A message from Save The Parish national steering committee member Admiral Sir James Burnell-Nugent
It has been a while since our 3rd birthday newsletter in August and there are a number of things on which I would like to update you.
A word of thanks
Save
The Parish is not a charity because charities are not allowed to have
political campaigning as their primary purpose. Because of the
Established status of the Church of England our campaign could be
construed to be political. We are a limited company with a Board and
annual accounts, all visible on the Companies House website. Your
Steering Committee are all volunteers but we do ask for and receive
generous donations, for such things as research, printing and
conferences. But I thought you would all like to know that donations
have been steadily increasing month by month over the last couple of
years. This is very heartening and a strong indicator of the growing
support for saving parishes. Thank you.
STP - Leicestershire Launches
As another mark of our growing strength you will I hope be pleased to hear that in addition to STP – Cornwall - https://savetheparish.blogspot.com/ - which has been campaigning for over 2 years, there is now STP – Leicestershire.
They have had a very successful launch, attended by over 70, and are
building strong opposition to the Leicester Diocese ‘Minster Community’
scheme which is being rolled out across the whole diocese. Parishes who
do not sign up will ‘receive no further resources from the diocese’ and
those which do sign up will be bundled into groups of at least 20
churches, quite possibly with only one full time priest. Priest numbers
and curate training are both being cut. If you would like to get in
touch with STP – Leicestershire, particularly to lend your support,
please email joey.newton@savetheparish.com
Other STP groups
There is further news that STP – Bath & Wells is up and running. Contact christo.chanter@savetheparish.com - and so is STP – Yorkshire. We are also hopeful of groups in the dioceses of Hereford and Norwich.
The formation of local groups is another sign of the growing strength
of Save The Parish. We anticipate that local groups will be able to
challenge their dioceses on the specifics of plans being rolled out in
such a way that recognises local considerations, such as the balance
between rural and local, or large and small parishes. If you are
interested in supporting any of these new groups, or forming a group in
your own diocese, do please get in touch via help@savetheparish.com.
We will help you get started through our supporters list (which we can
access for you but do not share), provide STP email addresses for you,
allow the use of the STP logo and provide insurance cover for public
meetings. We are finding it works well just to have small beginnings
with a few supporters who are happy to exchange information about what
is happening in their diocese – and let things grow from there. Please
do consider this for your own diocese – you will not be on your own.
Find us on Social Media
Many of you may not be users of social media – but there are plenty who are. We are active on X (formerly known as Twitter)
and increasing our visibility on Facebook. Whenever there is new
material on our website it will also be signposted on Facebook, so this
is a very good way of keeping in touch with developments and the
arguments you can deploy to save your parish. Just search for Save The
Parish on Facebook and ‘follow’. https://www.facebook.com/savetheparish/
|
|
Growing concerns
At
the national and parliamentary level we have strong concerns with some
proposed changes in church legislation that are working their way
through the General Synod to Parliament. The issue is the review of the
top level governance of the Church of England – which is often the
subject of criticism for its complexity and lack of accountability. A
draft ‘Measure’ (which will eventually have the force of an Act of
Parliament) has been published - https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/gs-2360-national-church-governance-first-consideration-july-2024.pdf
There are lengthy supporting reports and General Synod papers. At
present the Measure is going through its ‘First Revision’ which will
consider amendments to the proposed legislation, in much the same way
that Bill Committees work in Parliament. Save The Parish are
extensively involved in this process on your behalf. For now, I would
just like to bring to your attention a few areas of major concern:
- It
seeks to form a new charity – Church of England National Services
(CENS) which will replace all the functions of the Archbishops’ Council
and most of the functions of the Church Commissioners. It is proposed
that the Church Commissioners, who hold £10.6 billion of investments
specifically to support parish ministry, will be reduced to just
managing those funds and passing the income to CENS for distribution.
- There
is active discussion on the precise definition of the charitable
purposes of CENS. In particular whether they will be broadened beyond
the 300 year old purposes of the Church Commissioners’ endowment funds,
as set by Parliament. STP is actively engaged on this topic on your
behalf.
- It
is proposed that the independent Church Commissioners’ Missional,
Pastoral and Church Property Committee (MPCPC), to which many of you are
appealing to support your opposition to unwelcome reorganisation
schemes affecting your parishes, will be abolished. It may be replaced
by a Mission and Pastoral Adjudication Committee within CENS – the same
body that will be making funding available to your diocese to reorganise
your parish. Judge and Jury. Your parish could thereby lose the
independent support that has been available from the Church
Commissioners for over 300 years.
This is a very complex topic and it has been several years in gestation;
it has more time to run but gradually these things get set in
concrete. I just wanted to bring this to your attention and offer some
reassurance that STP are actively challenging it every step of the way.
Can you help with a photograph?
Finally,
we launched a very successful postcard at our Spring Meeting and 1000
copies disappeared very quickly! It had a graphic of a parish church on
the front and a short description of the goals of STP on the back. We
have potential copyright issues over the graphic and so would like to
replace it with a photograph of a clearly active parish church. If you
have any such photographs please send them to help@savetheparish.com. If
the photographs have any recognisable people in them, then we would
need their permission to use the photograph. Please help us out with
this request.
Many thanks for your continuing support as we grow in strength and are
actually saving parishes around the country from unwelcome plans.
Best wishes,
|
|
Sir James Burnell-Nugent
Steering Committee, Save The Parish
|
|
Join STP As An Organisation
We urge PCCs to join our campaign. The more PCCs we can tell the CofE we
represent nationwide, the better. From your perspective, it is a step
taken in advance to establish that your PCC unanimously wants to
preserve your parish, if and when your diocese comes up with plans to
merge it.
So, if you are on a PCC, help run a 'Friends of X Church' group, or
otherwise know of or run an organisation that cares for or depends on
the parish system, please apply below for your organisation to join Save
the Parish.
|
|
|
Register your organisation
Comments