New Leadership At Cinnamon

As we look ahead to 2022, I wanted to take the opportunity to update you on a few developments at Cinnamon and let you know about some exciting plans for the next 12 months.

Team update

As you may already be aware, Mike Royal is moving to take up a position as General Secretary of Churches Together England in March. We are delighted that Amanda Bindon, who has been co-leading the organisation with Mike, will continue as CEO at Cinnamon.

Amanda will be supported in her role by Paul Garratt, who will become Director of Church Engagement and Business Development, and Mark Kitson who will continues as Cinnamon’s Associate Director of Projects.

This experienced team and are supported by Cinnamon’s wider team of community development and social franchise practitioners who work directly with local churches and Christian organisations as they respond to the needs in their communities.

Cinnamon’s Focus

As ever, Cinnamon remains focused on “Equipping Churches to Engage their Communities.” We believe it’s vital that we continue working together to support our communities through these challenging times.

Since 2016, we’ve supported 35 Christian initiatives on their journey to becoming established charities through the Cinnamon Incubator Programme, and have helped thousands of churches to start and develop social action initiatives.

In 2020 alone we interacted with 2,300 individuals from more than 700 churches. We now have more than 506 members of our Cinnamon Connect online learning community who are passionate about seeing their churches make a positive impact in their communities.

Our job over the next year will be to continue adapting to best support you and the work you are doing in your local area.

Plans for 2022 and beyond

Uncertainty it seems, is the only thing we can be sure of these days, but the team at Cinnamon will continue and adapt. In the first three months of 2022,

• New Training Modules
  We’ll be delivering two brand new training modules in Change Management and Understanding Conflict in Ministry. These have been developed in response to the current issues churches tell us they are grappling with.
• Training On Demand
  Developments are also well underway for the launch of two new on demand training modules, which participants can work through in their own time.
• Research
  In addition, we are conducting a new body of research with churches across the country to better understand the challenges they face when engaging with their communities in this post-COVID world.

These remain challenging, but exciting times.  I am confident that with your support we will continue to help deliver transformation through our churches and thus into our Nation.

Let’s not underestimate what has been achieved and let’s build on this as we enter another challenging year.

With thanks for your support and best wishes for 2022.

Martin Warner
Chair of Trustees