District funded FRCO posts within God For All 2025-2032
Faith-Rooted Community Organising district lead
Thank you for the interest that you and your District have shown in embarking on the journey of Faith-Rooted Community Organising (FRCO).
At the Methodist Conference in June 2024, as part of the God for All strategy, a commitment was made to extend the work of Faith-Rooted Community Organising over the next seven years. This includes employing a Connexional Faith-Rooted Community Organiser and providing funding for part-time Faith-Rooted Community Organiser leads in each Methodist District.
What is Faith-rooted Community Organising?
Faith-rooted Community Organising is series of practices, informed and guided by our faith, that focus on building relationships, and gathering people together, to use their collective power to act for justice, change and transformation. These practices are not new to Methodism. Rather, we are rediscovering, for our current context, many of the ways in which early Methodism grew, flourished, and transformed lives.
This is not a new programme or initiative, but a way of working that recognises that if we want things to be different, we have to do things differently.
At the heart of all community organising is the desire to see and name the challenges of the world as it is, yet to also hope for and work towards the ‘world as it should be’. Church communities are already seeking to do this through prayer, worship, witness and service. Faith-Rooted Community Organising practices offer a framework for turning hopes and vision into action, both within our churches and in our wider community.
District funding for Faith Rooted Community Organising (FRCO) District leads.
Local and focused FRCO resources are needed to support cultures of vision-into-action in every district, by working with key district colleagues including the district leadership team, the district NPNP team, superintendents, mission enablers, Methodist Pioneering Pathways and social justice leads. To seed and ‘normalise’ an organising culture in every district, we will fund a dedicated half-time FRCO district lead, who will provide bespoke support to embed Faith-Rooted Community Organising practices, aiming to develop teams and effective leaders of change in those congregations and communities. The role will be key to supporting existing churches and new Christian communities (NPNPs) to make connections as part of their discipleship and core mission to be justice-seeking.
To support you in this journey, you will be offered Connexional funding to employ a District FRCO lead, and support from Deacon Kerry Scarlett ScarlettK@methodistchurch.org.uk, the Connexional FRCO officer, whose role is to support you and your District from the early exploratory stages, through recruitment and appointment and ongoing.
Funding for this post is dependent on compliance with the attached job description. We encourage all districts to begin this appointment by September 2026 to ensure they receive the full seven years of funding. The 7-year funding cycle for this post ends in 2033.
Pre-appointment
As soon as you are ready to start exploring how your District could appoint a District Faith-Rooted Community Organising lead, please contact Kerry Scarlett, Connexional Faith-rooted Community Organising lead, (scarlettk@methodistchurch.org.uk). She will schedule an exploratory conversation with you and with the District leaders whose role will be key in supporting this work. Those present at this exploratory meeting should include, for example, the District Chair, the District Mission Enabler or Missioner, the Aligned Learning Network officer, and the potential Line Manager for the District FRCO lead.
The purpose of this meeting is to:
- Ensure a shared understanding of Faith-Rooted Community Organising, and the role of the District FRCO lead in equipping people across the District to draw on the principles and practices of the Justice-seeking Church report, develop existing congregations, and to begin new forms of Christian communities.
- Share details of the support available during the planning, recruitment and induction phases.
- Assess together when the District will be ready to proceed with recruitment and funding can be released
During this exploratory conversation, we will discuss:
- Existing experience, understanding and awareness of Community Organising and Faith-Rooted Community Organising within the District, recognising that this will vary from District to District.
- Experience and examples of Community Development, Social Action and Social Justice taking place in the District, and how FRCO works alongside these.
- District hopes for the appointment, and how it fits within the wider District vision (for example, the District Development or Mission Plan priorities).
- Whether discussions have already taken place and with whom.
- Whether a potential line manager has been identified. Additional support will be available to help line managers around the District FRCO lead’s induction and probation.
- Whether the District is also seeking to appoint an NPNP lead, and if so, the stage of recruitment that the District is at.
- The District FRCO Lead will need to work collaboratively as part of a District ‘Mission Team.’ Who are the Team in your District, or who will be a part of the Team you are creating?
- Preparing for recruitment and interview. The panel will need to include people with a good understanding of FRCO. Kerry is offering to be on the interview panel, and sample interview questions and guidance will be available to assist the panel.
- Scheduling a FRCO Familiarisation session in the District (possible dates, venue, timings)
- By the end of the meeting, we should have agreed key tasks, dates for follow up meetings and conversations, and a likely time schedule as to when your District will be hoping to move to recruitment, interview and appointment.
Why are we encouraging Districts to engage with FRCO? Introductory information for District Leadership
Faith-Rooted Community Organising offers distinctive ways of being and working in community, which will support the underlying cultural and leadership changes needed to action our vision to become an inclusive, justice-seeking, evangelistic, growing Church.
The practices of community organising enable the flourishing of relationships with God, ourselves, and others, which are at the heart of the gospel and fundamental to God For All; Justice, Dignity and Solidarity; Action for Hope; Positive Working Together; and the implementation of our commitment to being a Justice-Seeking Church.
This involves three distinct aims of implementing organising practices:
Within some Districts, there will be churches and circuits who are already using some of these practices, and so they will not be new to them. During the exploratory conversations, we will explore what is already happening, and how FRCO can strengthen this further.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is FRCO different to other forms of Community Organising?
Some Districts actively engage in Broad-based Community Organising, which brings together different groups from across civil society to act for change. Faith-rooted Community Organising complements this, emphasizing collaboration and interdependence rather than working in isolation. Grounded in Methodist heritage and theology, FRCO provides a framework to work for justice and transformation both within church communities and broader society.
Is FRCO different to Community Development?
In some Districts, Community Development skills are already being used in some contexts. Community Organising practices do share some underlying principles with Community Development, but there are also some distinctive differences.
Both are rooted in a deep desire for community well-being and flourishing. Whilst there are many different models of Community Development around, Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) practices, in particular, recognise that all people have dignity, worth and potential. It is important to recognise that many communities already see themselves in this way and know this to be true. It is often those from ‘outside’ who need to shift their perspective, and to listen and learn from lived and living experience within the wider community.
Both ABCD and Community Organising encourage us to resist the language of deprivation and needs-meeting. Both remind us to put ‘people before programmes’, and instead recognise the importance of building relationships and creating opportunities for people to use and develop their gifts, skills and experience so that the whole community can flourish. ABCD, like community organising, seeks to find and develop local contextual leadership.
Whereas, Community Organising has a particular focus on the importance of power. Community Organising practices enable us to use our collective power to take small, achievable steps towards necessary change. This includes learning to see how power is held and used by individuals (including ourselves), and within organisations and social groups, in visible, and in less visible ways. As people of Christian faith, we recognise that all power comes from God, but that power, but that as human beings, we can be use and share power well, or misuse it. Community Organisers often speak of holding the tension between ‘the world as it is’ and ‘the world as it should be.’ The misuse of power is at the heart of exclusion, injustice and inequality and so our responses needs to be attentive to power in all its forms. Whilst we want to hope for and work towards the time when all can flourish, we recognise that in reality there are barriers and challenges which prevent flourishing, often through systemic injustice as a result of our flawed, imperfect human nature. Community Organising seeks to build relationship to gather people to use their collective power to act on their shared vision, hopes and concerns, overcome social injustice and seek change and transformation.
Funding and Support
Basic budget
Basic budget template
Notification and release of funding
For funding for the FRCO District lead role to be released each year, the following form must be completed annually.
- Name of District
- Name of district FRCO lead, email address
- Commencement of employment
- No of hours district employed
- Annual salary paid to the district FRCO lead (if it is not £18.5k for 18.5 hours)
- Portion of salary to be claimed.
In order to assist with our shared learning around FRCO, we also ask for a six-monthly ‘check -in’ conversation between the District leadership and the Connexional FRCO.
Connexional Support for District FRCO leads
Monthly, 45-minute, one-to-one conversation with the Connexional FRCO Officer in year 1 of the District lead’s role, moving to 6 times annually in year 2 and beyond. These will be scheduled at a time to suit the District FRCO lead.
Quarterly District FRCO Lead Network Gatherings for shared learning and support. Each year, three of these will be online (90 minutes) and one in person at MCH. These will take place on the following:
- 9:15 – 10:30, Thursday 27th November 2025 (online)
- 9:15 – 10:30 Thursday 15th January 2026 (online)
- 10:30 – 15:30 Thursday 16th April 2026 At Methodist Church House
- 9:15- 10:30 Thursday 16th July 2026 (online)
- 9:15 -10:30 Thursday 15th October 2026 (online)
- 9:15- 10:30 Thursday 14th January 2027 (online)
- 10:30- 15:30Thursday 15th April 2027 At Methodist Church House
- 9:15- 10:30 Thursday 15th July 2027 (online)
- 9:15- 10:30 Thursday 14th October 2027 (online)
- Annual 24 hour residential for District FRCO leads, for shared learning and support. (Date and venue tbc)
Interview and Induction
When we have all agreed you are ready to proceed with recruitment:
- We will discuss the process for funding release once a successful appointment has been made.
- You will be provided with a list of sample interview questions along with some examples of what to look for in the interviewee’s responses
- You will be provided with detailed guidance around induction and probation (for example, suggested tasks for the first week, month, six months along with objectives and outcomes).