Our aim is for everyone in the National Church Institutions (NCIs) to feel that they belong, and are valued for who they are and what they contribute. Together, our people contribute in different ways towards our common purpose, whichever NCI they work in and whatever their background.

The Church’s digital team was established in October 2016 and, over the last four years, has worked with colleagues across the Church to transform the digital presence for the better and reach and engage millions of Christians and people exploring their faith. Major areas of focus include providing resources and materials during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic; continuing development and maintaining the national websites; co-developing major Christian campaigns at Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter; overseeing a social media and website training programme with thousands of churches; and developing innovative products like the Alexa skill.

The Church has been recognised for its work in this area by winning a large number of national awards.

The Digital Team also works to support the implementation of the Church of England’s Vision and Strategy priorities, seeking to create a younger, more diverse Church.

Since the Church of England started the award-winning Digital Labs training programme, more than 13,500 people have benefitted from our tailored training for church leaders and volunteers. Digital Labs equips local churches to use social media, websites and other digital tools for evangelism and discipleship. We offer industry-standard advice made relevant through in person training, webinars, blogs, videos, and a newsletter.

As Digital Labs Officer,you will build confidence in the local churches of the Church of England to use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, A Church Near You and their own websites to reach new people and encourage members of their worshipping communities in their faith.

You will run a national training programme to upskill the Church to use these digital platforms. You will also curate and create new content for the Digital Labs webpages, blog, on-demand training library and newsletter.

We are taking a flexible approach to work, with many colleagues opting for a hybrid approach to their working week, with a mixture of home and office-based working. Further details will be discussed at interview. We are open to flexible or part time working for this role.

For an informal conversation please contactrachel.roberts@churchofengland.org

We would like to hear from you if you have the ability, motivation and commitment to give to this opportunity and the requirements explained below.

The Church of England is for everyone, and we want to reflect the diversity of the community the Church serves across the whole country. Therefore, while of course we welcome all applications from interested and suitably experienced people, we would particularly welcome applicants from UK Minority Ethnic Backgrounds.

We offer a unique environment with opportunities for continuous learning, generous annual leave for work life balance, season ticket loans and a range of benefits including discounted entry to attractions and what we feel is a market leading package when it comes to our pension scheme.

The Role

• Deliver the core Digital Labs digital skills training webinars.
• Work with the Digital Labs Manager to support training sessions for ordinands and diocesan colleagues.
• Co-ordinate, commission, edit and write content for the Digital Labs blogs and guides, including creating or commissioning short training videos for people to access digital skills on-demand.
• Create and send the Digital Labs monthly newsletter.
• Project manage arrangements for large national events to equip church leaders with digital skills and promote the vision of The Church of England.
• Curate and administrate the resources from the Church of England YouTube channel.
• Use Canva to create thumbnails, images and social media graphics to illustrate and promote Digital Labs activities, ensuring a consistent visual identity.
• Work with other members of the Digital Team to create resources for dioceses, parishes and churches to help them to participate in national campaigns and mark events.
• Evaluate and track the success of the training to show how this work is furthering the mission and strategy of the Church of England.
• Champion local church use of digital platforms, creating and maintaining a library of great examples of how local churches are using ACNY and social media.
• Maintain relationships with internal colleagues and stakeholders to develop collaborative resources, live webinars and blogs.
• Keep up to date with digital trends and social platform changes, and the latest innovative ways to promote the gospel in the digital environment, to feed into plans for webinars, newsletters, blogs and videos.
• Assist with Communications department responsibilities to support General Synod in London and York, and at other major NCIs events.
• Other duties for Digital Labs as required, for example acting as admin of any future social community spaces for Digital Labs participants, such as a closed Facebook group.

Staff Management and Supervision

• You may be required to manage external agencies, contractors and freelancers as well as provide informal management to other employees of the NCIs.

The Requirements

Essential

Knowledge/Experience:

• Experience of using social media professionally.
• Experience of giving presentations and training groups.
• Experience of planning small events.
• Experience of updating websites, writing blogs and creating newsletters.
• A good understanding of the digital environment and digital trends.
• An awareness and understanding of Christian evangelism.
• Excellent project management and organisation skills.
• Excellent clear digital copywriting skills.
• Excellent clear verbal communication skills.
• Excellent IT skills with Microsoft Office and other industry standard applications.

Attributes:

• A passion for digital and helping churches use this.
• Comfortable and confident helping churches promote faith in Jesus Christ in the digital public square.
• Builds consensus and positive relationships within and across teams.
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work in a small core team, and as part of a wider team during certain events.
• Ability to work under pressure during busy periods.

Desirable

Knowledge/Experience:

• Experience of project management, delivering on time and to budget, taking ideas from concept to delivery.
• Experienced user of Canva.
• Basic video editing skills.

Circumstances:

• Able to travel occasionally within England.
• Able to deliver evening webinar sessions occasionally.

We in the National Church Institutions support the mission and ministries of the Church all over England. We work with parishes, dioceses (regional offices), schools, other ministries and our partners at a national and international level.

Excellence, Respect, Integrity

We follow these three values in everything we do, whether we are of Christian faith, another faith or no faith. To learn more about working for National Church Institutions and our benefits, please click here

As a Disability Confident Leader, we actively look to attract, recruit and retain those of you who are disabled.

As a member of the Armed Forces Covenant, we welcome applications from those of you who have served in our Armed Forces and their families.

We are committed to being an equal opportunities employer and to ensuring that everyone, job applicants, customers and other people with whom we deal, are treated fairly and not subject to discrimination. We will do whatever is necessary to provide genuine equality of opportunity. We continuously review our policies and processes to support our aim to create a workforce as diverse as the nation the Church of England serves.

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