What we heard — the Discovery report is published

This week the Digital Transformation Programme publishes What we heard, the public record of three months of listening across the Methodist Church.

Since March, the programme has been listening — in district leadership meetings, superintendents' cohorts, circuit administrators' groups, Learning Network sessions, one-to-one conversations, and through an open channel anyone in the Connexion could use. What we heard is the account of all of it, in one place.

The listening, in numbers

• 23 of 23 districts in the listening picture
• 300+ survey responses across the three listening surveys
• 100+ people in face-to-face conversations with the programme
• 25 substantive listening sessions with district teams, circuits and groups

Deliberately cautious numbers — every one real, every one traceable to a conversation or a response.

What's in it

What we heard sets out the themes the Connexion has named, in people's own words, with the numbers underneath. It is themes and people, not solutions — the decisions about the route belong to the workstream scoping and governance papers that follow. And it is a living document: the listening channel keeps bringing in new voices week on week, so this is a picture we'll keep adding to.

The report comes in two forms:

• A short public summary for anyone who wants the headlines.
• A fuller written report for anyone who wants the depth — read in one sitting, or dipped into theme by theme.

A word of thanks

To everyone who took part — who gave us an hour, a survey response, a conversation after a meeting, a frank email: thank you. This report is yours as much as ours. You're warmly invited to read it and tell us where we've got it right, and where we haven't.

The listening doesn't stop here. At the end of every month we publish a short Here's what we heard update naming the themes coming through, what we've done already, and what we're looking at next.