|
Even without this Diocesan Pastoral Plan, your parish and deanery discussions have already given you an agenda for future development. Every parish is different, and our approach must be flexible. I ask parishes, `clusters' of parishes and deaneries to use this document as a basis for pastoral planning over the next five years, perhaps taking one or two topics at a time.On the other hand, there is little point to all our work over the last year if this document becomesyet another `grand plan' which sits on a shelf and gathers dust. We must work together to ensure that it has a positive and lasting effect. A key theme throughout the responses to `Forward and Outward Together' is that we must be pro-active rather than re-active. This has to begin now - we do not have the luxury to put it off until later. Our progress will be carefully monitored. The decisions and recommendations here are not set in stone. Things change in East Anglia, and we must change with them. The Plan will be regularly reviewed, especially after five years. But it should serve as a point of departure for our future together, a future full of hope and trust. As Archbishop Oscar Romero once wrote, `It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. For a "future not our own".' Please read the whole Pastoral Plan in the light of the full text from Romero . What is our main aim in all of this? It is not primarily for our own benefit that we seek to move forward and outward together, but for all the people of East Anglia. Jesus said, 'I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!' (Luke 12.49). East Anglia is mission territory, and the Risen Jesus calls us to set East Anglia on fire with his presence, and to fill our area with the Good News of salvation. With my renewed thanks and my warmest good wishes, Yours in Christ, Rt Rev Michael Evans Bishop of East Anglia
 |
