This evening's meetings were both worth while. Mary Cotes skipped the Mission Partnership Exec and gave a presentation to the Watling Valley about the Mission Partnership review - which seemed to focus on vision and was well received.
Although I did pop into the second half of this meeting I decided to go to the Exec - largely because my name was on the agenda a few times... mostly for reports from project groups...
This meeting did give me the opportunity to raise an issue that I've been thinking about for a few weeks...
I've been pondering the credit crunch and the oncoming recession and wondering what we should do about it. It seems to me that it would be easy for churches in MK to drift through it as bystanders. On the other hand there are some real issues beginning to emerge and there may be some useful things that we could do to prepare or respond as the economic downturn begins to affect people around us.
What we're going to do next is arrange a day at the end of January when four or five of our specialists do a bit of information gathering and speak to some of the key experts and authorities in the city. This day will hopefully give us a chance to take a snapshot of the situation in the city and give us some indication of the potential needs. My hope is that we would then be able to advise the churches about what appropriate action they could take locally or collectively.I'm mentioning this on the blog, partly to let people know what we're up to, but also to invite responses - and start the process of information gathering - so if you have any factual or anecdotal information about the effects of the downturn on Milton Keynes please drop me line.
