In June 2024, it was announced that the Diocese of Southwark would receive £29 million over nine years from the Church of England for its whole-diocese transformation programme. This programme – known as the Diocesan Investment Programme (DIP) will facilitate mission and growth projects throughout South London and East Surrey, none of which will be at the expense of core funding for our parishes.

We know as a Diocese that there are so many great ideas and innovations that are happening at a parish level to grow their churches. We would like to get behind some of these ideas that come out of the parish or team or deanery. We are therefore writing to every Incumbent, Area Dean and Lay chair to ask for ideas that you may have and wished you had the resources to take forward in your parish or deanery to see good growth occur. Last time all such ideas had to go to the church commissioners for approval. This time we have the ability to evaluate and award these in the Diocese to help us towards our Strategy and Vision. There are two funds that we have access to.

The first is for an expanded fresh expressions of Church fund. For this, parishes or deaneries can apply for up to £10,000 for a project or idea and can apply for a multi-year grant of up to three years for a new worshipping community or fresh expression of Church.

The second is for an Innovation fund of £250,000 that can be awarded once every three years. This is funding for an innovative, creative missional idea that has the potential to create a step change in missional growth to benefit others in the Diocese and potentially the wider Church.

The first stage is for parishes, teams or deaneries to think whether they have an innovative idea that might meet the criteria contained in the enclosed guidance. To help you think through the process we are holding zoom workshops (see dates below) to help you know what is required by the Diocese.

We are conscious of the many demands on our clergy and don’t want you to use more effort than is necessary at the first stage. We therefore initially require a single page giving a brief outline of the idea you would like to propose by midday on Friday 28th February 2025. At this stage it does not need formal support from your PCC but you do need to talk to members of the panel about your idea prior to submission of the one page proposal. We will look at these and give feedback as to whether this might have the potential to be worked into a proposal. If after this stage, we think that there is the potential in the idea and we feel it is one of the strongest and suitable for submission we will then work with the parish/ team/ deanery to help it be ready for submission.

If you are interested, thinking of whether this might be something you would be potentially interested in making a bid then we are holding several online workshops to give you more information.

Dates and times of workshops:

Wednesday 13th November 7-9pm
Tuesday 19th November 7-9pm
Wednesday 20th November 11am-1pm
Thursday 28th November 3-5pm

If you can’t make any of these dates then please do contact us at mission@southwark.anglican.org with the heading “Innovation Fund” and if there is demand we can put another workshop on.

Innovation Fund Briefing