Truro's plans branded 'revolutionary' in Church Times expose

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The shocking scale of the wholesale re-organisation of the Church of England in Cornwall has finally been exposed on a national stage. 

The extent of the cost and impact of the ideologically-based restructuring is listed over two pages in today's Church Times. The paper also reports local concern that these plans are being pushed through from the top without proper local consultation. The Diocesan ten-year plan for Change and Renewal was noted at a thinly attended Diocesan Synod on 20 May.  Lay synod member Martin Saunders is quoted as saying this was  'totally undemocratic' as synod members had not been given enough time to study it. "It was just 'take it or leave it,' he said. 

Click here and here to read the articles. Click here to read the Diocesan ten-Year Plan for Change and Renewal.

Attempts by Cornwall's Bishops, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen and the Rt Rev Hugh Nelson, to play down the scale and upheaval of these changes are blown away in the report, as example after example is given of plans for huge benefices, parish re-organisation and wholesale removal of stipendiary priests. Alongside this, the totally unrealistic figures proposed by the Bishops are revealed - for example, the intention to treble the numberof churchwardens - while in the same document (the ten-year Diocesan Plan for Change and Renewal) the admission that current volunteers are exhausted by overwork.

The real danger of churches closing is also illustrated.  It quotes Pydar's deanery plan as saying: "We will need to be bolder in putting people and mission before buildings.... We also need to make it clear that if  ministry ceases in a church building, it ceases to be a 'church'."


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