A report on the Save The Parish 2025 conference

 Save The Parish co-founder Alison Milbank writes...

This is a rather belated report on our 2025 conference.  Save the Parish welcomed over 120 people to         St James the Greater in Leicester for our conference on October 18th, on the theme, ‘A parish is for      life’.

We are entering a new stage in our development as an organisation, as we have become part of the solution for the future flourishing of local ministry in the Church of England. The positive focus of the conference reflected this, though it comes after no fewer than four STP centrally supported events in Leicester diocese to protest against the radical removal there of local parish ministry.  

This event was focused on reflecting on our gains in synod, which Marcus described, as well as the alliances with rural bishops in seeking to rebalance financial resources back to the parishes. Bijan Omrani, whose book about the Christian roots of our culture gave us a fascinating insight into the parochial dimension of our history. 

Our panel contained a new Christian from an urban context, a rural parish priest, our own case-worker and a leader of a young lay movement to reflect on what makes parishes flourish.

Susan Roberts, who has co-led the amazingly well-organised STP Cornwall gave us insight into starting a local group. This was followed by members of our steering committee looking forward to the forthcoming Deanery and General Synod elections, where we hope to make gains. Finally, the utterly engaging Bishop Esther Prior captivated us and sent us away inspired to commit ourselves with renewed energy to saving the parish. 

We also had a lovely evensong with choir and organist from St James’s Church and are so grateful to the vicar, Andrew Quigley, for hosting us.

You can watch the conference videos here:

We also have short clips of participants giving their perspective:

Please keep us in touch with your parish joys as well as sorrows and fill up places on your deanery synods"

Kind regards,
Alison

Alison Milbank
Save The Parish


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