The Church in crisis - update from Save The Parish
"Firstly I would like to draw your attention to a ‘Thunderer’ article in The Times this morning – written by Emma Thompson. https://savetheparish.com/2023/04/10/thunderer-column- times-10-04-2023/
Various bits of important news have appeared in the Church Times and other papers recently. I thought you would like to know about them too.
Last week there was an important leader in the Church Times. Here are the opening sentences:
“Announcements of new funding under the umbrella of the new Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI) suggest that the wind has changed direction in the corridors of Church House, Westminster. The word “parish” has crept back into the text as something worth supporting, if not exactly in need of saving. Whether this heralds the departure of the Mary Poppins of mega-churches remains to be seen. Certainly, the first tranche of grants indicates that dioceses are being given greater freedom to spread money more widely. The eschewing of “discrete projects” is to be welcomed. While the creation of new, large town-centre churches remains in vogue, it is interesting to see a more nuanced language emerging. The diocese of Worcester has concluded that “renewals” in parish churches are less risky than new plants.”
I very much hope that as one of our supporters, you can take heart that the editor feels that “the wind has changed direction.” The proof will of course be in how grants are allocated.
Also published last week was an article on a research report into trends in church attendance since Covid, across five dioceses – Oxford, Canterbury, Chester, Guildford and Leeds. The article reads:
“The decline in church attendance of almost one quarter between 2019 and 2022 may be the result of reduced supply rather than lower demand. A new report suggests that too many churches abandoned their online offering and cut the number of services available.
Church Attendance in October 2022: Post-Covid-19 trends, patterns and possibilities draws on data from five dioceses, and concludes that there is a “strong correlation” between reduced provision and reduced attendance. “Numbers are lower than in 2019 not because the demand for church is in inevitable decline but because of difficulties with the supply of both onsite and online church services,” it says. “Churches that stayed online and have not reduced their service numbers have fully regained 2019 attendance levels. It is only where churches have retrenched that their attendance is reduced.” This should be a cause for optimism, the report argues: “If attendance is sensitive to the state and supply of church life and worship, then the future of attendance trends lies in the churches’ own hands. Developing the number and relevance of services leads to church growth.”
Finally there was a comment in an article of 4th April 2023 in the Glasgow Times https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/23433604.amp/ confirming previous reports that poor areas are worst affected by clergy-cutting and the withdrawal of church social care. The report includes this comment:
‘The Church of Scotland has already closed a number of churches under a "prune for growth" strategy, which it said had led to it losing a third of its membership who refused to go elsewhere.’"
If services are planned to be reduced in your parish, or have already been reduced, please take steps to counter that.Impress upon your local clergy and your diocese that the evidence could not be clearer - cutting clergy and cutting services causes decline. Please, you could say, would the Church of England not blame parishioners for not attending vicarless churches? By squeezing resources available to small and rural parishes, the Church of England is driving its own decline.
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