OPEN LETTER TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
The Archbishop of Canterbury started a three-day visit to Cornwall this
week amidst unprecedented turmoil in the Church of England in the county.
He arrives amidst a wave of controversy about the Bishop of Truro’s
brutal cost-cutting project On The Way, which threatens to cut vicars, destroy
ancient parishes, and close historic churches.
But the Archbishop will be distracted from that by visits to the
parallel Transforming Mission programme which is spending millions in the
county on highly contentious ‘mission churches’.
The campaign group Save The Parish Cornwall, fighting to save clergy
jobs and preserve the county’s centuries-old way of church life, pen an open
letter to the Archbishop, begging him to recognise - and stop - the damage
Cornwall welcomes you this weekend. This is, of course, the land
that tourists see – beautiful beaches, breath-taking countryside, cream teas
and pasties.
You might even have previously glimpsed something of the other side of
Cornwall – the towns with some of the highest levels of unemployment, addiction
and child poverty in the country. Towns like Camborne and St Austell.
These are two of the five towns where your teams have started well-meaning if
lavish efforts to tackle both serious levels of human deprivation and crashing
levels of worshippers in the Church of England: mission churches.
Millions have been poured into these 'Transforming Mission' centres with the
target of reaching out to missing generations.
You will undoubtedly be taken to see their ‘successes’. There will, of
course, be a slew of carefully organised photo opportunities.
But just a word of caution…. Cornwall has to a very large extent become
the Land of the Emperor’s New Clothes. What you see is perhaps not quite the
reality.
The huge financial investment has not elicited expected results. Projected crowds of new worshippers have not materialised. Neither have the donations that they were expected to make - £274,000 in Transforming Mission Camborne alone during the five-year life of the project – to ensure sustainability.
But those truths won’t be revealed to you as you travel around, funnily
enough in the midst of a series of deanery synods ushering in plans for On TheWay – the Bishops’ cost-cutting exercise here.
And as they take you to photo opportunities and carefully staged
‘interviews’, if you listen carefully you might just hear an increasingly loud
murmur of discontent.
Not just discontent, actually - but the sound of pain, anger and fear
among both clergy and congregations the length of the county as people are
being manipulated, and bullied, into making decisions that they do not want.
An increasingly audible protest from people angry that they are being
ignored in what seems a tone-deaf quest for ‘fruitfulness and sustainability’.
People who have given years of their time, their money and good faith are being
ridden over roughshod. People are hurt and shaken.
Many are of a generation that look up to clergy. To an increasingly
bitter number, that respect now seems horribly misplaced.
They react with bewilderment to the Bishops’ arcane and deliberately
non-inclusive 'consultation’ programme to drive this reorganisation
through.
Younger people – who know that even Bishops have to be held to account –
are silenced by secrecy. Deliberate secrecy. And bullying tactics.
Disagree with the Bishop? They’re openly threatened he’ll railroad it
through anyway – words we have heard in not just one deanery.
For just a soundbite of the heart-breaking uncertainty and feelings of
betrayal in Cornish congregations, just look at the questions that are being
asked at deanery synods during your visit. There you’ll hear what anguish
sounds like.
“Please can some of the threatening language about paying our full
MMF be removed?“ they have pleaded at Penwith Deanery. “Parishes are doing their
best but ….being threatened with even more cuts to ministry doesn’t help PCCs
when we’re doing our level best.”
In Carnmarth North Deanery a parishioner asked: ”How can you spread this ‘vision’ if you don’t spread it widely and well in advance of a meeting like this? When did democracy become a dirty word in the Diocese of Truro?”
From East Wivelshire in north Cornwall one outraged churchgoer writes
“the diocese and the rural dean are on the point of steam-rolling through their
new plan without the support of current church members….no one wants to get on
the wrong side of the people in charge.”
Another correspondent explained that 27 churches in his part of the
county are to be merged and shoehorned into just three new benefices.
From St Austell: “I wrote to the Bishop pointing out no proper
consultation had taken place and there were severe shortcomings in the plan….
The Bishop responded by saying that if the plan was not agreed, he would
‘agree’ it!’"
Once the Church of England was rightly famous for welcoming all
Anglicans - a ‘mixed ecology’ to use a fashionable term. Plainly
that message has been erased in the diocese of Truro.
All four senior clerics in Cornwall are from the same doctrinal
background - evangelical. All five of the Transforming Mission church clusters
are evangelical in nature and offer little in terms of traditional worship –
thus dispossessing very many faithful believers.
Your Bishops here have been deaf to pleas for accountability and an
honest scrutiny of Transforming Mission finances. Why? The answer – in the end – has to be: there
is something to hide. This is not working.
Desperate efforts now to bring the two tortured schemes together and
create a combined ‘On The Way’ and ‘Transforming Mission’ office, led by the
Bishop of St Germans, show that the cracks are gaping behind the scenes.
Why can’t the Church Commissioners’ billions – and their massive recent
investment income - be used to keep priests in parishes? Because that is what
is needed. Almost every churchgoer in Cornwall would say – if asked – that they
would like their own vicar.
Please listen to some real people, Archbishop, not just the Bishops and
their entourage.
Then there might be some real progress in bringing people to the faith.
Peter Bellenes
Clive Dixon
Peter Hall
Andrew Lane
Susan Roberts
Neil Wallis
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