ABSTRACT
This chapter takes time to reflect on the significance of the variety of organisational forms and positions that the ARCS Practices embodied. After setting some brief outlines of the ecclesiastical background to these Practices, a broad three-fold typology is offered for distinguishing them organisational – the Faith Based Agency; the parish practitioners; and the diocesan practitioners. Each form of practice is discussed, illustrated from the data, and with attention being particularly paid to organisational and ecclesiological understandings of power. Conclusion are drawn about the particular advantages of the Faith Based Agency – often lay led – over the more clerically and ecclesiastically bound forms of practice, especially in relation to enabling change on the ground. At the same time, the Practices strongly suggest that for these lay-led agencies to be most effective, some effective link between them and more permanently structured aspects of church life are required.
