What You Told Us

In the fifth episode of Connected, Ben Hollebon marks a milestone: the publication of the programme's Master Discovery Report.In June, the Digital Transformation Programme published the full, single record of everything it heard during its discovery phase — every listening conversation, every survey and group, and research into what has and hasn't worked elsewhere. It went up on the Methodist website for anyone to read, and was sent directly to everyone who took part. This episode is a walk through what that listening surfaced.Ben starts with the scale of it — over 100 in-depth conversations, more than 300 survey voices, seventeen of the twenty-three districts reached at Chair level, and all twenty-three engaged in some way. Then he sets out the report's five headline findings, each one traced back to what real people actually said. People are the glue holding disconnected systems together. The church on our screens isn't always the church we hold on record — a gap of integration, not knowledge. Compliance is eating the time meant for mission — the weight and the fragmentation of it, never the duty of care underneath. The Connexion is already adapting, with paid lay "operations" roles appearing in five districts independently. And adoption, not technology, is the hard part.He's honest about what the report doesn't yet capture — younger voices, ordinary church members, Black-majority and diaspora congregations, and four districts not reached for a direct conversation — and about what happens now: the move from discovery into design, framed by five areas the evidence points toward, offered as possibilities to shape rather than promises. This episode is for anyone who wants to hear what the whole Church said when it was asked — and what the programme intends to do with it.