Aims, Vision & Values

Deepening faith

As part of the Diocese of Exeter our aims are:

To work towards seeing a Christ-centred, loving, creative and relevant Christian presence in every local community
To focus our activities on the three diocesan priorities of:

Growing in prayer
Making new disciples and
Serving the people of Eggbuckland, Estover, Derriford, Mainstone and Leigham with joy.

We recognise that our strategy needs to be two-fold:

Deepening faith: encouraging people in their journey of faith and deepening their connection to God.
Extending Community: partnering and building community; being a blessing in our locality.

Our values, which are shown in everything we do, are:

Being loving, inclusive, welcoming, and valuing everyone.
Being whole-hearted in our life together.
Being one body: valuing diversity and disagreeing well. Enabling everyone to contribute to the life of the church without prejudice.
Being prayerful and open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
Being open to learning and drawing on the wisdom of the Bible.
Being reflective and open to change.
Being adventurous, encouraging and not taking ourselves too seriously.

We work locally with other church and parachurch groups including:

We prioritise safeguarding through our Safeguarding practice and policy.
We value creation and try to be sustainable. In 2016/17 St Edward’s Church was awarded a Bronze Eco Church award and in 2018 silver award in recognition of the progress achieved so far. We are actively working towards a gold award across all our buildings and communities.
We endeavour to be fully transparent in terms of Data Protection and the current legislation known as GDPR has been adopted.