Summer update: Save the Parish Conference and General Synod - Part 2

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 The Rev Marcus Walker, Chairman, Save the Parish, writes about July's General Synod at York....

The meeting of General Synod at York was widely seen to be one of the most fractious meetings anyone can remember. There were three elements of the session on which Save the Parish focused its attention. The first was a motion about parochial ministry. It was fairly 'motherhood and apple pie' but it gave us the opportunity to highlight the complete failure of the Archbishops' Council to follow the terms of the Church Commissioners' endowments - which are supposed to be spent on supporting the stipends of priests in the poorest parishes of the country. You can read an article here about what we were trying to do in this debate, which was written for the Critic. We have also spliced together a video explaining the issue and showing the short debate that was allowed on the topic.

Watch our video on parish funding

The other big issues which Save the Parish was involved with were the developing plans for transforming the governance of the Church of England. This governance review will be returning many times over the next few years as its plans are turning into legislation. Many STP members have been involved in the reference group but the ability for us to debate any of it was hugely limited by having only 24 minutes to discuss the entire plan (with seventeen proposals), seeing only four speeches allowed, all of which were in favour of the proposal. There is much work to do.

Reforms to the Mission and Pastoral Measure were also debated at this synod. This was originally the infamous GS2222, which was one of the reasons Save the Parish was founded. This is a completely different plan, which may or may not improve the relationship between parish and diocese depending on how the legislation looks at the end. Sadly both of our proposals fell that day: that parishes should have equal access to legal advice as dioceses when facing merger or closure (diocesan advice being funded out of the parish share, after all) and that there should be no reductions in the rights of representation when proposals are being put to parishes. There is much more work to do here too.



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