November 2025
From 4pm on Friday 31 October to 7pm on Saturday 1 November, the PCC together with the Director of Music met in the Diocesan retreat centre at Shepherd’s Dene, near Corbridge, for the first of two sessions looking at future strategy.
The emphasis of this first session was to develop a vision for 2030, unconstrained by issues of resources and finance, to which we can aspire. A second session, planned for February 2026, will aim to put together practical plans for the achievement of the vision.
The pictures below show the team and work and at the bottom of the page you will find a brief summary of the outcome.
The process...
We started with a Eucharist, followed by a common meal and then a quiz on our knowledge of the parish, followed by compline and relaxation before the main event, starting early the following morning with morning prayer and breakfast.
After breakfast we worked in groups of three, sharing our visions of how we see the parish in 2030, and then in groups of nine and finally in plenary. We found a lot of overlap in the thinking of the various groups and prepared flip charts summarising the main themes.
After lunch, we continued the discussion, listened to feedback from the subgroup following the Church Pastoral Aid Society’s “leading evangelism learning hub” process which challenged us all about our own role in spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ.
We closed the session with a service of Eucharist and the evening meal before heading back for Berwick.
... and the outcome
We are excited about the vision for the future and afterwards Lee put together the charts below highlighting the main themes – the next step is to share this with the congregation and then at our next week moving from vision to action planning.
