Profile for the appointment of a curate in the Cornerstone Resourcing Church Team, Leicester Diocese

Parish Profile: The Cornerstone Team, Leicester DioceseThe Cornerstone Team is based in three villages on the eastern edge of Leicester and includes three suburban village churches with an average Sunday attendance of around 250 people. As a team, we are self-consciously and confidently evangelical, and our desire is to see people:

Turn to Jesus: coming to know him for themselves as Saviour and Lord.

Grow in Jesus: getting to know him better with deepening faith and committed discipleship.

Live for Jesus: living daily lives shaped by the gospel – at home, at work, and in serving those around us.

With these things in mind, we are committed to:

• Mission and Evangelism

• Accessible Biblical Preaching

• Developing and encouraging active lay ministry

• Continuing to resource and grow our flourishing youth and children’s work

• Being a church family with a sense of community and belonging, with an emphasis on small groups for study, fellowship, nurture and outreach.

• Sunday worship which is accessible and engages both head and heart.

• Serving our local community and the areas around us.

Team and PrioritiesThe Cornerstone Team is comprised of three churches. St Luke’s Church, Thurnby, is a busy parish church, with three weekly services attended by around 200 people. The worship style is varied, with an emphasis on the contemporary and informal, and services incorporate thriving groups for youth and children, and major on biblical preaching. Rob Miles, the Team Rector, is based in Thurnby; many lay people are involved in ministry, and there is a staff team including a non-stipendiary Associate Vicar, a youth worker and a children’s worker. We are in the process of appointing a full-time Associate Rector to increase our capacity to focus on planting and outreach.

St Catharine’s Church, in the neighbouring village of Houghton on the Hill, is a growing family church with around 60-70 people attending on a Sunday. Significant growth has taken place in recent years, with the appointment of a full-time vicar, and a small ‘church graft’ of people from Thurnby in 2011. The Team Vicar post in Houghton is currently vacant, and the church is currently being led by our final year curate, Steve Ransley. St Catharine’s has also had Children’s and Youth Worker since 2016, who has grown and developed our ministry to children, young people and families.

St Mary and All Saints, Stoughton, is in a small nearby village, with two services a month, and an average attendance of around 15 people.

There is a strong emphasis on ministry among families, children and young people across the team, through regular groups, youth camps and holiday clubs. In Houghton and Thurnby, there are strong links with the three primary schools (two of which are church schools), which are seen as key points of contact.

We attach a high importance to evangelism, outreach and discipleship: Christianity Explored, Life Explored, and Alpha have been run in all three villages, and many people within the churches belong to home groups.

Beyond the Cornerstone Team, we engage fully in the life of the Deanery, where both our current and previous Rector have been involved in leadership. We have links with both the Midlands Gospel Partnership, and with the New Wine Internship programme.

We are currently in the midst of a major project to build and open ‘The Hub’, a Community Café in Thurnby as a point of connection with people, a base for serving local communities, and as a location for a new fresh expression congregation in the next couple of years. This is a key part of our plans as a Resourcing Church.

Our expectation and vision is that, as a Resourcing Church, we will be starting a new church plant, graft, or fresh expression every 18 months to 2 years, both within our parishes and in the surrounding areas.

Resourcing ChurchIn 2018 we have entered a new and exciting phase of our church life. We have been designated one of the Diocese of Leicester’s first Resourcing Churches, which seeks to meet the diocesan strategy of seeking growth in the number of disciples, the depth of our discipleship, and in our capacity to serve our communities.

This strategy is very much in our DNA as a team. We are at present discerning under God how best to use our resources, including the appointment of new staff, to enable us to reach out effectively both within and beyond our parishes. We have a particular focus on church planting, grafting and starting new congregations and fresh expressions.

The ParishesThurnby is a suburban village of approximately 3000 people, which is largely owner-occupied with a small area of social housing, and which borders a large former council estate. Houghton is a semi-rural commuter village of approximately 1600 people, which is largely owner-occupied. Stoughton is a small village of about 300 people. Across the benefice, there is a high proportion of working and retired professionals, or people successful in business.

There are good facilities within the benefice, including three primary schools, three pubs, a range of shops, three village halls, two garages, a range of sports clubs and facilities, a residential retirement home plus some areas of sheltered housing, a small Methodist Chapel, and a bus service to Leicester.

There is significant house building taking place both within our parishes and in nearby areas. With this comes significant mission opportunities, and possibilities for future plants.

Church-Planting CuracyThis curacy will include all of the usual training opportunities which come with working in this varied and busy parish, including preaching, pastoral work, and the full-range of occasional offices; but also with a clear focus on church planting as part of Resourcing Church. We are currently looking at several possibilities for our next plant or graft, with the aim of releasing our new curate to lead it. The expectation is that, over the first 2-3 years of the curacy, the curate will work with leaders to identify the location and shape of a new congregation, while beginning to gather people who will join the plant. We are therefore looking for someone with a passion for evangelism and church planting; with a desire to work in new and creative ways; who enjoys starting new things and seeing them develop; and who thrives as part of a team.

The curate will work closely with Rob Miles as Training Incumbent. Rob led a church graft from Thurnby to Houghton where he has been Team Vicar for seven years, before recently becoming our Team Rector. Before coming to Leicester, he worked among students in Johannesburg as a Mission Partner with Crosslinks; and then, having been ordained, as curate at Moulton Parish Church in Northampton. Outside the Cornerstone Team, Rob is on the Steering Group of the Midlands Gospel Partnership (Leicester).

While the training relationship with the Training Incumbent is key, this post will enable the experiences and expertise of the whole staff team to feed into and enrich the development of the curate’s ministry.

Further DetailsVisit www.thurnbychurch.com and www.houghtonchurch.co.uk

If you would like to find out more about this post, please contact Revd Rob Miles:

Address: The Vicarage, Main Street, Thurnby, Leicester, LE7 9PN

Phone: 0116 241 4783

Email: robmiles100@btinternet.com