An update from Save The Parish national steering committee

 A message from Save The Parish national steering committee member Emma Thompson

"We on the steering committee are conscious that we owe you an update after the July General Synod in York. If we ever seem silent, please be reassured that it is not because we are inactive - in fact a period of silence usually indicates that we are flat out! 

We are trying to act as advocates for the parishes with all of: (i) Parliament (with the complications of needing to forge relationships with a new set of MPs, including a new Second Estates Commissioner and Ecclesiastical Committee members); (ii) the diocesan bishops (some of whom are sympathetic/supportive); and (iii) the officials working in the Church’s central administration (ditto - in fact, we were recently even thanked for “persevering").

GENERAL SYNOD JULY 2024

Some good news from this General Synod is that it was presented with a CofE paper (GS Misc 1384) which confirms what we have been saying since STP began nearly three years ago. Bishops are being badly served by their finance departments. Dioceses are making inadequate returns on the assets they manage for parishes - unsuprisingly when they are managed in 40 separate pots - which should be generating more funds to pay for more vicars. My co-volunteer James Burnell-Nugent wrote a splendid letter about this mismanagement of Diocesan Stipends Funds (“DSF”s) to the 5 July Church Times: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/5-july/comment/letters-to-the-editor/letters-to-the-editor.Please see our website link for a succinct explanation: https://www.savetheparish.com/diocesan-finances-review-2024-paints-a-picture-of-poor-financial-performance/ This makes it crystal clear that many dioceses have work to do to "put their own house in order” financially and generate more revenue for stipends. You may wish to press your diocese to maximise funds, to pay priests with, from the parish assets it holds in its DSF. You remain able to review your own diocese’s figures in the finance section of our website.

General Synod was also presented with a preliminary report on Trust: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/gs-2354-trust-and-trustworthiness-within-the-church-of-england-a-preliminary-report.pdf. I was commissioned to write about it for both the 27 June Times Thunderer column (https://www.savetheparish.com/2024/07/05/church-of-england-cant-blame-social-media-for-its-failings/) and the 5 July Telegraph Notebook (https://www.savetheparish.com/2024/07/05/dt-the-church-of-england-has-forgotten-its-only-purpose/). The report seemed to me utterly deficient but, when during Synod I met the bishop who led it, he was very nice despite my criticism of it (I am increasingly feeling that we in STP are less reviled and more valued for prompting debate). If you would like to make any comments about the reasons for the absence of trust, which the CofE recognises as an issue without really seeming to understand the difference between causes and symptoms, please email me at emma.thompson@savetheparish.com; I can pass on a compilation of views. Or you can always usefully air parish issues by writing to the Church Times: letters@churchtimes.co.uk (deadline for letters Tuesday at noon for Friday publication).


STP supporters at Synod also raised concerns (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/7-july/news/uk/lack-of-trust-is-blighting-the-c-of-e-s-leadership-governance-review-body-warns) on the bishop-led Governance Review, whereby draft new legislation is being proposed: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/gs-2360-national-church-governance-first-consideration-july-2024.pdf. The most significant of various issues with this draft “Measure” is that clause 8 makes a substantial deviation from the original purpose of and legal constraints on the Church Commissioners’ endowment. Anyone with governance experience is most welcome to send me their comments, or address them to the Clerk to Synod at revisioncommittee@churchofengland.org and ideally bcc to me at emma.thompson@savetheparish.com. I am often struck by how much the CofE needs to hear from lay people about secular standards.

IN THE PARISHES

Our most important work is to deal with daily enquiries from you, our supporters. We exist to represent you and make sure that your concerns are heard. However, we are all volunteers, juggling STP work (like parish volunteering) within our normal lives. So please lend us your help by spreading the word that STP exists to your friends around the country. It is much easier if people know about us and understand how to protect their parishes before their cases become urgent. Anyone whose bishop is due to retire should be communicating with people in other parishes now, to prepare for a possibly very different, less parish-friendly, future regime. If your parish priest is about to retire, your PCC needs to be in early contact with your patron for support, in case an amalgamation of parishes is proposed by the diocese once the post is vacant. Some people have been nervous about being associated with STP but, now, personally I would say that they are way behind the times.


Our postbag gives us a picture of what is happening and how people are feeling at grassroots level. Pastoral “reorganisation”, involving amalgamation of parishes (which the CofE’s own evidence shows drives decline), is a key issue. It is often associated with the sale of the vicarage by the diocese. In some cases, it is happening “by the back door” rather than in a proper legal fashion under the Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011 governing legislation and its associated Code of Practice. It can begin when a parish living is suspended… the bishop can then appoint whomsoever he/she pleases, after consultation… parishes may find a pastoral scheme outcome pre-emptively inflicted via ministerial appointments during suspension. We intend to raise this circumvention of the legislation with the Church House team which is seeking to reform the “MPM" (not necessarily to the parishes’ advantage!) One of the saddest issues raised with us is the effect on religious education in CofE schools of removing the local vicar (often an ex officio governor and an ex officio trustee of parish charities), as is happening in places like Leicester Diocese - or giving the vicar via amalgamations so many parishes to care for that they can rarely visit the schools. This problem was raised by Ben Bradshaw MP with the Second Estates Commissioner in the House of Commons on 23rd June 2022 (please see 10.17.59 here: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/6c07df9e-223d-4da0-bc16-9ecb96a100e5?in=10:17:59) with respect to rural church schools. Ben received the reply, as Hansard records, that “the Church is really focussed on the front line and putting the parish first”: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-06-23/debates/C76F90F9-7158-4A1C-A6A7-F89EA175FAB5/OralAnswersToQuestions#contribution-2C0F946B-6219-4C19-9A0A-AF2ABCEAC39E.Other common postbag concerns are the loss of Eucharistic worship and the imposition on a parish of unsuitable clergy. We have even been consulted in cases where congregations have brutally been told to vacate their own church. Save The Parish cannot solve all of these problems, but we are there to be your advocate and to help parishes make the best case or defence they can. We do happily have some success stories. All credit to the Acting Bishop of Exeter and the Archdeacon who reversed an unjust amalgamation in this case leading to a happy ending: https://www.savetheparish.com/2024/06/18/a-parish-success-story/. Please remember that your main source of strength is to refuse any suggestions to merge your PCC, to connect with your parish’s patron for early support and for your PCC to decline unanimously to merge your parish into a larger group.

The cash flow diagram in the finance pages of our website shows how much money there is for parish ministry. If your Archdeacon claims that the Church Commissioners’ money is "not there to support parish ministry” (as was said to one of my co-volunteers), this is wrong - in fact, they are more than 300 years behind the times! The Commissioners' endowment was created in Queen Anne’s reign precisely to fund the day-to-day activities of parishes in poorer areas by providing them with clergy, creating a model of universal provision for “everyone everywhere”. Thus, using the Commissioners' funds which were intended to support parish ministry to pay for schemes which instead drive parish decline (as happened in Wigan for example) seems to me completely wrong. Moreover, if your diocesan representatives try to link your payment of parish share to their provision of a priest to you, they are cutting across this longstanding universal model and substituting a system of “priests for the rich” which is surely not what Christ intended. Studies show that poor areas are more likely to see church closures and are harder hit by the closures. To download our latest leaflet, please scroll down on the home page here: https://www.savetheparish.com.

A big thank you to all of you who wrote to your Parliamentary candidates. Please now brief your new MP about STP and forward them this new leaflet from our home page. We hope to hold another Westminster meeting this Autumn (when there is no General Synod meeting, the next being in February 2025).

A big thank you also to our donors. Your generosity has enabled us to afford for example leaflets and badges for meetings (and even to do some entertaining of people whose support we need, although we are very aware of our fiduciary duties to provide value for donated money, so we spend it only thoughtfully and carefully). Thank you so much for your support.

In other news, I have joined my own diocesan synod, in addition to my deanery synod, unopposed. I have had no official notification of my success in this election but was told unofficially by my Rector that there is a meeting on 12th October. I expect my views to be unwelcome at meetings because, like so many lay people with business experience, I take a dim view of a charitable organisation having high levels of administrative costs. I feel impatient for it to be recognised Churchwide that this is unacceptable but it seems to me unsurprising that so few of us want to take part in these synods if the interests of the parishes are not being properly represented. Please share my pain and join a synod at some level if you can, helping us to speak up together for the parishes."