Local churches, led by local people, supported for the long term
Shared Local Ministry is about teams of lay and ordained people working together to serve God and their local congregations and communities.
Our hope is for every church congregation to have a commissioned local leader, equipped and supported to serve their church community alongside their Oversight Minister. You can find out more about the role here.
Inspired by the shared ministry model of Ephesians 4, Oversight Ministers are clergy who enable and nurture the gifts of others while leading mission and ministry across a number of churches. You can find out more about the role here.
Our Youth Hub and Schools Ministry enable churches to engage with young people, nurture faith, and support the development of young worshipping communities across the diocese.
To support clergy and parishes, encourage collaboration in mission and ministry, and help churches navigate change.
Operations Leads coordinate practical support and shared resources across churches, enabling more effective ministry and mission.
Our Vision
The Diocese of Hereford is committed to Proclaiming Christ and Growing Disciples. Our vision for the future of the diocese is Shared Local Ministry, enabling flourishing local churches, where people are Prayerful, Christlike and Engaged with their wider communities in mission to people of all ages.
Shared Local Ministry is about teams of lay and ordained people working together to serve God and their local congregations and communities. It has five aspects:
Local churches, led by local people, supported for the long term
Every community in this diocese deserves a living church. From the smallest hamlet chapel to the busiest market town parish, each one is a sign of God's presence in the place it serves. Shared Local Ministry is our commitment to keeping it that way: churches that are open, active and led by people who know and love their own community.
At its heart is a simple conviction. God has already given every congregation the people it needs. Ministry has never belonged to the clergy alone. The Church's own ordination services begin with the calling of the whole people of God. Across Herefordshire, south Shropshire and the borderlands that calling is visible every week, in those who lead worship, visit the housebound, run toddler groups, care for buildings and hold communities together.
We are also honest about the pressures. Like most of the Church of England, our congregations are smaller than they were. Attendance is about a quarter lower than before the pandemic, and nearly half of our regular worshippers are over seventy. There are fewer paid clergy than there once were, serving one of the most rural dioceses in England. We could respond by spreading our vicars ever more thinly. We have chosen instead to grow leadership in every place.
Shared Local Ministry does this through three connected roles. Focal Ministers are trusted local volunteers, lay or ordained, publicly commissioned to be the recognised leader in one particular church, working alongside the congregation. Oversight Ministers are priests, normally the vicar or rector as now. They lead across a group of churches, with a particular calling to encourage and develop the ministry of others. Area Deans are experienced clergy who support church life across a wider area, caring for ministers and helping churches flourish together.
Much stays exactly as it is. Parishes remain, with their own church councils and their own life of worship, including Holy Communion. Your building, your churchyard and your community's connection to them are unchanged. Many parishes already work with local teams of licensed and commissioned lay ministers, and Shared Local Ministry builds on that existing practice. Some are choosing to take it up now, with their vicar or rector, deciding together as a church; elsewhere change usually comes at a vacancy, when a new Oversight Minister is appointed. No church will have this pattern imposed on it.
What changes is the support behind it. Everyone taking on one of these roles is carefully prepared and publicly commissioned. Each is given real, ongoing help: training, a supportive community of others doing the same work, and regular review. The Church has learned, sometimes the hard way, that asking people to carry responsibility and then leaving them to carry it alone fails everyone. We are building the support in from the start.
This is a hopeful path, and an old one. Locally rooted ministry, shared between lay people and clergy, is how the Church has flourished in the countryside for centuries. Shared Local Ministry renews that pattern for our own time. The aim is that in every place there is a church that is prayed for, cared for and led, by people who belong there.
To find out more, or to explore whether God might be calling you to serve in your own church, speak to your vicar or contact the diocesan office.
How Focal Ministers, Oversight Ministers and Area Deans are formed and supported
In a village church on a Sunday morning, the person leading worship is someone the congregation has known for thirty years. She farms two miles up the lane. She was commissioned by the Bishop last spring, she has been carefully prepared for what she does, and behind her stands a whole pattern of preparation, support and prayer. This is Shared Local Ministry at work. This page explains the part most people never see: how people are prepared and supported for these ministries.
Shared Local Ministry is carried by many people: Readers, licensed lay ministers, worship leaders, pastoral visitors and others already commissioned to serve their churches. Within that wider ministry, three roles give it shape, Focal Ministers, Oversight Ministers and Area Deans, described in our introduction to Shared Local Ministry. Each carries real responsibility, and each has its own pathway of formation, development and support.
Formation means more than training. Training teaches tasks. Formation shapes people through prayer, experience and reflection, growing the character, confidence and judgement that these roles need. It also starts from what each person already brings. A priest becoming an Oversight Minister builds on years of ministry rather than starting again. A Focal Minister may already serve as a churchwarden, Reader or pastoral visitor, and their pathway focuses on what is genuinely new. Area Deans take up posts with no settled template, and their preparation is honest about that.
Formation grows in stages. It begins with foundations: understanding the call, knowing where the role starts and ends, and time rooted in prayer before anything else is asked. It continues through practice, learning the role by living it, alongside others doing the same work; for Focal Ministers this takes around twelve to eighteen months, for Oversight Ministers around two years. Over time it deepens, building confidence for the harder parts of ministry, including conflict, safeguarding and leading through change. There is no certificate to collect and set aside; support continues for as long as the ministry does.
Support is matched to the role. Oversight Ministers and Area Deans meet regularly with a trained supervisor, a protected hour to speak honestly about how the work is really going. Focal Ministers meet regularly with their Oversight Minister for support and encouragement. Everyone joins a Community of Practice, a regular gathering of people doing the same work, where they can share what is actually happening, learn from each other, and pray together. And regular review means the minister, the local church and the diocese look together at what is growing well and where more help is needed, so no one is left to guess how they are doing.
All of this rests on a simple conviction: take a calling seriously. When someone steps forward to lead, they deserve more than a commissioning service and good wishes. They deserve careful preparation, people to learn alongside, and someone to turn to when ministry becomes demanding. That is what these pathways provide, and what the diocese has committed to fund. Commissioning is a beginning, and the preparation, support and care that come with it are for keeps.
To explore whether God might be calling you to one of these roles, speak to your vicar or contact the diocesan office.