Save The Parish - Cornwall

Following our  Fact Sheet  on key questions to ask regarding MMF (Mission and Ministry Fund), we have received a number of further queries from Parochial Church Councils (PCCs). Here are some answers. Neither Save The Parish Cornwall nor Save The Parish nationally are advocating at this time a total MMF or Parish Share “strike” by PCCs. But we in Cornwall in the Diocese of Truro believe the annual Call has been much too high for some years and in 2024-25 needs particularly to be strongly challenged and resisted.  The 2025 MMF, split by benefice within each deanery: click here to read What will happen if we don’t pay our MMF - and how do we do it? First of all, remember that MMF is NOT a statutory charge that you have to pay - like your gas bill, for instance. It is in fact a voluntary charity donation. It is true that, generally, a PCC is getting something in return for that charitable gift. But in times when that return is often getting noticeably less and less, while th...

Save The Parish Cornwall issues the following response to a regrettable statement by the Diocese of Truro published on its website on 5 March 2024. The Diocese misleadingly says that Save The Parish Cornwall is 'targeting clergy' and providing inaccurate clergy figures. Save The Parish Cornwall’s recent analysis of clergy numbers in the Diocese shows that there were just 39 priests for Cornwall’s 200 plus parishes and 300 churches at the end of December 2023 - according to figures supplied by Church House sources at the end of January 2024. A further 19 other incumbencies remained vacant. Stipendiary priests in Cornwall at the end of December 2023, and their locations: data supplied by Church House sources to Save The Parish Cornwall at the end of January 2024. There was, therefore, one stipendiary priest to 15,000 people: the population of Cornwall is just over 600,000. The number of stipendiary priests in Cornwall at the end of December 2023 was 39. Save The Parish Cornw...

We hand delivered our report ' Don't Turn Off The Lights, Bishops' to Lambeth Palace on Wednesday 21 December and recorded a video message for Archbishop Justin Welby.  Click here for the message. Our petition -  calling for a moratorium on the Diocese of Truro's damaging On The Way plans - is gaining momentum.  Please sign. Click here https://chng.it/L8KfGmrs6p    

“A bishop with the soul of a servant should be able to express uncertainty about the way ahead, ask for help, and, ….'find reverse gear’ if necessary.” Click here to read. An important leader from the Church Times (8 September 2023), just days after the Sunday Telegraph published an expose of the unhappiness and unrest in Cornwall caused by the Bishops of Truro and St Germans's restructuring plans for the Diocese of Truro - known as 'On The Way'.   Bishops should be sensitive and responsive to the unrest - and concern - that their plans provoke, it suggests. As the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen makes his way to his new appointment at Winchester (his farewell service at the Cathedral was last Sunday)  Save The Parish Cornwall is urging the Bishop of St Germans, the Rt Rev Hugh Nelson, to have the courage to press the 'pause button' on these plans. People across Cornwall believe that they should be re-evaluated and re-assessed, this time with proper consultation. ...

  Save The Parish Cornwall held a face-to-face sit-down conference this week with Bishop Hugh Nelson and senior officials of the Diocese of Truro. At it, the Save The Parish Cornwall pressed strongly for an immediate moratorium of the diocese’ sweeping On The Way church reorganisation plans that will change irrevocably Anglican worship in the county. Although organised previously, the meeting in Truro came a day after significant coverage in the national press sparked by a 57-page dossier of testimonies collated by Save The Parish Cornwall from deeply concerned and distressed Cornish churchgoers and the wider community about both the manner and the impact of the damaging On The Way plans. The dossier, published widely this week, includes further demands from Save The Parish Cornwall including: *Guarantees that stipendiary priest numbers in the county be increased within a year from the current record low of 54 to a minimum 81 - not including curates in training - and ...

Important - and extensive - coverage in today's Sunday Telegraph of the situation in Cornwall and Save The Parish's campaign to expose the fundamental flaws in the Bishops' On The Way restructuring plans. Click here and here to read.   A spokesman from the Diocese of Truro is quoted as saying 'It is not true that these plans were forced on the deaneries."  The Diocese has repeatedly insisted that the plans were 'bottom up' rather than 'top down' but this has certainly not been the experience of those involved on deanery level.   In fact, the Bishop of St Germans himself said at the Diocesan Synod meeting in November 2020: “ A: The Bishop of St Germans, the Rt Revd Hugh Nelson, explained that, as mentioned by Archdeacon Paul, he is working with Jonathan Rowe on a complex piece of work that will support deaneries and help sustain them. Deaneries in most need will be given support first. A bottom up approach is critical, particular in regard to put...

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...

Deanery Synod members in Kerrier, west Cornwall, have been given a deadline of 3 August 2023 to approve a controversial Community Interest Company (CIC) to employ new workers in the proposed On The Way plan – which will result in one huge benefice uniting 23 scattered churches. The Kerrier On The Way plan , approved by Kerrier Deanery Synod by just one vote in 2021, has ever since caused widespread division and anxiety. This confusion continues. Deanery synod members say the need for a CIC was not mentioned when the plan was drawn up and some consider they are being pressured by the Diocese into forming a CIC so that the plan can go forward. Save The Parish Cornwall has drawn up a Fact Sheet outlining the significant legal and administrative responsibilities involved. It questions why the Diocese is unwilling to access the funds directly. Click here to read.  The Diocese insists, however, that a Community Interest Company (CIC) is the only way of accessing funds from the Church...

Save The Parish Cornwall’s Neil Wallis this week told national campaigners about the duchy's fightback against Truro diocese’s radical On The Way restructuring plans. These plans, initiated by the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen, threaten to change church life in the county forever.   "Church life in Cornwall faces irreversible changes – for the worse – due to restructuring plans known as On The Way being pushed through ruthlessly by Bishops and Archdeacons of the Diocese of Truro," he told the national Save The Parish conference in York.  Gone is the idea of priests in parishes. "The Bishops of Truro and St Germans' plans for “ Oversight Ministry ” aka Oversight Management will see ever fewer manager-priests tasked with running lay teams. New teams of Lay ministers are being encouraged and communion-by-extension will become the norm in some churches – to the dismay of many. "In one deanery – Kerrier - the final approved plan calls for just two priests to be in ch...

The Bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen has curtly rejected calls by Save The Parish Cornwall for a moratorium on his On The Way restructuring plans , and refused a request for a meeting to discuss the widespread concern of churchgoers across Cornwall. STP Cornwall sent the Bishop a letter on 29 January 2023 requesting this. Click here to read. In his brief response dated 9 February 2023, the Bishop said that adequate consultation had been undertaken in developing these plans, and that he would not be offering a meeting to discuss alternative views. He stressed that his letter should not be reproduced either in full, or in part. In the letter, the Bishop referred to a meeting at Illogan Church on 4 February 2023, which was attended by STP Cornwall supporters. At this meeting, which was to discuss the situation in Carnmarth North deanery and its On The Way plans, the Bishop was questioned about a lack of transparency and consultation. Click here to read more. At the time, th...

The main issue Save The Parish has with the Diocese of Truro's plans is that we believe they are addressing the wrong question from the wrong perspective - too often misusing wrong information to justify their actions. In effect, the Bishops of Truro and St Germans publicly argue that they are making a ‘business case’ for ‘growing’ the church in Cornwall. But no genuine company seriously trying to turn round a struggling business model has ever succeeded by axing their sales staff, closing down outlets, and effectively telling customers to change their buying habits because they don’t know what’s best for them. In this case, STP believes that this is what is happening to the vicars and their parishes and churches, and churchgoers and local communities in Cornwall. What the Bishops want Our Bishops are set on a certain ideological trajectory i.e. developing a ‘mission church’ model at the expense of rural parishes and in doing so are burning through its (OUR) financial asse...

  A letter from Save The Parish Cornwall's Peter Bellenes in the Western Morning News today - in response to the Bishops' statement published last week in response to our joint statement with Cornwall Buildings Group (CBG).

  CAMPAIGN GROUPS CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON BISHOPS’ RADICAL PLANS TO CHANGE CORNISH CHURCHES   Two Cornish campaign groups are calling for a moratorium on Truro’s Bishops’ radical restructuring plans which they say will change the face of church going – and the Cornish landscape - forever.   Save the Parish Cornwall and The Cornish Buildings Group (CBG) warn that new diocesan schemes to create giant benefices swallowing up smaller rural parishes will result in the closure of many churches and the destruction of a vital part of Cornish life. Clergy numbers will be radically cut and funds instead funnelled towards lay ‘support workers’.   Patrick Newberry, Chairman of the CBG, says as many as half of the churches in East Cornwall could be closed as plans for central ‘mission churches’ and lay ministry – rather than priests in rural parishes – are implemented. The CBG, which works to preserve ancient buildings and Cornwall’s heritage, believes it is time to ch...