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The parish of

Kings Norton

Part of the Church of England

Our Vision

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There are many dividing lines in church life, in local life and in each person’s journey of faith. At the heart of mission must be deep commitment to partnership which enables people to become confident in who they are as human beings in Christ, so that dividing lines can be transformed from barriers into thresholds of new life and meeting with God and with others who are different, in both church and wider communities.

Transforming our mission, staffing and buildings serves and deepens this to enable connections: between each area and each resident of the parish with God, each other and with the wider church and region; between St Nicolas and the Team’s District Churches; between St Nicolas and its immediate context of churchyard, newly restored mediaeval community buildings and The Green; between the different areas and uses within the parish’s buildings; between different stances on current wider church issues; crucially between past, present and future in Christ. Within all this, we gather a wide range of church tradition and worship style in strong commitment to go on living and growing together.

We pray to go on growing in God’s mission in a diverse and challenging parish, in building confident lay ministries and in making hard choices, with lively trust in God’s grace in all that cannot yet be seen or done. It is much bigger than any one of us. We have to learn each day to do that which by grace we can and let God and his people do the rest.

We are aware of being but stewards of the rich parish church story of Kings Norton and seek:

To embrace great diversity of tradition, social context, worship and theology

To discover new growth of lay gifts in worship, pastoral care, hospitality and outreach

To break new ground in mission partnership with others in and beyond the parish

To grow in faith, in ministry, in learning and in nurture for all

To grow in prayer and action in local community regeneration

To renew buildings and resources to make them safe, useful and lively

To be renewed for growth as the people of God in and for this place

We have much to discover and do in all these. They are very much work in progress and bring risk, challenge and opportunity. We therefore seek to grow as people who can live with the provisional, who want to discover more and who want to listen, pray and work with others; sometimes leading, sometimes learning, yet always in faith that God’s mature purpose and promise for the growth of his church require more attention to what joins and knits us together in Christ than to what makes us different. Thus we affirm and grow in seeing our rich differences as “gifts to be offered and nourished, rather than positions to be defended.”

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