Published on: 11/11/2025
This month’s blogs are all looking at hurdles. There are plenty of hurdles in life, even if you’re not running the 3000m steeplechase, and they can be categorised in many different ways. One useful way I have thought about overcoming hurdles is a four-step process; awareness, desire, knowledge and support.
Step one – Awareness
It’s very difficult to engage with something like starting a New Congregation, if you don’t know what they are or that you’re supposed to start one. Becoming aware of something is overcoming the first hurdle to doing it. This is true of starting a New Congregation. It is diocesan strategy to have 50 New Congregations by the end of 2025, we are currently nearing 40. We are not quite there yet, but it’s not too bad a place to be in considering we started counting in 2019 and we lost a lot of time to Covid.
We have been helping curates during their training to think about starting New Congregations and we have run workshops at Development days. There is a lot of information on the website about New Congregations which can help inform you or you can email me for a chat at john.marsh@sheffield.anglican.org
Step two – Desire
Once you know about something, that it exists, and that you are supposed to be doing it, the next step is to choose to do it. Choosing to do something new is key to doing it, it’s the hardest step. We’ve addressed some issues around discernment and intentionality in previous blogs, so suffice it to say, at some point choosing to start a New Congregation is a hurdle that needs to be overcome.
Step three – Knowledge
Although this is step three, it can be interchanged with step two. Sometimes you need to know how to do something before you can choose whether to do it. In any case, knowing how to do something is indispensable to doing it. Fortunately, we have built up quite a bit of knowledge in the diocese around starting New Congregations. We have some clear ideas of what we are trying to achieve with New Congregations and also clear definitions of what a New Congregation is, again follow the link above to the relevant Diocesan webpage.
In addition, it’s part of my role to meet with Oversight Ministers and/or Focal ministers to help them think through how to start a New Congregation and I am happy to provide conversation or training to help with this. Do get in touch.
Step four – Support
Starting a New Congregation can be daunting even when you have both desire and knowledge. Support from others can be crucial. The support available in the diocese is of three types, shared knowledge, coaching, and finance. Since we now have more than 40 New Congregations we have a large number of people willing and able to share their knowledge and experience with you. This knowledge and experience covers a wide range of types of New Congregations so there will always be someone able to help. Again, my role is to help churches at every stage of their New Congregation, and so I am available to chat through any issues. Finally, we have Small Sparks grants, and Mission Enabler grants, to help with the financial side of starting something new.
So, become aware, desire to do, find out how, get support. Start a New Congregation.
This week’s Blog post was written by John Marsh, Mission Development Adviser