What are ChurchWorks Colabs?

There are some real high points in the annual ChurchWorks calendar. The Commissioners' meetings that happen in Westminster twice a year are probably the apex: brilliant conversations between the UK's leading churchwomen and men, and senior politicians and civil servants. Occasionally, we also have a full-on national Summit too, like the one in February. More than 300 people attended our gathering at Methodist Central Hall, as we unpacked our three Key Mission Areas through keynote speeches and seminars.

But these aren't the only meetings that happen during the year. There are some others, which go into the real nitty-gritty - the engine rooms, if you will, of the ChurchWorks Commission. They're called Colabs. The ChurchWorks Colabs are a series of in-depth discussions involving our Commissioners, lay and senior church representatives, and parachurch organisations. Increasingly these conversations also involve direct engagement with key partners within government. Some of the topics that come up are simply too big to unpack in the Commissioners' bi-annual meeting. That's where the Colabs come in: giving Commissioners the chance to work with Christian stakeholders to discern their positions on things like a new government fund, policy consultation, or initiative, and providing a creative forum to experiment with new ideas and flesh out details.

Ultimately, the Colabs are about partnership and collaboration, hence the name. They're great fun! Plus, they've come up with some really useful resources. The nationwide Family Hubs Toolkit came out of the Children and Families Colab. And the Tackling Poverty Colab has recently helped produce a set of resources for church leaders on the Government's Pride in Place Programme. It's also in the process of setting up a working group on strengthening monitoring and evaluation: how churches record the impact of all their amazing community provisions. Often, the Church's problem isn't that it's failing to do enough, but that it's failing to write it all down! A more systematic approach across the country could lead to a revolution in the Church's ability to form new relationships and access funding opportunities.

We're also in the process of forming a Mental Health and Wellbeing Colab as well. This key Mission Area has been pretty much non-stop, with a lot of focus on delivery, for example our national Faith and Social Prescribing Report. But now is a good time to create more space for our various stakeholders to strategise and unpack what else they could do in this workstream, particularly with the government's new Neighbourhood Health Plan. Which is where you come in! The primary purpose of our Colabs is to equip ChurchWorks Commissioners to make informed decisions on a national scale. A key way of achieving that is having grassroots laywomen and men who can share what's already happening - and working - on the ground. Learning from the present, both good and bad, can help shape the future.

Do you have something to contribute? Email aaron.james@goodfaith.org.uk and alisha.palmer@goodfaith.org.uk and we can take it from there.