City of Milton Keynes Deanery Synod Report to Parishes - November 2025

My last report to parishes was in June and started “Welcome to Summer (and at the time of writing one of the hottest June days ever)”. The year moves on and the seasons change so it’s now November and last night temperatures dropped to -4 degrees in Milton Keynes. Welcome to Winter!

Here is the report to parishes following the Deanery Synod’s meeting on October 22nd, 2025 which was hosted by St. Thomas’s Church in Simpson.

The meeting noted the following changes to the Synod’s membership:

• At Cornerstone the Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriago has retired and will officially leave his post in January. Glynne Gordon-Carter has stepped down;

• Revd. Peterson Feital has joined us now he is in post at Stantonbury and Willen;

• Revd. Lewis Simonds has joined Water Eaton/St. Frideswides as curate.

Welcome to our new members and thank you to those who have left us for their service over the years.

Hearing from Bishop Dave

We were honoured to have Bishop Dave spend the evening with us and he gave an uplifting presentation of his early experiences in post and of his strategy for Milton Keynes. His experiences have included 11 confirmations and 18 licensings in his first 8 months and he has witnessed an openness to see the church as part of the answer to the city’s problems and a wave of new faith coupled with opportunities arising from the new housing developments. The strategy resulting from this is a development of work that the Deanery has been closely involved in and addresses 5 key areas:

• Transformation of Christ the Cornerstone

• Revival of work encouraging Children and Young People

• Propagation of new clergy and lay leadership

• Planting of churches in areas of new development

• Rebalancing of the size and coverage of the LEP parishes

Deanery Mission Fund

The Mission Fund has made three awards of £500 each so far and the Synod had presentations from two of them on the successes these had helped them achieve. Ruth Jones from Water Eaton explained the training received from Lighthouse for volunteers working with challenging children at a holiday club and Jo Roberts from New Bradwell presented on the use of seed corn funding to start a youth group.

Finance

The meeting agreed the proposal for the 2026 parish shares that had previously been sent to parish treasurers. A reserves policy was also agreed that will facilitate support for parishes in hardship as well as ensuring the deanery benefits from rebates available for prompt payment.

Ian Watson, Secretary

November 26th 2025