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Showing posts from August 31, 2023

On The Way essential reading: how Cornwall's radical church restructuring was introduced and developed

After a casual enquiry, Save The Parish Cornwall discovered that the important Minutes of Diocesan Synods in the early years of On The Way are not in fact up on the Diocese of Truro website.  We have therefore sought them out: we will add to these documents as more emerge. Only recent Diocesan Synod reports are accessible via the Diocese of Truro website . Asked why important Minutes of earlier significant Synods were not available, Communications Officer Kelly Rowe - surprisingly, in view of the infinite nature of the internet - said: "We don’t keep everything on the website due to its size."  As deanery plans now reach a crucial stage, we have tracked down these documents - essential reading for anyone interested in the genesis of On The Way.  2019 Presidential Address to Synod November 2019 by the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen, Bishop of Truro "Just this last week Cornwall Council agreed to invest no less that £612,000 in the Truro Lifehouse project based at All Saint...

If only church leaders had listened to front-line priests - Times 30 August 2023

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  Britain is no longer a Christian country, say frontline clergy in an article published by The Times today. Click here to read. The Times selected 5,000 priests at random from among those with English addresses in Crockford’s Clerical Directory of Anglican clergy and received 1,436 responses, analysing data from the 1,185 respondents still serving. The survey uncovered high levels of stress among priests, many of whom feel over-stretched. They fear that the church’s efforts to arrest the decline in attendance will fail and this may ultimately lead to its “extinction”. Professor Linda Woodhead, head of the department of theology and religious studies at King’s College London, said: “It’s extremely important to hear the clergy’s views. It’s hard to carry out these surveys which is why we have very few of them, and it is very interesting.” She added: “This survey shows the clergy t...