2008
Stuart Lord
Sizing Up Brighouse and Clifton Team Parish
The Rothauge size typology is almost unknown in the Church of England and can be found in less than hand full of writers. In need, congregational development is a Cinderella subject. Despite the differences between the Church of England and ECUSA, principally the use of historic funds, congregations on either side of the Atlantic behave in very similar ways. The project described in this thesis set out to size up the three congregations of the Team Parish of Brighouse and Clifton in order to aid them in developing a mission strategy aimed at numerical growth. This was achieved not only by calculating the average Sunday attendance, but also assessing the relationship and leadership styles of the congregation and noting the importance of all three being in congruence in order to allow the congregations to function in a way that is true to their type. The external environment was scanned using ‘off the shelf” tools generally available while the internal environment was scanned using data collected by the parish ‘Core group’ which is part of the Wakefield Diocese Ministry scheme. By incorporating elements from change management studies, especially organizational culture, an assessment is made of the success of the educational elements of the project in attempting to embed the typology into the core groups thinking. A brief reflection begins the process of moving this project from the specific (the team parish) to the more general by creating tools which may be used with any Church of England congregation.