Bishop’s Management Group letters are sent approximately once a month to the clergy, churchwardens, lay ministers, diocesan and cathedral staff, they are included in your monthly Peterborough Diocesan News distribution.
They are mainly informative, may include policy announcements, or raise discussion on strategic and longer-term issues. Here is the most recent letter, earlier letters are linked below.
BISHOP’S LETTER 31 15 July 2025
Dear Friends,
The last few weeks have given me pause for thought.
At the end of June, I celebrated forty years as a priest and while in some ways just another notch on the calendar, such markers inevitably invite you to look back at the journey you’ve undertaken.
In 1985 the world was a very different place. The very first (very clunky) mobile phones, were just coming on to the market, the internet wasn’t a thing, there were no emails arriving in inboxes at all hours of the day and night! Mikhail Gorbachev had just become leader of the Soviet Union and although it wasn’t clear at the time; the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’ was about to be torn down. We looked forward to (rather than feared) the occasional hot summer.
The Church was also very different. We weren’t competing with Sunday trading and a myriad of other leisure and sporting events. All our clergy were male. Initiatives of the national church such as the Faith in the City report were considered important voices in the debate about the well-being of the nation, in a way that would be hard to imagine, given the attempts to marginalise the Church that we see now even over critical moral questions such as assisted dying.
But our challenge, and not least for Bishop Debbie and the Bishop’s Management Group, is not to look wistfully back, but plan with hope for a future that is, in any case, in God’s hands. New times call for fresh thinking and, in some cases, new structures, and a lot of work is underway to make our Diocesan governance and structures more effective, inclusive and accountable, and to release energy for mission in our communities. For all that, the enduring message of the Gospel and of God’s love for all his children, remains the same. Christ is our cornerstone – on him alone we build.
With every blessing,
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The Very Reverend Chris Dalliston
Dean of Peterborough
Previous letters
Bishop's Management Group Letter 30 - 10 June 2025
Bishop's Management Group Letter 29 - 13 May 2025
Bishop's Management Group Letter 28 - 13 April 2025
Bishop's Management Group Letter 27 - 11 March 2025