Do we need to ‘Save the Parish’?


Frog Orr-Ewing writes: On Tuesday 3rd August, a gathering was hosted by Marcus Walker in St Bartholomew the Great, London’s oldest parish church, to launch a campaign to “Save the Parish”. This small conference was intended to begin a campaign for General Synod, expressly to stop resources being siphoned away from parishes, and to ‘resist any further centralisation of power and authority away from parishes and towards dioceses and the central church.’ Save the Parish should be understood in a wider context of commitment to local church ministry across the theological spectrum and a widespread concern that church bureaucracy is increasingly out of touch with front line people-centred parish ministry.

The media rallied behind the campaign including an article by Marcus Walker in the Spectator, and a letter planning to marshal lay-led reform of the Church of England. Tensions were further exacerbated by the Gregory Centre proposal coming to General Synod to launch thousands of lay-led churches over the next ten years. This sparked ‘limiting-factorgate’ ; a social media exhale of exasperation on the part of clergy to the insinuation that expensive theological training, church buildings and ordained leadership were factors limiting growth in the Church of England. Incidentally, putting out a press-release for this new initiative on the weekend of ordinations at the end of a pandemic was probably misjudged, and undeniably contributed to a growing feeling of disenfranchisement and a subsequent backing-away by bishops from this initiative. 

I am calling the Save the Parish campaign a ‘heart cry’, a response which is giving voice to a growing and deeply emotional, intuitive and practical sense that something valuable and precious is being lost. I also want to suggest that Save the Parish is in some way a declaration of love for the church, and an articulation for some, of what it means to be Anglican.

The Ideal of the Parish

The ‘ideal’ of the parish has for centuries been a core concept of the Church of England. It is so deeply woven into Anglicanism that historically growth has come best when the idea of parish is renewed, reformed and re-invented. Many of the churches in urban areas were a result of a beautiful blend of localism, empowerment, and mission with Anglican ecclesiology, liturgy and doctrine. But parish is best understood as an ideal, a dream, an archetype, because each one is so different, and in each area and age it is constantly changing, with as many exceptions as rules. 

But because parish as a concept of mission and church is contextualised, it will never truly ‘fit’ grand structures and strategies; every area, every congregation, has a unique story and it is the weird particularity which is precious and meaningful. Hopewell, the great congregational studies expert, said:

I have begun to see how astonishingly thick and meaning-laden is the actual life of a single local church. Many churches fail to tell their story. They are paralyzed in prosaic self-description that follows depressingly predictable lines. They evaluate themselves by counting money, membership and programs [Hopewell: 1987, pp. 3, 140.]

Parish has its roots in the ancient Minsters who were said to have ‘parochiae’ which are best understood as ‘spheres of influence of ministry’ rather than specifically geographic designations. The process of firming up these parochiae to specific locales took nearly three hundred years and appears to have solidified by the mid 1300s. During the Reformation, the parish was reinvented; the parish churches and congregations remained, but the liturgy and the institution became Reformed.

Failure and Change

Skip forward then into the crisis of the Eighteenth Century, with a population of this country largely disengaged with the Christian faith and local church, and this failure to engage people fundamentally challenged the parish ideal. The crisis of collapse in attendance in the Church of England stimulated two responses. The first was outdoor preaching with John Wesley declaring that ‘the world is my parish’ giving rise to Methodism, and the second was a church multiplication movement which remained within the parish system known as the Huntingdon Connection churches, a network of Anglican churches supported and funded under the patronage of Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon.

A further major reinvention of the parish was a response to massive shifts in population in urban areas in the Nineteenth Century. The ideal of the parish had long-since become broken, for the reality was a largely failing mission, and out of touch Anglican churches. Small village churches now found themselves responsible for a portion of a metropolis or for an entire town. However, it took nearly a century for the necessary reforms within the Church of England and Parliament to finally meet the practical needs of population growth in neighbourhoods. 21 distinct Acts of Parliament were required through the first half of the nineteenth century until they finally arrived at the New Parishes Act of 1856, and further amendments in 1869.

The result was, what I call in my doctoral research, the ‘new parochialism’ which led to the most phenomenal fifty-year Anglican church-building frenzy that England has ever seen. This season was marked by strong lay involvement and localism, a very simple procedure for starting new churches, requiring a defined specific area of mission through service, and a specified sum of money to be raised, and one proposed ordained person for each church. The solution was to utterly reimagine the parish as a sphere of mission with a building, and at least 3,000 people in an area to minister to. Neighbourhoods like Camberwell had 11 Anglican churches and parishes carved out of the old village parish, to include the new airy suburbs of Nunhead and Peckham, alongside the numerous nonconformist congregations. 

Having said all of this, it will not come as a great surprise to hear that I support church planting as an intrinsic part of Anglican ecclesiology and practice and I fear that some in Save the Parish may be mistaken by turning their ire on evangelicals and specifically on Anglican church planting—neither of which are enemies of the parish.

A New Crisis 

Already under increasing strain, the parish system now finds itself in crisis again, the differentiation and localism is being undermined in the rural areas by unwieldy and potentially unleadable collections of parishes, and all over the nation by a demonstrable distance between members of the public and a lively Christian faith centred around a local church. Falling attendance amongst children, aging congregations and a global pandemic all have had an enormous toll.

The crisis is real and I do not think anyone is ignoring it, and yet we have reached an impasse between two ideals, two archetypes. In the red corner, the model of parish, with clear priest and people, purpose and place—comfortable with the happy weird mishmash of particularities, aims and intentions, and with local theological commitments but little defining strategy. And in the blue corner dioceses, bishops and the national institution, with centralised initiatives, staff and management designed to navigate the institution through these choppy waters. So now we have a new story: Parochialism versus Managerialism, and we urgently need a burst of new creativity to write the next chapter.

Save the Parish is a heart-cry, a late plea for life before deconstruction. The very jumble of theologies, financial approaches, emotion and opinions which we see is, in itself, a rejection of the values of the managerialism that has, depending on your opinion either infected or affected the Church of England in recent years. Ironically, many of the newer city centre ‘resource churches’ share with Save the Parish a radical commitment to local front line ministry with vicars and committed teams moving into previously derelict buildings with a vision to revitalise and grow Anglican worshipping congregations in specific neighbourhoods. Many of the frustrations articulated by Save the Parish are shared by clergy who are leading resource churches and church plants, so there may be a greater basis for unity in a shared rejection of diocesan forms of managerialism.

Three Managerial Changes

Three major changes have occurred which have fundamentally hamstrung the parishes, but unlike other changes in the last century, which were initiated bottom up, these have mostly been top-down, and at the behest of a new commitment to managerialism, mirrored in other public sectors, but which is now being critiqued fundamentally in those settings, such as academia.

The first managerial shift, which Save the Parish mentions, are the parish measures of the 1970s, under which all churches gave up their land, reserves and glebes and incomes in return for one balanced and universal payment package for the clergy. Stephen Trott called the Endowments and Glebe Measure of 1976 a failed experiment, and I think he is right. The intention was to replace the patchy historic stipends whose uneven spread and value did not sit well with the quest for modernisation. Parishes in living memory were promised they would never have to pay for their clergy again, and centralised management would end their woes when they handed over their assets.

But the financial model and the financial contract failed, as they did with many other public sector industries, and instead of giving the assets (held in trust) back to local churches, the diocesan boards held on to the glebe lands and started needing to raise more money from the parishes to meet their obligations and this gave birth to the quota system. Fully independent charities freely give a “voluntary” gift to centralised funds, in return for which the priests get to keep a pension and a stipend. The pressure brought to bear on the PCC by Diocesan Boards is the threat of losing their vicar: parishes pay up, and vicars are commended for maintaining an attitude of institutional compliance.

There is no lack of commitment to giving in order to support poorer parishes, but now even if you do pay, you might lose your vicar anyway, especially in a rural area. Each diocese tries to counteract this by coming up with their own arbitrary algorithm to persuade parishes to decide their own taxes. However, now, as decline occurs, local communities have no levers to pull, no ‘agency’ and decisions are being made over their churches whether they like it or not. And they are saying that they don’t like it. I have lost count of the times that deaneries are given the ‘choice’ of which posts to lose. It is like asking someone which leg they would like to have cut off. It is a hot mess—and has been a cause of much tension since the late 1990s which is when the financial model failed. In recent years, as Dioceses have taken time to ‘cut posts’ and ‘amalgamate the parishes’ they have done so with no apology, and no handing back of control.

I have on several occasions had chances to help advise lay leaders in villages on how they could respond to a local church financial crisis—a lack of vicar, a church roof collapse. In three villages there was the money available to pay the full stipend and pension, and to repair the church, but a decision had been made by a DBF to remove the vicar, and use the vicarage for a new centralised post. This has happened in my direct knowledge, in three unrelated incidents, in Wiltshire, Surrey and Oxfordshire—so to be clear in three different dioceses. Lay leaders, church wardens in these cases, were happy to face the facts, but were not allowed to solve the problem as they saw fit. In all three situations, it was made clear to them by either an archdeacon or a bishop that it was not their place to decide on how to use the assets of their village or save their parish. In all instances, the posts are gone forever even though the communities had both the desire and capacity to solve the problem locally. 

The Loss of Freehold and making of Trustees

The second major managerial change was the loss of the living, or the freehold in 2005 and its replacement with Common Tenure by 2011. The argument given at the time was that this change was needed—but when this was debated at diocesan synods it was made clear that this was designed to equalise the rights of all assistant clergy. But once again, this change was not made at the request of parishes, and it removed the security of tenure for clergy and the rights of parishes. Moreover, the freehold balanced out the power of the bishops, who couldn’t easily remove or discipline clergy except with serious grounds and with expensive ecclesiastical law cases. Common Tenure then went hand in hand with new guidelines and discipline measures for the clergy. The CDM has been an unmitigated disaster, demoralising all who go through it, regardless of whether they are cleared or not (and the vast majority are cleared) yet 40% have contemplated suicide. This managerial experiment of repackaging the living is clearly traumatising and the costs are enormously high.

The third major managerial change occurred in 2011, requiring all PCCs to register with the Charity Commission, making all members of the PCC personally into trustees, adding new burdens of governance onto volunteers, and making churches more risk averse, but without changing any of the voting and selection patterns, and thereby layering this new obligation on top of pre-existing legislation from 1956 and 1969. (They have been charities for a long time, but were a ‘body corporate’, that is, considered as if they were a person with agency collectively not individually. The guidance was updated in 2017). The impact of this change on local churches cannot be underestimated, both for administration and capacity. 

With regards to administration of the parish: along with the changes to common tenure, PCCs as charities under the Charity Commission now have confused relationships of loyalty including that of clergy to parish, and of the PCCs to the Diocesan Boards of Finance. Though clergy remain bound with promises to bishops, they are simultaneously more clearly obligated by charity law to seek the best interests of the local parishes of which they are trustees. As a trustee of the parish, a vicar now faces a potential conflict of interest between the local interests of the parish and charity best practise, and the political power of the diocese, which has no legal standing within the individual parish charity, but does have authorising power personally over the vicar’s ministry.

The second impact of the change in charity status is one of capacity: the demands of trusteeship may lie beyond the scope of several local churches if we assume that all PCC members must be individual trustees. Several of us have experience as vicars in the inner-city, or other more challenging parts of the country, juggling the acute needs of our community and working to raise up leaders in the local church. Must all these local leaders also become individual charity trustees in order to have spiritual leadership and for the parish to be viable? 

Must a diverse and young community in a more deprived area or a remote rural community also try to find a dozen with experience of charity law, accounting and finance, who also have time on their hands to handle HR problems, buildings and parish share; grieving with the dying, burying the dead, marrying the hopeful, and grow the ministry whilst also recovering from the pandemic as well as doing incredible children’s work, and maintaining GDPR protocols and growing through conversion as part of a mission plan? Oh yes—and if the vicars drop a ball in any of this can they expect pastoral support and intercession from the Bishop, or will it be a terse email and a summons, or even a CDM?

‘Enough is enough!’

Hear the cry from the pews and the pulpits…enough is enough! I have lost track of church leaders reaching out over the last few weeks to confess that they have never been more demoralised and exhausted; while they still believe in their call, and the call to pastor and care for others, and honour God to the best of their ability, they are hanging by very thin threads. Whether you are running a fresh expression or a traditional parish, the distress is real.

The intrusion of central bodies into the day-to-day independence of local churches has increased beyond measure over the last decade, and post-pandemic, I believe as clergy rightly contemplate moving forward with their churches and congregations, and realise the hugely hard task ahead of them, they want pastoral care and active support, or if they cannot have this, to be left alone to solve their own challenges on the ground. Church leaders have lacked pastors because their pastors, according to the ordinal, the Bishops, have often become managers, and are now caught up in the remote business of trying to manage institutional resources in a climate of decline. 

Traumatised people, who have often suffered from a loss of agency, will look for routes forward which are safe, and which allow them to ‘be themselves’ and live out of their core values—a love of God, and a love of neighbour in an actual place with actual people. Whether this is a form of new monasticism or a parish, a country town or city centre resource church—where all of these responses to the crisis all coalesce is in a resounding rejection of managerialism. In this there is an unlikely unity, even if in all other things there is diversity. Could I be so bold as to suggest that ‘if you have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches’ several idiosyncratic prophetic voices are articulating a heart cry.

‘We are here, we are here…’

It is like the moment, if you have ever been treated to watching or listening to Dr Seuss’s Horton hears a Who when the kindly elephant suddenly realises he can hear a shout from the top of the speck: “we are here, we are here”. Horton the Elephant becomes the one who realises that an entire tiny civilisation may be destroyed. The residents of Whoville shout because they fear that they may overlooked, and they are waiting for an apology and for someone to say ‘I am listening, I hear you.’ 

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At the beginning of my ministry, as a young vicar in the inner-city, my bishop was acutely aware of me, my parish, my family and the needs of our church and neighbourhood. He rang me regularly to ask how I was, he found practical ways of supporting and encouraging us, visited the church, and if you don’t mind me saying so, it felt like he gave a damn.

I know there are many Bishops who know their parishes and clergy and who practically contribute to mission on the front line, and have found a way to be human with those entrusted to their care. To all of you—thank you, and please don’t be discouraged. Maybe at least part of the pathway to flourishing is to recapture a love for the clergy and parishes in the frontline of the Church of England. There is almost certainly legislation that needs to be changed that will dial back the failures of the past and help us regain our morale and energy for service and growth, but most of all, it is time to listen.

So yes, let’s listen to Save the Parish and to those who want to plant more churches.


Rev Canon Dr Frog Orr-Ewing is Fellow-in-Mission at University of Winchester, Honorary Canon Theologian of Winchester Cathedral, and Founder of Latimer Minster. He is married to Amy, a well-known speaker and writer on apologetics.


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143 thoughts on “Do we need to ‘Save the Parish’?”

  1. “At the beginning of my ministry, as a young vicar in the inner-city, my bishop was acutely aware of me, my parish, my family and the needs of our church and neighbourhood. He rang me regularly to ask how I was, he found practical ways of supporting and encouraging us, visited the church, and if you don’t mind me saying so, it felt like he gave a damn.”

    It would feel/be overwhelming to tackle the whole subject at once. Let’s start here .. with the Bishops returning to their original task of pastoring the pastors, and delegating the management. Let them renew contact with the front line workers, grow to understand their needs and their circumstances, understand the local culture and the individuality of the church and the individuals, clergy and lay, that make it all happen. It might just shift the perspective sufficiently to bring about longer-term deeper change.

    Reply
    • That might be one persons experience but the mileage varies. It’s also true within other denominations too and at the extreme, can be seen as a form of grooming the “right” people in the group

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  2. Frog thanks for this excellent article on the history/context etc of the parish system. There is so much in this I didn’t know. I was aware of issues like loss of agency, traumatic experience, dealing with conflicts of interest, and fear and how it impacts. Thank you for the detail and breadth you have added to this. You say this at one point: ‘In all three situations, it was made clear to them by either an archdeacon or a bishop that it was not their place to decide on how to use the assets of their village or save their parish. In all instances, the posts are gone forever even though the communities had both the desire and capacity to solve the problem locally.’ There is an issue with the ability of bishops etc to make such decisions which seem to be unfair and lack consistency, openness, transparency and accountability. I have recently read the book ‘Giving up the purple’ by Julyan Lidstone which I recommend. It looks at the roots and implications of the church’s hierarchical leadership style. The purple is not explicitly about clergy clothing but about purple togas / Rome/ Constantine and the tension between hierarchical culture and biblical values. Church planting does get discussed.

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  3. As Methodist Presbyter ordained in Korea, spiritually encouraged at Queen’s Ecumencial Foundation in the 1970’s, and now worshipping in Stockport Parish, and preaching and celebrating in the United Stockport Circuit of the Manchester Methodist District I hesitate, in a small way, to deflect my established confreres. I keep holding on to locality in the Church Catholic and Universal, especially through the musings of a former Bishop of Dudley. He observed that the linguistic root to “parish” implies the place where the stranger is welcomed.
    May we, in every denomination, be enabled to to welcome the stranger .

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  4. Psephizo is almost always good, but this is great: the best blog post I have read in a very very long time. I can’t tell you how much this resonates with me. THANK-YOU!

    Clergy are “demoralised and exhausted; while they still believe in their call, and the call to pastor and care for others, and honour God to the best of their ability, they are hanging by very thin threads. Whether you are running a fresh expression or a traditional parish, the distress is real.”

    Yep. I’ve been ordained 24 years. In five years’ time I’ll be 55; that’s the earliest I can “retire” and I recently requested a statement from the Pension Board if I do so (fyi I’ll get about a £50k lump sum and £7k pa as things stand and at the moment I’m sorely tempted to take it. I could re-train as something else or work part time, but I’m fortunate in having options as my kids have left home, I own a house and have other income. Other clergy are trapped, particularly those who were tricked into selling their property when they got ordained only to find that the retirement housing scheme isn’t as generous as it was back then.)

    Four points if I may:

    1.

    I honestly can’t imagine how the Bishops could have handled the pandemic any worse than they have: from the initial panic and overreach in March last year (banning incumbents from praying in their churches), to the subsequent gaslighting (“no, no, we never gave an instruction; it was only ever advice and guidance” – a flat out lie) to the lack of personal, proactive pastoral care during 2020. If you tried to construct a sort of deadpan, poker-faced parody of poor leadership for a satirical novel it could hardly have been as awful as the reality. The only reason the “key limiting factor” thing went down so very badly was because clergy were already feeling so low and lost; at any other time it would have been shrugged off, no more than another momentary “meh” as they flicked through the Church Times.

    2.

    A minor correction: the Freehold was replaced by Common Tenure in 2009 not 2011, although the C-of-E website gives that later date as that was the last time the legislation was revised (and there’s another problem: the CT legislation has been and can be re-written, so clergy are signing up to a contract that the other party can change unilaterally.) Quite why they didn’t just bring in CT for clergy ineligible for the Freehold – i.e. priests-in-charge, curates, et al. – and left Freeholders alone is a mystery. I have the Freehold but can’t really see how it makes much difference: I’m still liable to CDM, BMO, so-called “pastoral [sic] reorganisation” and dispossession; in fact, I suspect I may have fewer rights than my colleagues on Common Tenure. Pretty much the only things I don’t have to do are MDRs and some HR stuff (“statement of particulars” etc.) But CT does make clergy de facto (and possibly de jure) employees, whilst still retaining the technical, if now meaningless, title of “office holders”.

    3.

    “At the beginning of my ministry, as a young vicar in the inner-city, my bishop was acutely aware of me, my parish, my family and the needs of our church and neighbourhood. He rang me regularly to ask how I was, he found practical ways of supporting and encouraging us, visited the church, and if you don’t mind me saying so, it felt like he gave a damn. I know there are many Bishops who know their parishes and clergy and who practically contribute to mission on the front line, and have found a way to be human with those entrusted to their care.”

    My Diocesan Bishop (+Michael, Lichfield) “invited himself” (his words) to my church yesterday. He preached and led at our service and came to lunch at the Vicarage. And it was wonderful! Whatever issues I have with the Bishops as a body it’s hard to dislike them as individuals, all the more so in person. Most of them, most of the time, are good and godly people doing their best with their hands tied by red (purple?) tape. Pray for them. And love them. Yes, speak truth to power – but also forgive them when they get things wrong. They are only human. (Although I would find it easier to forgive them if they actually apologised; but that is up to them. My job is to forgive regardless.) I, for one, would not want to be a Bishop for all the tea in Chelmsford.

    4.

    When it comes to money I’m tempted to apply the following logic: a.) I was unlawfully locked out of my church for six weeks last year by the ultra vires ad clerum b.) the Biblical formula in such cases is that reparation should be fourfold (cf. Lev 22; Luke 19). c.) 6 x 4 = 24. d.) 52 weeks in a year minus 24 = 28. e.) Ergo, I owe 28 week’s parish share for 2020.

    Once again, many thanks to Frog and Ian for this excellent contribution.

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  5. “The second impact of the change in charity status is one of capacity: the demands of trusteeship may lie beyond the scope of several local churches if we assume that all PCC members must be individual trustees.” This is a really important issue. I recall a conversation some years ago with a bishop who observed that the demands of compliance with so many areas of legislation were weighing local churches down, and the demands on people’s time to deal with the seemingly endless administrative demands means that it is getting harder and harder to persuade lay people to take on leadership roles.

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      • Perhaps because as a volunteer you are unpaid with no real rights despite spending many hours working, whilst clergy and youth workers are paid for the work they do. There is also little to no accountability as you’re not an employee etc. It seems like the upper echelons of the church are expecting a hell of a lot from unpaid workers.

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        • Quite a substantial % of clergy are unpaid – 27% nationally, which I expect will rise in coming years. (This excludes those ‘retired’ clergy who also offer ministry without payment.) These clergy are subject to CT and often work under the same requirements and demands as paid counterparts. Many effectively work full-time unpaid, living on income from pension or savings or spousal income. So yes, a lot is expected of unpaid workers (and spouses, in the case of spouse-supported ministry) – both lay and ordained.

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  6. Excellent article, thankyou. It captures the specifics of how we’ve ended up where we are, and why so many are feeling demoralised. Unlike some of the initiators of ‘Save the Parish’, I don’t think church planting is part of some grand conspiracy to undermine the local church. But just as covid has accelerated other changes (e.g. online church), it’s also accelerated the day of reckoning for the parish system. The circumstances the parish system was designed for no longer pertain. Membership is in long term decline, clergy numbers are at an historic low and still falling, with the burdens of buildings and bureaucracy falling on fewer and fewer people. We’ve known for years this was unsustainable (I wrote this in 2012 http://davidkeen.blogspot.com/2012/06/leading-of-5000-redesigning-cofe.html), but not tackled it, it’s the CofE’s equivalent of the social care sector.

    What are the scenarios in which the parish might be ‘saved’? a) the CofE starts growing again b) parishes are amalgamated to ever bigger units c) the CofE moves away from the requirement for clergy and historic buildings to constitute parish. Or to put it another way, at what point is the parish system no longer fit for purpose, given the mission of the CofE and the resources it has available?

    Just one omission: the first thing clergy are expected to do coming out of lockdown is to run Living in Love and Faith with their remaining parishioners. Thanks for that. I used to be a young enthusiastic vicar. I hate what I’m turning into.

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    • I agree. On your last point I have repeatedly said that we need LLF like we need a hole in the head. But the HoB want to plough on regardless. It’s insane. The courageous thing would be to say ‘We are putting all discussions on hold for five years; the doctrine of the Church remains unchanged’, and then face down the opposition.

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          • Hi Ian. Well I know you don’t agree with them – but I have in whose those fellow Christians whose most personal life, loves and faith have been publicly debated for decades now by the CofE without yet coming to any way of honouring or welcoming them. The ‘hole in the head’ you think we can just put off for yet more years – are real people who have been waiting years and have faithfully invested a great deal into LLF at some personal cost. So I get what you are saying and why but wish you had said it differently.

          • I think you know perfectly well that I do not view people as a ‘hole in the head’. I have gay friends who are same-sex partnered, gay friends who are celibate in obedience to the teaching of Scripture and the church, and gay friends who are other-sex married.

            What we need like a hole in the head is to be discussing the complex issues around whether same-sex relationships can be viewed as equivalent to marriage. I realise that there is much at stake for my gay friends—in every direction—but as Ian Hobbs notes below ‘it is as plain as a pikestaff that this was a poor decision.’

          • Ian I know you don’t. But put like that it unfortunately made people sound like an institutional issue/decision that needed shelving. Anyway … grace and peace.

          • The question of the holiness or otherwise of patterns of sexual relationship other than marriage *is* an issue. It is one with a great many personal consequences, but it is an issue.

        • David Runcorn … Isn’t the frustration rising because there’s no indication of anybody listening? Quiet appeals have been ignored. Am I wrong? What indicators have I missed?

          The other David wrote “Just one omission: the first thing clergy are expected to do coming out of lockdown is to run Living in Love and Faith with their remaining parishioners. Thanks for that. I used to be a young enthusiastic vicar. I hate what I’m turning into.”

          It is as plain as a pikestaff that this was a poor decision. I’m appalled at significant decisions made at any level in the current situation where there is a pastoral disconnect. Minds are elsewhere, reasonably, and thus should dictate any agenda.

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          • Ian. I said to Ian I understood his point. But no I do not think the situation is anywhere near so obvious. It is a real dilemma and we are searching for wisdom – like a lot of life.

          • Ian I think the problem for the many of us who have been waiting to have this debate for the last 30 years is that there have always been reasons why it isn’t the right time. For some, including quite a few contributors here, it will never and can never be the right time. So let’s get on with it and then perhaps we can at last stop talking about it and find a peaceful settlement.

          • Ian I think the problem for the many of us who have been waiting to have this debate for the last 30 years is that there have always been reasons why it isn’t the right time.

            Um how can you have been ‘waiting to have this debate’?

            ‘This debate’ has been going on for over two decades!

            What can you possibly have been waiting for?

          • That’s to misunderstand what LLF is about Ian and you must be aware of that. You must be aware of the origin of the document following the refusal of GS to take note of the bishops paper.
            LLF is a resource document to help inform discussion. It is based, and I quote, “around Richard Hooker’s pattern of Scripture, reason and tradition: “ [Both Archbishops were clear in their letter about this three legged stool by the way]. It was never intended to make any case for or against change, but to do the spadework.

            LLF is there to help the debate within the wider church before the debate comes back to GS. It is widely recognised that greater pastoral accommodation is likely in the light of general legislation, the requests for services of prayer and blessing surrounding that, and the fact that some who hold the bishops licence for preaching and teaching have greater flexibility in their personal lives than clergy.

            None of this is news to you. And no, there has not been a proper debate about this matter since ‘Issues’ was written decades ago.

          • It is useful for people to see the terms of reference for the next steps group.

            Terms of Reference
            The LLF Next Steps Group will
            1. Agree and commend to Dioceses approaches that enable meaningful engagement with the LLF resources in as wide and representative range of churches as possible;
            2. Encourage effective and wide use of the resources across the Church;
            3. Encourage the House and College to engage with the process and hear the learning emerging from churches’ engagement;
            4. In response to a substantive period of church-wide engagement with the resources:
            a) draw up scenarios for different outcomes and consider the ecclesial implications;
            b) consider and bring forward to the House proposals for consideration of any motions or other business that should go to the General Synod arising from the process of learning proposed by the LLF resources;
            5. Draw on the diversity, experience and expertise of the members of the Pastoral Advisory Group, a Reference Group and LLF Advocates
            a) to ensure that engagement with the resources is framed in as pastorally sensitive and safe way as possible for everyone, especially LGBTI+ people;
            b) to advise on the preparation and delivery of facilitation training and resources to achieve the above;
            c) to extend the reach of the group, when appropriate, to diverse stakeholders.
            6. It is expected this work will be completed by the end of 2022 at the latest.

    • Some have suggested that Myriad may not be unrelated to LLF . . . . I think John McGinley is conservative / traditional / orthodox / homophobic (delete to fit your stance) and new Anglican (or Anglican-ish) churches might be a preemptive and semi-schismatic move.

      Although ironically the last time this happened it was the Methodists, who have just legislated to *allow* same-sex marriage.

      Funny old world.

      Reply
      • Not sure that is really true at all. Those most suspicious of LLF are conservatives who are also suspicious of charismatics and lay-led church planting—at least by my observation.

        Reply
        • I am a bit confused by all this talk of clerical and lay led churches. I thought the CofE model was one of collaboratively led churches (Incumbent and PCC). In my experience churches that are exclusively clerically led are part of the problem as (most of) the congregation expect the clergy to do everything for them.

          For rural ministry the laity may have to take a much more visible role if services are to be held for small congregations each week as clergy cannot physically be everywhere. However, this must still have some clerical involvement unless we are moving to a completely non-Eucharistic church model.

          Reply
          • I am a bit confused by all this talk of clerical and lay led churches.

            I guess it depends on how you define ‘led’. How much ‘leading’ should the teaching elder actually be doing?

    • “Just one omission: the first thing clergy are expected to do coming out of lockdown is to run Living in Love and Faith with their remaining parishioners.”
      Actually, I thought going carbon neutral was the first thing we had to do. Our current leaders seem unable to understand that when lots of things are urgent priorities, nothing is an urgent priority.

      “I used to be a young enthusiastic vicar. I hate what I’m turning into.” I’m just preparing for my MDR and a similar thought occurred to me as I pondered current ministerial life. To be fair, there is still joy to be found, but it goes hand in hand with utter exhaustion with all the stuff you have to wade through.

      Reply
  7. What an excellent piece to read. As I am only a churchwarden I have had less reason to know all that history, but the implications of it ring very true to my experience. The comments also add valuable insights. We are a small rural parish, and have been in interregnum for 8 of the last 12 years, so my experience is as a churchwarden who has tried to lead a parish for a long time, with very mixed support from Diocese and Deanery. The current Dean is trying hard for us, but more generally, my experience of our difficulties has been one in which I have proposed some solutions to our problems and nearly always been told that ‘we can’t do that’. I know nothing is simple, but it often feels as though we could run our church and parish better if we were independent of the Diocese (and my family’s history IS based in the Presbyterian Church !). Alternatively it makes you want to give up and join the Salvation Army, you get the feeling that instead of worrying about the Quinquennial Inspection, you could be making sandwiches for the homeless . . .

    Reply
    • Please don’t say “only a Churchwarden”. It’s a vital role, as you’ve described. I worked with some wonderful Churchwardens over my 38 years stipendiary ministry… (and a very few who wanted the position not the job) .
      Blessings on you.

      Reply
    • I feel for you in your situation and know plenty of others soldiering on and keeping things going in interregums.

      I’d just caution that the grass always seems to be greener elsewhere, and some solutions to this problem fall into that trap. My in laws are part of a independent Congregational Church and part of the leadership team. They are grateful for some independence, but there are also plenty of times when they miss being part of a church which was part of wider network and had central support for specialist services. And the Salvation Army officer who comes once a year when we have a toy service always laughs when he gets told numerous times that people envy him because the SA isn’t bogged down by tradition and don’t have silly procedures and they can just get on with their soup runs etc. – he says that they have as many traditions as everyone else, they just look different, and people grumble that they should run things more like Methodists/CofE/URC etc. !

      Reply
  8. I would say that the pandemic has made the managerial problem worse. Our diocese has discovered that it can send an interactive email every week to all clergy (including myself as an elderly PTO) encouraging them to do all manner of things. It all adds to the sense of pressure.
    As always the article is stimulating. Whether it will achieve more than a letting off steam remains to be seen.

    Reply
    • But given this ability, why are the emails not sources of encouragement and equipping? It really begs the question…

      I have to commend our diocesan, Paul Williams, who has continued to offer twice-weekly reflections on the psalms with his wife Sarah, and still appears to get about 700 views, so must be doing something right.

      Reply
      • “But given this ability, why are the emails not sources of encouragement and equipping? It really begs the question…”

        Because they are worse than useless. (Useless = silence; useful = good communication; worse than useless = bad communication.)

        Reply
  9. Another, not insignificant development which has happened in recent years is the growth in Ordained
    Self-Supporting Associate Ministry, quite a lot of it Locally Deployed. However the discussion around clergy seems to have in mind full time stipendiary incumbents but I wonder whether there is something around and about our ministry that might add a different dimension to the debate. I am trying not to whinge, but we are not just part-time vicar’s little helpers but an expression/model of priesthood and commitment to the parish that I believe has something to offer to the ongoing debate.

    Reply
  10. What an excellent article.
    I’m outside this and have no vested interest in structures or systems, but I have as a former lawyer set up my own business and advised and set up the documentation for a new community charity.
    Frog has written an excellent article, which highlights not one, but numerous conflicts of interests, to make the whole system unworkable for the furtherance of any common ministerial purpose, almost at every level, which to me would dissuade anyone with their eyes open, with the knowledge of the contents of this article, from seeking to follow a Christian calling in the CoE.
    If I may make two or three points:
    1 Charities and trustees. The onerous nature of personal liability of trustees is a weight, to far for many, paid or lay especially where it involves in effect managing a small/large scale business, with responsibility to keep up to date. I was a church council member for a couple of years in the mid ’90s and even then was greatly frustrated at the somnolent pace of things and interminable emphasis on finance and buildings. (It was a freehold parish). At no time did I do due diligence on the role, thinking I was merely, helping out, volunteering.
    2 I can not see Myriad taking off, if it is to be another template, superimposed over the existing system, particularly so if duties of trustees are to be placed on lay *worker*. But maybe I misunderstand.
    3 Top-down. I was employed in a senior management role in the NHS, and while in certain spheres, the concept of bottom -up approach to commissioning and providing services was promoted, in my limited experience, it rarely, even if it was achieved, lasted long; only till the next director or Chief Executive, or Secretary of State, who all wanted to put their own imprint on the system. Even now, I hear from a nephew in senior management that the short-lived GP Clinical Commissioning Groups time is drawing to a close, with yet another top-down, re-organisation. It is little wonder, if Bishops are drawn from the Public Sector or Industry, that top-down will be the form by default or design. Whereas, church membership is in effect a body-voluntary.

    Reply
  11. All PCC’s are charities, but not all PCC’s are required (yet) to register with the Charity Commission. As far as I am aware the simple act of registration does not change the status of PCC members and that they always were charity trustees.

    Regarding the Endowment and Glebe Measure in my area very few parishes had sufficient glebe to pay even for a significant part of a clergy stipend. If the capital could be returned to individual parishes then it would in reality benefit only a few rich parishes and the ‘estate’ parishes that really need the financial support would largely be the losers. The income from diocesan glebe is a restricted fund (the Diocesan Stipends Fund) and can only be used to pay for parochial clergy. I therefore fail to see the argument here.

    Please could someone define “managerialism” for me please.

    Reply
  12. This is a very fine article, carefully resourced and critical thinking courteously engaged – thank you. For the continuing discussion it might be helpful if more space was given to outlining the original intentions behind the initiatives that Ewing rightly focuses on. What were they seeking to address and why? Successive General Synods (yes, it was a widely consultative process) did not work all this out with hindsight.

    Reply
    • That is a good question. I was part of the Synod that passed the CDM measure; there were voices warning against it, but we did not heed them. I have now found myself, multiply, a victim of exactly what those voices warned of.

      The problem here is poor process, based on a defensiveness about power. Anything so radical as this should always have a planned review against the stated aims, so that unforeseen consequences could be addressed. But no-one wants to surrender the kind of absolute power that the decision-making process appears to grant.

      The same was true with RME and theological education. Several of us warned loudly of the consequences of what would happen; but Steven Croft roundly rebuffed us, and played off one group against another with political adroitness. He then moved on—having given himself as diocesan a great deal of power over the processes, to the detriment of the system as a whole.

      Without any review of the decision with the benefit of hindsight, we are lumbered with something that no-one has the will to tackle, so it seems.

      Reply
      • Ian,
        “A planned review against stated aims”. That seems to be rare, if at all, at a large scale level, though I stand to be corrected.
        The evidence in the NHS is that national structural change does not achieve stated aims, yet it goes ahead, mostly as a political decision. Primary Care Trusts in the NHS had inspections and didn’t last long.

        It is practically simpler to have local based planned reviews.
        But at the outset, perhaps there could have been national pilot/ probationary schemes country wide, with a selection of different demographics.

        Independent reviews are perhaps the ideal in theory, may be more informative but not without contention, such as David Chamberlain’s comment explains.

        Reply
      • Thanks for your reflections Ian. I was not on synod but I remember the theological education debate and the early central proposals for clergy review and capability procedures which went with Common Tenure. Both were hopelessly over the top and actually unworkable but only one was revised in the right direction.

        Reply
  13. Indeed, trusteed obligations pertain, whether the trust(which may or may not be a charity) os registered with the Charities Comission.
    And it is precisely at this point where there may be a sunstantial conflict of interest, place upon the trustees by other “offices in the heirarchical structure.
    As for managerialism with the CoE structure, I suggest that it includes the importation of the science of management, which may be partial, wholesale, good or poor, but mostly excludes or denudes theological and or ministerial vocations.
    I’d also draw s distinction between management and leadership.
    Local ministers may be excellent theological and pastoral leaders of their people but ineffective managers of fiancial and material resources.

    Reply
  14. I was a senior executive in Financial Regulation at the Charity Commission some years ago. Registration with the Commission recognises charitable status in law: it does not confer it. PCC members were always trustees.

    I would add: even if appointed to trusteeship as a representative of an outside organisation, or present ex officio, a trustee’s responsibility towards running the charity so as to take forward its objects (in this case “the advancement of religion”), is exercised in a personal capacity. In general, if a trustee feels that pressure is being put on them to act merely as a delegate whose mandate is derived from outside, and that this pressure conflicts with their duty to the charity, I’d encourage them to take legal advice.

    Reply
    • But this is in many ways the problem itself. I would say more than 80% of the people who would even consider joining a PCC in a small church would be put off by just reading a sentence like that, about trustee-ship. It is not that we should hide the legal position of PCC members, but it has to be presented in the absolute simplest of terms and without an implication of some significant legal risk.

      The symptom of Managerialism in this context I would say is the almost endless demand and requirement for form-filling, accreditation, compliance, risk-assessment, surveys and so forth. For example, our diocese is keen on ‘Growing Healthy Churches’ using the ‘Natural Church Development’ system. They want every parish to do the survey, EVERY year. We must survey, send in results, await the analysis, and then work on the analysis to produce 3 new initiatives, and put them in place, EVERY year. It is a lot of work and too much of a proportion of all the available work-resources in the parish, it actually frightens some parishioners, because they feel they are being checked-up on (however much pastoral oil you pour on their concerns), and it hugely adds to the feeling of pressure to DO something. We find that by the time we have given enough meeting time to considering these things a couple more months have passed by, and the time for the next survey is fast approaching. Its just an example, but if you only have 4 or 5 people who have the resources (mental, spiritual, financial, etc.) to take an initiative forward it is quite enough to do a survey and attempt one initiative per year. Allowing a 2-year cycle would give people a much more positive view of the whole thing.

      Reply
      • “The symptom of Managerialism in this context I would say is the almost endless demand and requirement for form-filling, accreditation, compliance, risk-assessment, surveys and so forth.”

        In my experience compliance and risk-assessment comes from 2 sources. One is from the law (e.g. health and safety) and the other from new safeguarding requirements. While the latter comes from Dioceses I challenge anyone to tell me that this is not necessary given the past abuses.

        As for the survey you speak of I have no local experience.

        Reply
    • Personal indemnity insurance, from the outset, may provide some assurance and safety-net to take on a trustee role. And a fund could be set up to finance the premiums.

      Reply
      • Trustee indemnity insurance is available for PCC’s from EIG but of limited value in my opinion. Far better for dioceses to provide support and training – which most do, but then this is then seen as a further burden. It is not an easy problem to solve.

        Reply
        • Not an easy problem to solve, I agree, but why are PCC members trustees? Why is it necessary? Focus groups perhaps, with voting/opinions advisory, not determinative, to be determined by staff. Maybe this shows my lack of understanding of the system and relationships.
          In what way is indemnity insurance of limited value?
          In light of the article, I’d suggest that training provided by dioceses, immediately sets up a conflict of interest for PCC members.
          And if a PCC is a charity, it seems that it is far from independent – see church warden Jonathan Douglas’s comment above, where conflict of interest is uppermost.

          Reply
          • One of my friends, who knows a lot more about charity law than about the C of E, said to me: “The leaders of [a well-known wealthy evangelical parish] believe that they work for God, not for the C of E. They are a separately-registered charity. Serious question: if they were to arrive at the opinion that their bishop, diocese, and the C of E as an institution were holding them back in their mission, which materially detracts from the pursuit of their charitable objects, and they also know that the diocese is short of money, what is it that stops them from offering the diocese a few £million to buy out their relationship with the institution, including purchasing the premises, so they can go it alone without this ball-and-chain round their ankle? you know, like a ‘management buy-out’? why, in fact, do they not legally have a DUTY to do this?”

            I didn’t have time to give the long answer, but my short answer was “The C of E doesn’t work like that.” I am no longer sure, however, what is so special about the C of E. Secular charities withdraw from their sector’s “umbrella bodies” all the time, if the trustees decide that the relationship no longer offers value.

          • What a very interesting question. Under freehold in the past, I don’t think the diocese could make any claim to a right to the buildings of a parish.

        • Geoff, it’s an automatic element of the parish insurance policy so all trustees are automatically covered.

          Nick, I’d be interested as to why you believe it’s ‘of limited value’ as it offers protection at very low cost. It doesn’t cover deliberate decisions the PCC knows to be wrong when it makes them (e.g doing work without the relevant faculty permissions) but that’s understandable!

          I agree that training and support are needed on the responsibilities and specifics, and whilst Dioceses do provide this, it does vary widely from Diocese to Diocese ….perhaps that is something that COULD be shaped centrally rather than locally so there is consistency – I’ve had the good, the bad and the awful over time as a PCC member of different churches! And perhaps some bitesized modules with the basics would be useful that people can work through at their own pace as not every PCC member can make daytime training sessions!

          Reply
  15. I echo many of the comments above. The article is a most helpful contribution to the debate.
    A couple of questions/observations:
    1. Is Frog correct in his statement about the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connection churches being ‘a network of Anglican churches’? I suggest that this is not the case.
    2. I take the point about the additional burden imposed by the Charity Commission. But surely this is one of the consequences of parochial independence and self-determination? The radical alternative might be that espoused by the Roman Catholic Church in England, where the diocese is the charity – and not the individual parishes. I suspect that such ‘centralisation’ (albeit from a different ecclesiology) would not be welcomed in most Anglican parishes.
    3. Is the Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976 really a ‘failed experiment’? I look at the huge variation in the figures for net endowment income against each parish in the 1963/4 edition of Crockford: from £4 in a parish in Willesden in London to £2630 in Wigan (the latter, thanks to the Lancashire coal mines, IIRC). Even then, many PCCs needed to find money to increase their incumbent’s stipend to a reasonable amount – with significant variations remaining in the net benefice income. By whom were parishes promised that ‘they would never have to pay for their clergy again’?
    The parson’s glebe was taken over by local trustees in Spalding in Lincolnshire in the seventeenth century, because the wise local farmers did not want their priest to be spending his time in glebe management – and the incumbents have benefitted from that early and local ‘managerialism’ to this day. Perhaps it’s a shame that others did not follow this example.
    I am writing this comment from the very different context of the Church of England in the Bailiwick of Guernsey – where very little of the modern Church of England legislation applies. The ancient parish churches (and some of the parsonages) are owned and maintained by the ratepayers. Incumbents have the freehold. The parish system is the basis of local government. I have just returned from watching the local cider producer maintaining the orchard opposite the church, which is glebe land – still owned by the parish. We have much greater opportunity and responsibility for determination of our common life than might be the case in England.
    But we are facing here some of the same problems as are being discussed by Save the Parish – the number of churches, the cost of stipendiary ministry (we receive no financial support from any English diocese of the NCIs; clergy and their pensions are funded locally), recruiting lay office holders, etc, etc.
    The aspiration that ‘everything would be fine if we undid the work of the last forty years’ does, I regret to say, seem to be a little unrealistic.
    I have been a member of the senior staff team in three dioceses over the past 11 years. I recognise that one person’s ‘managerialism’ is another person’s ‘best endeavour to support the local church in fast changing circumstances’. Of course, I may well disagree with (or, at least, raise a quizzical eyebrow at) some of the solutions and some of the appointments I observe in some dioceses; but I hesitate to comment when I don’t know either the detail or the context of the decisions.

    Reply
    • 1. No I don not think Frog is correct about the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion (note the spelling they use). It is certainly a separate denomination today and I believe it was in the Countess’s time.
      2. I agree entirely
      3. The point I was trying to make. I am also aware that Suffragan bishops and archdeacons were sometimes the incumbents of parishes with particularly large glebe income which was also used to pay a curate to do the work! Note the glebe income was restricted income even then. The fundamental problem is the CofE needs more income than it has to fund ministry the way is was in the past. “undoing the reforms of the last 40 years” will not change that. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the current proposals, if the CofE is to survive then some radical changes are required and they will be uncomfortable for both clergy and laity.

      “I recognise that one person’s ‘managerialism’ is another person’s ‘best endeavour to support the local church in fast changing circumstances’. ” Yes exactly.

      Reply
    • Thanks for this Tim. I think you point to the fact that these are complex issues and need teasing out.

      I was particularly struck by your observation about the disparities prior to the 1976 measure. In a discussion with Save the Parish people on FB, I asked what system they wanted to go back to. Individual endowments? Wealthy benefactors? Landed gentry as clergy?

      Or, here’s an idea, congregations being taught that they need to give to support their own ministry—with partnerships between wealthier and poorer parishes…?

      Reply
  16. Simultaneously brilliant and deeply depressing article, thank you! The managerialism which has crept into the CofE during my 27 years as a member of the clergy is somewhat mirrored by my experience as a school governor. The burdens being placed on volunteers in that context are, if anything, heavier than those placed on PCC members. I’ve been a governor on and off for about 30 years, so would be seen as very experienced, but I’m truly dreading OFSTED’s imminent visit, as I feel I’m being judged along with the staff team, and any slip ups I make during their inspection could jeopardise the school’s evaluation. I’m ex-officio as the incumbent, so cannot resign, but I would be seriously considering it if that were not the case, as committed as I am to the flourishing of our school. If I’m feeling like this, it’s no surprise that people are less than keen to volunteer as governors, and likewise as PCC members. I look forward with trepidation to OFSTECCLES coming to my parishes any day soon.

    Reply
    • I’m not sure that you cannot resign the governorship. Doing so would not exclude automatically you from operating in the school outside this role. It would make the pastoral role one separate from the managerial /supervision one which can be a clash of roles.

      Reply
      • I’m not sure that you cannot resign the governorship

        I’m sure David will have looked into this, but resigning the governorship would require him to find a substitute to fill the rôle on his behalf, and David, being a conscientious sort, may well feel he cannot morally ask someone else to take on that onerous responsibility just to save him the hassle.

        Reply
        • I can’t comment on how David sees it…

          but it could be that it would release the incumbent to focus differently and an opportunity for someone else to add their effort to the school. Is it always important for a specific person to do something or that the task is done? Sometimes “we” have to say “no” in order to work better.

          Having been the incumbent with 5 church schools in the parish and one huge state secondary I chose to take up governership of the latter and others to take my place in the primary schools. My predecessor chaired all five! It did not stop me from being involved in them but in a different way.

          Reply
  17. I suggest a campaign to Save the Doctrine comes first. More important and fundamental than the LLF disagreement, important though that is.

    Phil Almond

    Reply
  18. “Lay leaders, church wardens in these cases, were happy to face the facts, but were not allowed to solve the problem as they saw fit. In all three situations, it was made clear to them by either an archdeacon or a bishop that it was not their place to decide on how to use the assets of their village or save their parish.”

    The CofE is not only short of funds, but there is a shortage of clergy. Only a short time ago we were advised that due to retirements the numbers of stipendiary clergy would fall even with a 50% increase in ordinations. I don’t know the details in this case but in the context of a shortage of clergy is it right the a rich parish of a few souls should have priority over a larger poorer parish?

    Reply
  19. Like some others, I was left with a few ‘I wonder’ questions over some of the assertions. Anecdotally, my grandfather was a parson (his preferred term) in parishes in Oxfordshire and Kent through the 1950s and 60s, retiring in the mid-70s, before the glebe reforms. Yes, he lived in a Georgian mansion in Oxfordshire, but received almost nothing as a regular stipend, he and his family being almost wholly dependent on the smallholding he ran in the extensive gardens and Easter offerings. Even then, they could only heat one room in the house. With no private means or family money (a far cry from many of his predecessors in post) it was hand-to-mouth existence. I can see rich parishes crying foul because of the ‘plundering’ of glebe, but what proportion of them were really self-sufficient with a fair (liveable) stipend for their clergy? You can see a contemporary equivalent with some of the ancient dioceses benefiting from significant historic assets and other newer dioceses (Birmingham for example) having almost nothing.
    Likewise I wonder whether the managerial turn in terms of charitable responsibilities was down to the Church or to increased attention from the Charity Commission? As others say, rules around registration with the CC have tightened, but this has only only required PCCs to face explicitly what has long been their position in law. If I might add a correction, only PCCs with an income of over £100,000 are currently required to register, others are excepted charities, an exception which was recently renewed for another 10 years. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t charities, just relieved of the administrative burden that comes with registration.
    My big question is whether these ‘managerial changes’ have been self-inflicted wounds or whether – like the rise in safeguarding requirements – they have been required by the changing world in which the Church exists, in which no institution has been able to carry on into the 21st century operating as it did in the 18th.

    Reply
    • Yes indeed–we underestimate how much we are suffering from a change in culture.

      In a discussion with Save the Parish people on FB, I asked what system they wanted to go back to. Individual endowments? Wealthy benefactors? Landed gentry as clergy?

      Or, here’s an idea, congregations being taught that they need to give to support their own ministry—with partnerships between wealthier and poorer parishes…?

      Reply
      • Yeah, yeah,
        I know that tithing is no more, but it is an indicator, is it not, of who comes first in our lives, who is Lord of our finances ? And from gross, pre-tax income.
        Mind you, tithing was pre- Mosaic law.
        There were after all tithes and offerings!

        Reply
  20. The best thing I have read so far on the current crisis/conversation. Many thanks Frog.
    ‘At the beginning of my ministry, as a young vicar in the inner-city, my bishop was acutely aware of me, my parish, my family and the needs of our church and neighbourhood. He rang me regularly to ask how I was, he found practical ways of supporting and encouraging us, visited the church, and if you don’t mind me saying so, it felt like he gave a damn.’
    This was exactly true for me too. My first Bishop was Patrick Harris. GRHS.

    Reply
  21. Registration of PCCs did not alter the status of PCCs as corporations, or the fact that members of a PCC are ‘charity trustees’, which does not entail being a trustee in the strict sense.
    The reminder was probably salutary, but should not be misunderstood.

    Reply
    • In what way or or ways don’t the trustees have a fiduciary realtionship, the legal fiduciary duties of a trustee?
      As stated by Frog, (and Wm Arthurs above)
      the duties are onerous at law.
      And what are PCC members being trained in, by Diocese?
      Maybe Nick could explain.

      Reply
      • They do have those fiduciary duties neither church law nor charity registration has changed that!

        For property transactions the role of the ‘Diocesan Authority’ ( a role similar to a custodian trustee) provides some protection to PCC members in ensuring that the PCC has taken proper advice and complies with charity law.

        My own diocese provides training for parish officers on a regular basis which addresses these and other issues that PCC’s need to be aware of.

        Reply
  22. Thank you very much for this. A couple of points.

    The Connexion seceded from the Church in 1782, after a scrap over the Spa Fields Chapel, and even before then not all of its followers were ‘Anglican’. The best book I know of is that of Alan Harding (2003), formerly incumbent of South Mymms with Ridge in Hertfordshire, and then of the large South Hartismere benefice in Suffolk.

    Parochial endowments varied radically in size. Many parishes had little or no glebe. A few parishes were exceptionally well endowed, but there was a very long tail. Hence the Bounty, which functioned as a tax on the first fruits of wealthy livings which were transferred by the Bounty to poor livings, and which engaged in an extensive parsonage-building programme. I have made this point to Mr Trott in private correspondence.

    The agricultural slump which occurred after 1870 (with the flood of cheap grain) devastated clerical incomes. After 1836 tithe rentcharge was calculated septennially, the ‘modus’ being based upon prevailing grain prices. For those clergy who had glebe, its returns, even if heavily diminished, became a lifeline. Guy Shrubsole has asked how the Church’s acreage fell so dramatically in the century after 1870, and noted that it had to be because freehold clergy were selling glebe, often at a discount, to make ends meet. Clerical incomes fell very quickly in the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s. Something had to be done to halt the bleed.

    The purpose of the 1976 Measure was therefore not only to equalise clerical incomes, but also to stop clergy from ‘selling the family silver’. However, the implicit promise of the Measure was that the quid pro quo for the ‘theft by legislative fiat’ would be that the parishes would be kept in stipendiary clergy.

    It did not work that way, of course: the corps of stipendiaries was unaffordable. The financial pillars which sustained the parish had been church rate, tithe, glebe and fees. Church rate was lost in 1868. Tithe was finally lost in 1936 (or 1977). Glebe, where it was to be had, was lost in 1976-78, and fees were mostly diverted to DBFs.

    Moreover, the old system had not been designed for superannuation. Clergy pensions were first introduced in 1926, but clergy remained able to stay in employment until death; the 1975 Measure introduced compulsion with respect to retirement, and this quickly placed great and increasing pressure upon Church finances. This led to the ‘furniture burning’ of appropriated parochial endowments, and also to speculative ventures by the Commissioners. The outcome was the Pensions Measure 1997. That Measure, and not the 1976 Measure, is the cause of much of the present difficulties, not least because its has sucked money away from the parishes at just the point when they needed to invest more heavily in mission work in the wake of the liberalisation of Sunday trading from 1994.

    Also, as others have noted, parish officers have been effective trustees perhaps as far back as 1921, if not before. I am not certain that people really appreciate just how onerous the fiduciary obligations of a trustee can be in law, even with profin cover. The recent tendency to merge PCCs (chiefly because of the increasing difficulty of replacing officers), especially in rural multi-parish benefices, if anything increases the liabilities markedly. The morality of this is questionable, especially when so many officers are retirees living sparingly on often modest annuities. This is another reason why I would argue for the transfer of the buildings to the state or some central agency: it is unreasonable to expect a small number of often elderly people to have complete responsibility and accountability for a large and expensive building.

    The Taylor Review also proposed increasing the administrative burdens of parish officers. The chief problem with the Church, as I see it, is that too much money (parish share) is being sucked up from the bottom (for all that the parish share system permits a cross-subsidy of poor parishes by wealthier ones), whilst too many burdens are being pushed down from the top.

    I should add that I attended a service at Latimer in 2014, which was led by the excellent John Went. It was really heartening to see a small church on the fringes of Buckinghamshire with such a wonderful community spirit, fine preaching and teaching, and with so many nice people. It was also a huge pleasure to see a critical mass of younger people, for once. Thank you again!

    Reply
    • Yes what a lovely man.
      You two ‘Frogs’ should really pool your wisdom on this. Encouraged by the level of discussion.

      Reply
    • “The financial pillars which sustained the parish had been church rate, tithe, glebe and fees. Church rate was lost in 1868. Tithe was finally lost in 1936 (or 1977). Glebe, where it was to be had, was lost in 1976-78, and fees were mostly diverted to DBFs.”

      The DBF part of Fees has steadily increased (and is now 100% for non-church funerals). The smart / cynical thing for the incumbent to do is to waive all fees and instead suggest a voluntary donation to the PCC.

      That way:

      1.) the DBF don’t get their hands on it

      2.) it’s good pastoral practice as the people pay whatever they can afford. (It’s easy enough to suggest a figure, say £100 for a funeral, and even ask that it be Gift Aided as it is not remittance for services rendered but a donation)

      3.) we could undercut all the freelancers and chancers (aka “civil celebrants”) by virtue, if that’s the word, of our subsidy.

      I’ve been waiving more and more fees. I’m amazed the legislation allows me to, but it does and I take full advantage of it. Doubtless they will close that loophole soon and another lever the clergy have will be lost to the great power grab by the Higher Ups.

      Reply
        • A blog post on fees would be interesting . . . . A few (a VERY few) clergy still retain their fees but that is no longer an option and what was the Incumbent’s is now the DBF’s. This was particularly a stupid change that benefitted no-one and actually means the c-of-e pays more NI but it’s all part of the slow drift of power away from the parish and priest and towards the ravenous monsters, rocks and whirlpools of the Dire Seas.

          There are big questions about what we charge, why we charge and how we can do better (including my mini rebellion as outlined above.) I suspect if the c-of-e waived all fees for non-church funerals and did them on a “voluntary donation” basis we’d clean up and possibly end up quids in to boot. Of course, the DBFs would block any attempt at that . . . .

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          • Harry,
            You make an interesting observation. Our Baptist church will shortly hold a memorial service for a member of our local community who died a few months ago and was simply buried in a committal by the local Anglican church without a service, due to Covid. The church was shut. They had to get a priest in from outside to do it. They charged the family a fee of £250.
            We have informal contact with the family and will do the memorial service for them for nothing. The family were not too impressed by what they got for their money, so I think that you are right that doing things on a voluntary donation basis is likely pay dividends not just materially but also demonstrating appropriate pastoral sensitivity.

    • ‘ Guy Shrubsole has asked how the Church’s acreage fell so dramatically in the century after 1870, and noted that it had to be because freehold clergy were selling glebe, often at a discount, to make ends meet. Clerical incomes fell very quickly in the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s. Something had to be done to halt the bleed.’

      I think this must be the answer to the question ‘Where did the Church’s historic glebe assets actually go?’ And I think dioceses with historic assets who have been selling them off to cope with revenue shortfalls are making the same mistake all over again.

      Reply
      • “And I think dioceses with historic assets who have been selling them off to cope with revenue shortfalls are making the same mistake all over again.”

        I don’t think that is legally permissible with glebe. The glebe assets are part of the Diocesan Stipends Fund which is a restricted endowment fund. The income can only be used for the stated purposes. The capital can only be expended to certain capital purposes, not to cope with revenue shortfalls. Our diocese has sold glebe at windfall prices when it became possible to sell it at development value, but this has gone into the Diocesan Stipends Fund as required by the Measure.

        Reply
          • Depends on the status of the asset they could sell of any unrestricted asset to fund day to day income. Charities Act finance can get complicated at the best of times, and these different types of asset in CofE make it more complex. At the very least there will be Benefice property, Glebe property, Educational Foundations (unless the Board of Education is a separate charity) and DBF corporate property and within the DBF corporate there may be further restrictions of use including endowment type restrictions.

            Basically if a developer offers £1 million for some agricultural glebe land that was worth say £5,000 in order to build houses on it, it is in the diocese’s financial interests to sell it. If they invest that £1 million they get a much bigger income (say £50,000 per year) from that the couple of hundred pounds they might have got in rent from a farmer.

            That £50,0000 increased income can be used to fund stipends reducing any deficit in the diocesan budget. That may look like selling capital to pay income but it isn’t as they are still only spending the income. The capital value has actually increased.

            This has the side effect of leaving the chair of the DBF to explain to the annual meeting of the DBF that although the statutory accounts show a surplus, they really had a deficit as the £994,000 will be shown in the accounts on the income side as gains on sale of assets.

          • Sorry typo 995k gain on sale of assets.

            Even where permitted I would not support use of capital to fund income indefinitely as that is not sustainable. However many diocese are face with no alternative in the short term, which leads to difficult decisions. However I would support the use of capital to provide pump priming support and capital assets for mission opportunities that are likely to be more than sustainable in the longer term without ongoing support. This is the logic behind SDF funding from the centre and diocesan match funding.

        • Many thanks for this. You raise a very interesting point (for me, that is). Section 19 of the 1976 Measure required the glebe land to be held by the DBF for the benefit of the diocesan stipends fund.

          However, that requirement was repealed by the Church Property Measure 2018. Section 25 of that Measure requires the proceeds of sale of glebe to be allocated to the stipends fund, less the discharge of any liabilities.

          Yet under Section 13 of that Measure when a parsonage is sold, the proceeds of sale, less the redemption of any liabilities, are allocated ‘to the capital by way of accumulation’. What capital? Presumably the capital of the DBF, though the defined expressions in Sections 48-49 do not clarify the position.

          Of course many more parishes will have had parsonages than glebe. The parsonages will, mostly, have been funded by means of tithe income (which was a tax), although the Bounty did provide subventions for poor parishes (see here, by way of example, for Leicestershire: https://www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/HarrattvolumeLXI-3sm.pdf).

          Perhaps the SFP campaign should be concentrating on the proceeds of sale of parsonages rather than glebe. As mentioned, it seems to me that the 1976 Measure, for all its faults, was part of a progressive policy, aiming at the equalisation of clerical incomes, which had hitherto been often irrationally, and unfairly, unequal (sometimes grotesquely so).

          I agree with Mr Orr-Ewing’s opinions (which elide with some of the ‘mixed ecology’ statements we have seen recently). However, my concern with the Myriad proposals is that they risk creating rival income streams, when many parochial incomes are already highly attenuated, often because of parish share subventions, or the problematic legacy of such subventions. If the problem of the buildings could be got out of the way once and for all – ideally by means of some comprehensive national scheme (one which, ideally, would preserve the Church’s reach) – the stakes for many parishes would be reduced accordingly, and there might be rather less of a reaction against the sort of plans that Myriad have been advancing.

          Reply
          • Sale of parsonages is indeed more complex. Where a benefice is merged with another, the ownership of the parsonages of the benefices can be determined with the pastoral order and ownership can indeed be passed to the DBF. Any other sale of a parsonage will initially place the capital in the pastoral reserve, to be used to provide a replacement parsonage. The DBF can make a case for release of these funds on the basis of an undertaking to provide a replacement parsonage if needed.

        • Many thanks for that, Canon Orman! That is most helpful. So, I must therefore assume that, in the case of Section 13 of the 2018 Measure ‘capital’ means the general reserve held by the DBF, and not the stipends’ fund.

          One thing I would add is that the Church would do itself a great favour if it explained to the public how it is funded, especially at a local level. Too many people seem to think that it is enormously wealthy, and this (and the statement in draft pastoral schemes that churches are to be ‘closed for *regular* worship’, when they are invariably closed forever) might account for why many people are often not stirred to action to support their local church community if it is fading. Even the Commissioners’ assets are fairly modest when compared to the endowments of some of the more famous universities.

          In addition, whilst there are many monographs and articles dealing with the property of the Church in the middle ages and early modern period, there is practically nothing covering the period after the mid-nineteenth century, save where information can be gleaned on an incidental basis from articles on, say, agrarian history. The Commissioners’ themselves have been very well served by the late Geoffrey Best (‘Temporal Pillars’ (1964)) and his continuator, Andrew Chandler (‘The Church of England in the Twentieth Century’ (2006)), which were institutional histories commissioned by the Commissioners, and there is also Eric Evans on ‘The Contentious Tithe’ (1976) (although that has only a few pages on the story after 1836, and that book – really a worked up doctoral thesis – was published before Denis Healey’s 1977 budget which brought forward the termination of tithe redemption by 20 years). There is almost nothing at a diocesan level (Arthur Burns on ‘The Diocesan Revival of the Church of England’ stops at 1870, and Peter Meadows’ edited ‘Ely: Bishops and Diocese’ (2010) does not really cover modern finance in any meaningful way). Absent that, I have found it necessary to rely upon annual reports (where these are to be had, and which often obscure as much as they reveal), Hansard, the reading of legislation or consultation papers preparatory to legislation, or upon information gleaned from my travels: all that is often thin gruel, confused, confusing, incomplete and has led me up a good many futile cul-de-sacs.

          Reply
          • No that deals with the replacement of the parsonage and in that case the capital is clearly restricted to the DSF or the Pastoral fund. As I understand it different procedures apply where a parsonage becomes redundant due to a pastoral scheme under the 2011 measure.

    • ‘Clergy pensions were first introduced in 1926, but clergy remained able to stay in employment until death; the 1975 Measure introduced compulsion with respect to retirement, and this quickly placed great and increasing pressure upon Church finances.’

      The great irony here is that now we are in a situation where clergy must retire, when anyone working for B and Q can continue in work indefinitely if fit. This surely needs to be changed.

      Reply
      • Christians do not retire, only expire… but not really, not for long.
        Fit for what? Purpose? That is a Sale of Goods terminology.
        So is, *merchantable quality*.
        Should they retire if they not of merchantable quality? Should they even be on display in the first place? On the check-out counter?

        But isn’t lay ministry a form of sponsored DIY…?

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  23. Thank you for an excellent and enlightening article. My wife and I are Pentecostal Methodists who have been running a para-church ecumenical worship band for decades. We had one year in which we had members drawn from seven denominations.
    I wasn’t aware of much of the legal detail but had seen the practical consequences in my ‘ view from the trenches’.
    We have excellent ministers, vicars and retired clergy but it takes them all their time to just stand still under the onslaught from on high and the demands of running patches which cover up to 17 churches with travel times of an hour between them.
    It has been apparent for some time that unless lay people just ‘get on with it’ the Gospel might simply perish with this generation.
    If the climate scientists are right we might very well need the parish system and very local churches once again as national government and institutional church disintegrates under the weight of the coming climate catastrophe.

    Reply
  24. Some years ago my wife and I worshiped in a Church in Birmingham. It was the largest parish in the deanery. The Parish was so large that if you split the parish in two then BOTH halves would still be the largest parishes in the Deanery!
    The housing suburb had massively outgrown the original Parish.
    We decided on a Church plant, but at that time there was no plan whatsoever as to how to support a Church plant at all. Even when I left there was no plan.

    A Curate started the Church plant in a school very successfully. It grew to 80 contacts and 40 regular attendees.
    I am a Reader and not a Curate and when the Curate moved on I took on the Church plant – so it was lay led. I did use the term “Chaplain” because I was not ordained and yet Joe-Public understood the term since I was the Church leader.
    A Curate is an entire two years of training – I got absolutely nothing of the sort precisely because there was NO plan.
    No Church is ever smooth running and the Church plant was no different.

    In spite of that, I am proud of the fact that I lost absolutely nobody at all and the growth of the Church plant was only small. It grew to 45 regular attendees and 90 contacts (the additional attendees had actually come from amongst those with whom we were already in contact). I did get into difficulties with one couple and gained the help of one of the clergy in the deanery to “arbitrate” instead of me trying to be heavy-handed.

    Lay leaders like me got, and get, no training, unlike Curates. The Church has an established plan for one but not for the other at all.

    When I look at the proposal for 10,000 lay-led churches there is likewise no realistic plan. The CofE is making the classic mistake that it always makes of thinking that appointing a central person is the same as having a plan when it is nothing of the sort. Most of the CofE don’t actually know what a plan is.

    [Interestingly I stupidly thought that a regular congregation of 45 was small just because the mother church had 3 services and 200 to 300 people. I discovered later that 45 is actually quite a large number, particulalry when you were renting a school and you didn’t have a Church building at all.]

    Reply
  25. Thanks for a very perceptive article Frog. You are so right in arguing for having a mixed economy – geographic parishes and church plants.
    The thing that must at last be allowed to happen in the Church is to encourage local initiative rather than stifle it by centralised control. In the countryside people want their own church and their own minister. Let them have it and let that minister be non-stipendiary if that is all they can afford.
    On the housing estates – so many of them now well away from a parish church – initiative must be encouraged to start church plants, but without all the bureaucratic lumber that would stifle it at birth.
    It is time for the Church of God to be brave. Let’s do it!

    Mike Keulemans

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  26. Thank you so much for this Frog – I am new to your blog post and read it through a link posted by a friend … I have commented on FB but just wanted to say thank you here!

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  27. Having read this article and all the comments, I wonder if someone needs to set up a “Rate my Bishop” site in the same anonymous spirit as ‘Rate my Teacher ‘ or ‘Rate my Doctor” with suitable categories.

    It might make the Bishops pay more attention to the ‘We are here’ community.

    Reply
  28. Geoff, I am not an Anglican Bishop although I believe I did at one time, confuse Andrew Godsall when I used to post on this blog as “Bishop Chris” which was the closest I ever came to being part of the Anglican clerical establishment..

    Reply
    • Yes Chris,
      I had realised that over the time I’ve visited and you have commented on Ian’s blog; not even Anglican I think, Baptist maybe? A rhetorical question.
      (Attempted poor) humour doesn’t translate well.
      And if I’m not mistaken, your comment may have been partial tongue in cheek, with a serious point to it.
      Though, seriously, I do think it is an internal CoE (warring) family matter.

      Reply
      • Geoff – yes is it was little tongue in cheek. I would expect such a site to be only open to vicars, curates and other functionaries of the Anglican family not to those outside it. I think some of us outside Anglicanism find all this a little bemusing. If the ‘Purple Powers’ as someone here has referred to them, cannot see that the Anglican church ‘has become hamstrung by its own administrative and managerial systems as the two Frogs have so ably demonstrated and needs radical change, then its future doesn’t look terribly bright.

        Reply
  29. Interesting article. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while, having listened to Andrew Rumsey talking about parish (and read his book, although more academic than his talks), discussion at our church (moved from Methodist to Anglican 20 years ago), and also with work as I use archives a lot, including parish records which tell an incredible story of the changes in the parish system over the centuries and can still be key historic sources in community history.
    One key issue is how people in the Church of England see the parish. A previous church were open about how they thought it was outdated in the era where people travelled to places/clubs/organisations they were interested in and didn’t worry about locality. My last church wasn’t quite like this but as a city centre Resource church 95% or more lived outside the parish, some coming a distance, and there wasn’t much sense of parish. I gather that HTB church plants are also dismissive of parish. I wonder though if the past year has/will make any difference, with us staying home and local more. A few people I know are now going to their local church (our family included) rather than travelling and more interested in what’s going on in our community. There is also a growing awareness of the importance of a sense of place which I wonder if this will have an impact of how we think about where we worship.
    I’m glad you said you’ve asked people what they actually want to go to as I wonder what it is that people want or expect. It’s easy to moan and point out problems, but with limited money and resources what do people think can happen? As I mentioned in an earlier comment, everyone think that other people have a better solution!
    The changes in church finances are before I was born, but looking in parish records and hearing from people who remember then it wouldn’t be much of a solution as many parishes never had the money to cover themselves, and the inequalities were stark. Seeing us as one body and the rich helping out the poor is admirable, and I can think of a few examples of this happening with parish share, but plenty of examples of parishes wanting to hang onto ‘their’ money. It will take quite a change of attitude.
    Regarding trustees is it really much of a change in the Church of England? From my Methodist background (and my in laws Congregational Church) there is a strong sense that the Church council has responsibilities, and there’s usually someone who keeps reminding people that decisions have consequences.

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  30. So a ‘head above the parapet’ comment from a ‘managerial high up’ or whatever we are commonly referred to now!

    Firstly, having been in parish ministry(lay and ordained) for 20+ years before becoming an Archdeacon, I feel partially equipped to comment.

    2. Thanks Frog & Ian for engaging in the issues, and to those who have clarified fact, perspective and theology. No one person has the sole answer.

    3. The many comments about the ‘CofE’ seem to imagine a single institution with command and control facilities. It is of course over 40 legally independent bodies if you only count dioceses, add in parishes themselves, incumbents, trusts, dbf, diocesan bishop ad corporate sole and more and at least we should recognise that simple changes of singular levers are fantasy. Local or regional responses to real issues are more realistic and appropriate. In my experience power still ultimately resides in parishes, yes myself and episcopal colleagues have a few cards, but never as many as a PCC with determined leadership!

    4. Much of the so-called managerialism, has come from: (a) attempts to bring a fairer spread of ministry nationwide (arguably the 1970s measures), (b) financial and qualitative accountability from outside of the church (Charity Commission, remember much if parish wealth came from the whole community not just the Anglican Church goers) of (c) safeguarding reforms necessitated by decades of institutional abuse and a demonstrative inability/refusal to reform our own church. The later is not an imposition but the bare minimum we owe the victims/ survivors and countless unknown who have suffered. If May not always get everything right but to criticise the leadership for requiring it seems to me to be the same high handed assumption that got us into the mess originally.

    Note only one of these came from within the church. If we wish to continue as a body within civic society or established the other two will always follow.

    5. I was mildly surprised by contributors pointed out that the ‘national church’ is aware of the complexity that compliance has bought for ill and has been following a ‘simplification agenda’ which has already benefited new Christian communities by vastly reducing red tape around Bishops’s Mission Orders and DAC processes to name but a few. May be too boring and slow for some but absolutely the right direction.

    6. Many posts continue the confusion about the so called 10000 lay led churches. The suggestion is of complementary mission alongside and from within parishes, not replacing them. There are undoubtedly cultural, theological and contextual issues over CRT, HTB, and others, but let’s be clear they are not doing this because they have cash. They are doing it because the look at the tradition, read scripture, apply the reason of those to the culture and want all people to come to love, know and be loved by Christ and his church. It might not be your tradition but it’s a very Anglican position.

    7. The assumptions about what diocesan teams are seeking to do seem so far from most teams I have encountered in the last five years. I serve in a very poor diocese, with no historic assets, and four larger churches able to contribute significantly excess over costs (which they generously do, thanks!). Our sole focus is to see the church grow in depth, breadth and yes, numbers across the most diverse urban area of the UK in such a way that sees parishes thrive in their diversity. Decisions about scope, partnerships, and much more are entirely local supported by their Bishop, but connected across the family of the diocese. Yes Common Fund is legally optional but without it we’d soon run out of cash. We are near our sustainable clergy numbers and see some of the most relatively generous giving in the country. But less than half of our parishes could survive going it alone m, even if they had historic finds in the first place. Add to that wartime bombing which gifted us with ours if concrete and copper buildings now expensive to maintain, the idea of a simple assert exchange is not particularly attractive here! As we have sought to develop a prayerful, radical approach I have been surprised how many times I’ve been told ‘oh you’re the people abolishing parishes!’ or, ‘ah the central powers dictation what we will have and do!’ NO on both counts! We need to listen carefully to what is actually said!

    8. So what to do?

    9. Pray for your parish clergy, lay leaders and diocesan teams. We are not against each other. Most offer goodwill and hard work, but clearly we cannot continue and need the Holy Spirit to pour out greater wisdom, hope and courage. But please, don’t assume the worst in others, encourage and act for the best.

    10. A few things we might sort:
    a) encourage and empower church planting of many smaller neighbourhood churches within parishes from within every tradition,
    b) select and train parochial clergy who have a clear missiology and how it shapes ecclesiology and practice, don’t ordain anyone who does not live and breath the life of Jesus and demonstrate an ability in contextual mission
    c) ask the Archbishops to extend their Pentecost prayer initiative to the soul and future of the church and simultaneously ask every diocese for a clear approach to sustainable and growing mission and ministry, but not using historic asserts to cover revenue
    d) address the issue or historic inequality of diocesan equity of with some dioceses have just under £200 million in accessible liquidity and overs nit quite £600,000! Most of that is simply historical chance and prejudicial historic power.
    e) resist calls for reversal of national stipends, glebe or measures, returning assets to parishes etc, until clear and detailed proposals show beyond doubt that it will not simply end in cutting the poor (clergy and parishes) adrift whilst middle class white Anglicanism gives itself maybe another 59 years to die gracefully.
    f) encourage diocesan teams and bishops to work regularly with parish clergy (who would be willing not forced) on the realities of what kind of church God calls us to be and what kind of ministry God us calling for that and what kind of resourcing it needs. We must all own the issues. Never loose sight if the Kingdom bring greater than the church, that something must die for new growth to come.
    g) find different solutions for each diocese, sharing the best and identifying the mistaken. Don’t assume General Synod or the HoB have a single answer, they don’t!
    h) prioritise personal encouragement of those holding local positions of responsibility and leadership, lay and ordained. Demoralised leadership is a reality and needs love and support, but grasping reality and vision will equally be hard and challenging for many.

    In all this perhaps we might always hope in divine love and always see Gods image in each other. Apologies for anything that sounds pricky or special pleading, disregard if you spot it. Thanks for all the contributions and original posts.

    Reply
    • Thanks for bringing in this perspective. I was particularly struck by

      ‘As we have sought to develop a prayerful, radical approach I have been surprised how many times I’ve been told ‘oh you’re the people abolishing parishes!’ or, ‘ah the central powers dictation what we will have and do!’ NO on both counts! We need to listen carefully to what is actually said!’

      For me this underlines why ‘Save the Parish’ has emerged. Whose prayerful and radical approach is being developed? Who asked for it, initiated it, developed it? If new approaches are not requested from the parishes (via deanery or diocesan synod) the senior leadership team does not have a mandate.

      Comments about abolishing parishes and dictating central powers perhaps show a lack of awareness of governance structures, but sum up the combined effect of the direct and indirect messages parish people are hearing. If senior leadership teams want to start a new narrative then may I humbly suggest:

      1) show that you are proactive in challenging how the Church Commissioners channel money to new projects/initiatives rather that to established parishes

      2) remove new initiatives from the diocesan synod agenda for two years and instead give space for clergy and lay people to speak about the their hopes for their parishes

      3) ask deanery standing committee for a slot on the next deanery synod agenda for a bishop or archdeacon to talk openly about the aims of Save the Parish

      4) encourage your bishop to graciously detach from the workstreams that emanate from (and which ultimately create more work for the parishes) the House of Bishops

      5) talk to your neighbouring diocese about potential savings on senior leadership and administration (i.e. model at the diocesan office what parishes are asked to do)

      I hope this comes across as constructive, rather than overly critical of the work you and others are doing.

      Reply
      • ‘Whose prayerful and radical approach is being developed? Who asked for it, initiated it, developed it?’

        Well in part people like me on AC who are noticing that decline in attendance in ‘traditional’ parishes has continued unabated, and that those arguing for church planting as a way to invigorate and renew the Church make a very good case, supported by research. Most people in parishes have little interest or awareness of the national scene, or what might be done about it. It is not their job! And they have other pressing things to think about.

        ‘If new approaches are not requested from the parishes (via deanery or diocesan synod) the senior leadership team does not have a mandate.’ If that is true, then the C of E will be dead in 20 years.

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        • I’m glad AC and the senior leadership teams have got it all covered. Just let the parishes know what you want us to do, if anything.

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          • It would help if AC was open, transparent and accountable. I think they don’t have observers at their meetings or even publish the minutes. Why? It looks rather secretive and does nothing to inspire trust or goodwill.

            “The secret of power is the power of secrets.”

    • Simon, thanks for this, and for sticking your head above the parapet. I would agree with much of what you say.

      Nevertheless, alongside what you say, there are some startling examples of terrible treatment by diocesan leaders of parish clergy, some of which I have experienced myself. Why have people like Bernard Randall been hung out to dry? Why has the CDM process been allowed to wreak such havoc, without a bishop or archdeacon standing up and saying ‘enough is enough’? Why do clergy get reprimands for doing good things, though perhaps naively? Why was eg Stephen Kuhrt suspended? Why do people doing good work, planting and growing churches, suddenly find they lose their licence?

      This is happening; it is demoralising; and it needs an explanation.

      Reply
    • Thank you Simon for your very useful observations. If I can pick up on one – the link between 10,000 lay-led churches, and HTB and CRT. I do think that an erroneous link has been made between the Bishop of Islington’s initiative and HTB, in particular. HTB hugely supports the concept of ordained clergy – there are 39 clergy and 8 ordinands ministering there at present, alongside 3 LLMs. Virtually every service leader and preacher is a member of the clergy or ordinand. Even the “worship leaders” are often clergy. I suspect there are few large churches in the country that are more clergy-intensive. Furthermore, HTB sends huge numbers of individuals to be trained as clergy (the most of any church in the country?) and has backed a CofE training institution, wholeheartedly, which has become one of the largest in the country. Finally, CRT has never “planted” a church – to my knowledge – that has not be led or overseen by a member of the ordained clergy. There is nothing in HTB’s strategy, that I know of, that supports lay-led churches. HTB is highly “for” ordained ministry.

      Reply
  31. Simon: “prioritise personal encouragement of those holding local positions of responsibility and leadership, lay and ordained. Demoralised leadership is a reality and needs love and support”

    The complete and utter any personal, proactive pastoral care at all during whole of last year is why I’m thinking of quitting. And it was culpable. If I’d led, loved and looked after my church like the Bishops (and, yes, Archdeacons) did me then I wouldn’t expect to have anyone left. I know the relationship of Senior Staff to Parish Priest is not exactly equivalent to one Parish Priests have with their congregation and community but surely they (you!) have a duty of care?

    They failed when we needed them the most. Worse: they got in touch to outlaw things that they had no right to (including, incredibly, funerals in church). They knew how to use a megaphone but not a telephone. It was appalling.

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  32. Simon,

    Thank you for your comments. I wanted to pick up on this point ‘But less than half of our parishes could survive going it alone’. Why is this? Are >50% of parishes really in UPA’s? Do they have small congregations and/or priests who refuse to teach stewardship? While there is a strong case for supporting UPA’s who genuinely cannot pay the full costs of their priest, the C of E cannot subsidise this number of parishes. Why not close some of these churches, sell off the buildings and use the cash to support a smaller number of bigger, better churches.

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      • Rural parishes should not be subsidised. They should have exclusively lay leadership or else be closed. Their congregations should travel to the nearest town as they do for employment, leisure, shopping, etc.

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          • If a rural congregation can afford to pay for their own vicar, why shouldn’t they?

            Well, then they wouldn’t be being subsidised, would they? So the comment wouldn’t apply to them.

            One thing about the non-established churches is that people know that if they don’t keep the lights on themselves, there’s no big parent denomination to swoop in and bail them out. At its best that means people have a real sense of responsibility towards their congregation.

            [Obviously there are exceptions: some non-established churches have, for example, bits of land that were left to them a century or two ago which have since become prime residential or commercial estate, and from which they now derive oodles of rental income. But while that can alleviate financial pressure, it also can lead to a sort of complacent laziness.]

          • While on holiday once I visited a small rural church that was part of a very large group of churches with a single vicar. The vicar said basically they could (and possible should) have a service every week but she could not take it more than once a month. So the churchwarden read the office and the sermon was more like a house group discussion on the passage.

            The service was lay led, but there was clerical oversight somewhere in the background. Is that a model of a lay led church?

          • Yes, I think it is one model. We have lay people who competently lead services without having to read from a book. If I were that vicar, I would invest my time in training people how to lead well, giving feedback. We also have lay people preaching; again, this is worth investing in.

            And the pandemic has opened new possibilities. Again, if this were me, I would seriously consider recording a video sermon for people to watch beforehand or in the service, then have a discussion.

          • Is remember the poor, not a gospel imperative any longer? Not getting at you Ian, but simply shocked that some people think church should be run like Tesco; I thought we were meant to be counter cultural! (Not that some rural churches won’t or shouldn’t close; they will and, perhaps, they should. Though they will, if not sold, still be a burden on the Diocese.)

          • That’s a very neo liberal view of ecclesiology.

            What is ‘neo liberal’ about it?

            And who, pray, is going to buy all these redundant churches?

            I don’t think the comment mentioned selling the churches? Just closing them. You can close a church without selling it, you know.

    • I think that closing churches is is the unpopular choice the Church of England will face unless decline is reversed. I just don’t see anything in this campaign that will do anything to avoid it. At least the central church and most dioceses seem to being doing something to reverse the decline even if the campaigners disagree with it.

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  33. Penelope, to be clear I am in favour of subsidising UPA churches. I see no reason to subsidise unviable rural churches. Some of the buildings could be retained and used for special occasions, others could be sold.

    There is too much sentimental nonsense about church buildings particularly in rural areas. If local communities want to keep their church building open let them pay for it.

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    • You seem to have the view that rural areas are full of rich people who can afford to pay anything. Many rural areas have had their populations displaced by people buying up holiday cottages. These people seldom take any part in the community and can leave a small poor population struggling to survive as a community.

      If you close a church building it still has to be maintained. Than could be done by the state, by heritage charity, or you find another use. I can’t see you getting permission to demolish a medieval listed building and you can’t just leave them to fall down either.

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      • I can’t see you getting permission to demolish a medieval listed building and you can’t just leave them to fall down either.

        You absolutely can leave them to fall down.

        ‘There is no statutory obligation upon the owner of a listed building to keep their property in a good state of repair’

        And the Church of England is exempt from having Urgent Works Notices served on it, too.

        https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/hpg/HAR/urgentworks/

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        • That’s an incomplete reading of the law…

          “The cost of carrying out the works may be recovered by the local authority or Historic England (as appropriate) from the owner. Such cost may include the continuing expense of providing temporary support or shelter of the building.”

          Though… I agree that some buildings should be closed. However, personally (so it’s not a useable as a statistic) I’ve only known one closed in several decades. It’s easier said than done…

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    • I think it depends what you mean by unviable. Certainly the rural churches I know are organised into groups which ‘share’ a priest. None has a weekly communion and all have lay-led services (well, almost all!). Many groups’ common fund contributions would not fund a full time stipendiary, even where people are giving generously. Hence my comment about neo liberalism. Most are subsidised by ‘richer’ areas. There are areas of wealth in Devon (where I live), but also areas of great rural (and urban) deprivation.
      Also, for better or worse, people are hefted to their churches in rural communities.

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  34. That is true in a some places, but many rural areas are extremely prosperous. Most of the rural churches I know are largely attended by retired professionals. In most cases the problem is the size of the congregation – a congregation of 10-20 can usually raise enough to cover the cost of the building, but not to cover the costs of their priest (unless the church has assets of its own e.g. from legacies).

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  35. It’s interesting to note that Jesus came and removed all hierarchy that had evolved in the church at that time, the tearing of the curtain at his crucifixion demonstrated this. No longer was there a need for an intercessor between God and man. Just Jesus.

    With the adoption of Christianity by Constantine in 313, a new model was created, once again reintroducing a hierarchy. Sadly, later reformations too, tended to emulate this same, or a similar hierarchical structure, not looking back at the model we have.

    Such structures tend to look more towards ‘managing’ the infrastructure, buildings, land, money, power etc, rather than focusing on helping people get to know Jesus. How many meetings concentrate more on the fabric than the gospel?

    Whilst the ‘established’ church tends to be withering, those that perhaps may be described as ‘Fresh Expressions of Church’ are often growing, especially those not hog-tied to a hierarchy. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned? Perhaps we should simply be looking back at the early church in Acts? Is it time to change, rather than accepting, embracing and adopting the hierarchical structure introduced in 313?

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    • Dee
      What about ‘Obey ye the ones leading you and submit to them; for they watch on behalf of the souls of you as rendering an account; in order that they may do this with joy and not groaning…’? Hebrews 13:17. Of course that does not mean unthinking submission. Those being led need to test all by the Bible.

      Phil Almond

      Reply

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