A Beginner's Guide to On The Way
Save The Parish Cornwall's Andrew Lane has put together some useful background.
On the Way is ostensibly a consultation exercise with the Cornish parishes to agree a plan to balance the books. So what is wrong with the books?
In the last few years the Diocese, with 60% aid from the Church Commissioners has set up five ‘Transforming Mission Centres’ each involving significant numbers of paid posts and absorbing six figure financial support annually. These TMC’s are Evangelical in nature and are driven on the theory that they will significantly grow the congregations. So far there is little evidence for this ‘growth’.
The rural Cornish parishes by contrast have received no such support. In 1976 the parsonages and glebe land were taken over by the Diocese apparently to guarantee a fair and equitable living for clergy irrespective of the wealth or otherwise of the parish. The parishes were left to fund singlehanded the maintenance and repair of their churches and to collect sufficient annual funds to pay for their individual and apportioned diocesan costs ( the MMF – Ministry and Mission Fund ). Despite their takeover of parish assets the Church then began to cut the number of clergy and to spread them thinly over the landscape with anywhere between five and a dozen parishes to sustain. Two national surveys this century have shown that where priests are thinly spread congregations decline as do donations and community fundraising. The end result of this is that churches are fighting for survival and are struggling to pay their annual due to the Diocese.
The Diocese has established an ‘On the Way’ group in each Deanery , each one led by Diocesan appointees but with representatives put forward from each parish. The Deaneries are presented with the figures required now and projected forwards for the MMF. They are then invited to come up with a plan for how they will raise the money or alternatively how they will cut their costs. This process is advertised as being open and democratic with the parishes free to find their own solutions to being ‘ fruitful and sustainable’. However it is also made clear that the resultant plan must be approved by the bishops. The bishops have put all their backing behind the TMCs so any alternative ideas for diverting some of these funds will not get approval.
Some participants have noted the Church’s own survey reports revealing the loss of priests causing dwindling congregations and have also spotted that where a good priest is in situ living within the community and servicing no more than 2 to 3 parishes then the congregation and the collection actually increase . Acting on this they have proposed for their plan that the Diocese should fund additional non-stipendiaries living in parishes ( at low cost) for an experimental period while the success of the strategy is assessed. But this is not permissible .it is made very clear that no such suggestion will be acceptable to the bishops so it cannot go into the plan.
So much for the parishes being allowed to come up with their own solutions!
On the Way is effectively a rubber stamp for Diocesan cuts. Some deaneries are being faced with losing half their clergy, half their churches and having their PCCs disbanded. This is about the most draconian destruction of the rural Church since the Reformation and the poor rural parishes are being made to carry the can.
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