Reepham Benefice

On Monday I was invited to a conference at Broadland District Council on the subject of wellbeing. The participants were mostly local government personnel with jobs like work-based health improvements specialists, outreach projects manager and recovery services manager northern locality. What do they all do, I’ve no idea! Amongst all these shiny people there’s little me, but I feel I can hold on my own because I have a pretty long job title too: Broadland Community Partnership Faiths Representative.

The conference was addressed by experts on wellbeing. The government report on wellbeing, heralding this latest initiative, contains some 40 pages of research, statistics and recommendations. Fortunately someone has reduced this to one page. What’s it all about? It springs from the observation that all is not well in our society: there are high levels of crime, stress, obesity, addition, economic turmoil and climate change. So Her Majesty’s Government has now launched a programme to promote wellbeing. Wellbeing is described as being more than just happiness - wellbeing means personal fulfilment, a personal outlook, creativity and to use a couple of bits of government jargon: mental capital and community cohesion.  

To listen to the podcast and hear the rest of the sermon, please have your speakers on. To download the sermon, use the links on the left.