Do we need to ‘Save the Parish’?
Frog Orr-Ewing writes:On Tuesday tertiary August, a gathering was hosted past Marcus Walker in St Bartholomew the Great, London's oldest parish church, to launch a campaign to "Relieve the Parish". This small conference was intended to begin a campaign for General Synod, expressly to stop resources being siphoned away from parishes, and to 'resist whatever farther centralisation of power and authority abroad from parishes and towards dioceses and the central church.' Save the Parish should be understood in a wider context of commitment to local church ministry across the theological spectrum and a widespread concern that church bureaucracy is increasingly out of touch with front line people-centred parish ministry.
The media rallied behind the entrada including an article by Marcus Walker in the Spectator, and a letter planning to marshal lay-led reform of the Church building of England.Tensions were farther exacerbated by the Gregory Heart proposal coming to General Synod to launch thousands of lay-led churches over the adjacent x years. This sparked 'limiting-factorgate' ; a social media breathe of exasperation on the office of clergy to the insinuation that expensive theological preparation, church buildings and ordained leadership were factors limiting growth in the Church building of England. Incidentally, putting out a printing-release for this new initiative on the weekend of ordinations at the end of a pandemic was probably misjudged, and undeniably contributed to a growing feeling of disenfranchisement and a subsequent backing-away past bishops from this initiative.
I am calling the Save the Parish entrada a 'heart cry', a response which is giving phonation to a growing and deeply emotional, intuitive and applied sense that something valuable and precious is being lost. I also want to advise that Save the Parish is in some style a announcement of dear for the church building, and an joint for some, of what it means to be Anglican.
The Ideal of the Parish
The 'ideal' of the parish has for centuries been a core concept of the Church of England. It is so deeply woven into Anglicanism that historically growth has come best when the idea of parish is renewed, reformed and re-invented. Many of the churches in urban areas were a result of a beautiful alloy of localism, empowerment, and mission with Anglican ecclesiology, liturgy and doctrine. Merely parish is best understood as an ideal, a dream, an archetype, considering each one is so different, and in each area and age it is constantly changing, with as many exceptions equally rules.
Just because parish as a concept of mission and church is contextualised, it will never truly 'fit' grand structures and strategies; every area, every congregation, has a unique story and it is the weird particularity which is precious and meaningful. Hopewell, the great congregational studies expert, said:
I have begun to see how astonishingly thick and meaning-laden is the actual life of a unmarried local church.Many churches neglect to tell their story. They are paralyzed in prosaic self-clarification that follows depressingly predictable lines. They evaluate themselves by counting money, membership and programs [Hopewell: 1987, pp. 3, 140.]
Parish has its roots in the ancient Minsters who were said to have 'parochiae' which are best understood as 'spheres of influence of ministry building' rather than specifically geographic designations. The process of firming up these parochiae to specific locales took nearly three hundred years and appears to have solidified past the mid 1300s.During the Reformation, the parish was reinvented; the parish churches and congregations remained, just the liturgy and the establishment became Reformed.
Failure and Change
Skip forrard then into the crunch of the Eighteenth Century, with a population of this country largely disengaged with the Christian religion and local church, and this failure to engage people fundamentally challenged the parish ideal. The crisis of collapse in attendance in the Church of England stimulated 2 responses. The outset was outdoor preaching with John Wesley declaring that 'the world is my parish' giving rise to Methodism, and the second was a church building multiplication motility which remained inside the parish system known as the Huntingdon Connection churches, a network of Anglican churches supported and funded under the patronage of Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon.
A further major reinvention of the parish was a response to massive shifts in population in urban areas in the Nineteenth Century. The ideal of the parish had long-since become cleaved, for the reality was a largely failing mission, and out of touch Anglican churches. Pocket-sized village churches now found themselves responsible for a portion of a urban center or for an unabridged town. However, it took nearly a century for the necessary reforms within the Church of England and Parliament to finally meet the practical needs of population growth in neighbourhoods. 21 singled-out Acts of Parliament were required through the starting time half of the nineteenth century until they finally arrived at the New Parishes Human activity of 1856, and further amendments in 1869.
The result was, what I call in my doctoral research, the 'new parochialism' which led to the about phenomenal fifty-year Anglican church-edifice frenzy that England has always seen. This season was marked by strong lay interest and localism, a very uncomplicated process for starting new churches, requiring a divers specific area of mission through service, and a specified sum of money to be raised, and i proposed ordained person for each church. The solution was to utterly reimagine the parish as a sphere of mission with a building, and at least iii,000 people in an area to minister to. Neighbourhoods similar Camberwell had 11 Anglican churches and parishes carved out of the old village parish, to include the new airy suburbs of Nunhead and Peckham, alongside the numerous nonconformist congregations.
Having said all of this, it will not come every bit a great surprise to hear that I support church building planting as an intrinsic part of Anglican ecclesiology and practice and I fear that some in Save the Parish may exist mistaken by turning their ire on evangelicals and specifically on Anglican church planting—neither of which are enemies of the parish.
A New Crisis
Already under increasing strain, the parish system now finds itself in crisis again, the differentiation and localism is being undermined in the rural areas by unwieldy and potentially unleadable collections of parishes, and all over the nation by a demonstrable distance betwixt members of the public and a lively Christian organized religion centred around a local church building. Falling omnipresence amongst children, aging congregations and a global pandemic all have had an enormous cost.
The crisis is real and I do not think anyone is ignoring it, and notwithstanding we have reached an impasse betwixt two ideals, ii archetypes. In the ruby-red corner, the model of parish, with articulate priest and people, purpose and identify—comfy with the happy weird mishmash of particularities, aims and intentions, and with local theological commitments but little defining strategy. And in the blue corner dioceses, bishops and the national institution, with centralised initiatives, staff and management designed to navigate the institution through these choppy waters. So now nosotros take a new story: Parochialism versus Managerialism, and we urgently demand a burst of new inventiveness to write the next chapter.
Salvage the Parish is a eye-cry, a late plea for life before deconstruction.The very jumble of theologies, financial approaches, emotion and opinions which we see is, in itself, a rejection of the values of the managerialism that has, depending on your opinion either infected or affected the Church of England in recent years. Ironically, many of the newer urban center centre 'resources churches' share with Relieve the Parish a radical delivery to local front line ministry with vicars and committed teams moving into previously derelict buildings with a vision to revitalise and grow Anglican worshipping congregations in specific neighbourhoods. Many of the frustrations articulated past Relieve the Parish are shared by clergy who are leading resource churches and church plants, so there may be a greater basis for unity in a shared rejection of diocesan forms of managerialism.
Three Managerial Changes
3 major changes accept occurred which have fundamentally hamstrung the parishes, just unlike other changes in the last century, which were initiated bottom up, these take mostly been acme-down, and at the bidding of a new delivery to managerialism, mirrored in other public sectors, but which is now being critiqued fundamentally in those settings, such as academia.
The first managerial shift, which Save the Parish mentions, are the parish measures of the 1970s, under which all churches gave up their land, reserves and glebes and incomes in return for 1 counterbalanced and universal payment package for the clergy. Stephen Trott called the Endowments and Glebe Measure of 1976 a failed experiment, and I think he is right. The intention was to replace the patchy historic stipends whose uneven spread and value did not sit down well with the quest for modernisation. Parishes in living memory were promised they would never have to pay for their clergy again, and centralised management would cease their woes when they handed over their avails.
But the fiscal model and the financial contract failed, equally they did with many other public sector industries, and instead of giving the avails (held in trust) dorsum to local churches, the diocesan boards held on to the glebe lands and started needing to raise more money from the parishes to meet their obligations and this gave birth to the quota organisation. Fully contained charities freely give a "voluntary" gift to centralised funds, in return for which the priests get to proceed a pension and a stipend. The pressure level brought to bear on the PCC by Diocesan Boards is the threat of losing their vicar: parishes pay upward, and vicars are commended for maintaining an attitude of institutional compliance.
There is no lack of commitment to giving in society to back up poorer parishes, but at present even if you practice pay, yous might lose your vicar anyhow, especially in a rural area. Each diocese tries to annul this past coming up with their own arbitrary algorithm to persuade parishes to decide their own taxes. Notwithstanding, now, every bit decline occurs, local communities have no levers to pull, no 'bureau' and decisions are being made over their churches whether they like it or not. And they are saying that they don't similar it. I have lost count of the times that deaneries are given the 'choice' of which posts to lose. It is like asking someone which leg they would like to take cut off. It is a hot mess—and has been a crusade of much tension since the belatedly 1990s which is when the financial model failed. In contempo years, as Dioceses have taken time to 'cutting posts' and 'anneal the parishes' they have done so with no apology, and no handing back of command.
I have on several occasions had chances to help propose lay leaders in villages on how they could respond to a local church financial crisis—a lack of vicar, a church roof collapse. In 3 villages there was the money bachelor to pay the full stipend and pension, and to repair the church building, but a decision had been fabricated by a DBF to remove the vicar, and apply the vicarage for a new centralised post. This has happened in my direct knowledge, in three unrelated incidents, in Wiltshire, Surrey and Oxfordshire—then to exist clear in iii different dioceses. Lay leaders, church wardens in these cases, were happy to face the facts, just were not allowed to solve the trouble as they saw fit. In all three situations, it was made clear to them by either an archdeacon or a bishop that it was non their place to decide on how to use the assets of their village or salvage their parish.In all instances, the posts are gone forever even though the communities had both the desire and chapters to solve the problem locally.
The Loss of Freehold and making of Trustees
The second major managerial change was the loss of the living, or the freehold in 2005 and its replacement with Mutual Tenure by 2011. The argument given at the time was that this change was needed—just when this was debated at diocesan synods it was fabricated articulate that this was designed to equalise the rights of all assistant clergy. But once more, this change was not made at the asking of parishes, and information technology removed the security of tenure for clergy and the rights of parishes. Moreover, the freehold balanced out the power of the bishops, who couldn't hands remove or subject clergy except with serious grounds and with expensive ecclesiastical police force cases. Common Tenure then went manus in hand with new guidelines and discipline measures for the clergy. The CDM has been an unmitigated disaster, demoralising all who get through it, regardless of whether they are cleared or not (and the vast bulk are cleared) yet 40% have contemplated suicide. This managerial experiment of repackaging the living is clearly traumatising and the costs are enormously high.
The 3rd major managerial change occurred in 2011, requiring all PCCs to register with the Charity Commission, making all members of the PCC personally into trustees, adding new burdens of governance onto volunteers, and making churches more gamble balky, but without changing any of the voting and pick patterns, and thereby layering this new obligation on top of pre-existing legislation from 1956 and 1969. (They take been charities for a long fourth dimension, but were a 'body corporate', that is, considered every bit if they were a person with agency collectively not individually.The guidance was updated in 2017). The impact of this change on local churches cannot be underestimated, both for administration and chapters.
With regards to assistants of the parish: along with the changes to common tenure, PCCs every bit charities under the Clemency Committee now have confused relationships of loyalty including that of clergy to parish, and of the PCCs to the Diocesan Boards of Finance. Though clergy remain jump with promises to bishops, they are simultaneously more clearly obligated by charity law to seek the best interests of the local parishes of which they are trustees. As a trustee of the parish, a vicar now faces a potential disharmonize of involvement between the local interests of the parish and clemency best practise, and the political power of the diocese, which has no legal standing within the individual parish clemency, but does take authorising power personally over the vicar's ministry.
The second bear on of the change in charity condition is one of capacity: the demands of trusteeship may lie beyond the scope of several local churches if we assume that all PCC members must be private trustees.Several of united states of america accept experience as vicars in the inner-city, or other more challenging parts of the land, juggling the acute needs of our community and working to heighten upwardly leaders in the local church building. Must all these local leaders too become private clemency trustees in order to have spiritual leadership and for the parish to exist viable?
Must a various and young community in a more than deprived area or a remote rural community likewise try to find a dozen with experience of charity law, accounting and finance, who also have time on their easily to handle HR problems, buildings and parish share; grieving with the dying, burying the dead, marrying the hopeful, and grow the ministry whilst also recovering from the pandemic every bit well as doing incredible children'south work, and maintaining GDPR protocols and growing through conversion as function of a mission plan?Oh yeah—and if the vicars drib a ball in any of this can they wait pastoral back up and intercession from the Bishop, or volition information technology exist a terse e-mail and a summons, or fifty-fifty a CDM?
'Plenty is enough!'
Hear the cry from the pews and the pulpits…enough is enough! I have lost track of church leadersreaching out over the terminal few weeks to confess that they take never been more demoralised and exhausted; while they even so believe in their call, and the telephone call to pastor and intendance for others, and honour God to the best of their ability, they are hanging past very thin threads. Whether you are running a fresh expression or a traditional parish, the distress is existent.
The intrusion of central bodies into the twenty-four hour period-to-day independence of local churches has increased beyond measure over the terminal decade, and mail-pandemic, I believe every bit clergy rightly contemplate moving forward with their churches and congregations, and realise the hugely difficult task ahead of them, they want pastoral care and active back up, or if they cannot take this, to be left alone to solve their own challenges on the footing.Church leaders accept lacked pastors because their pastors, co-ordinate to the ordinal, the Bishops, accept often become managers, and are now caught up in the remote business of trying to manage institutional resource in a climate of pass up.
Traumatised people, who take ofttimes suffered from a loss of agency, will look for routes frontward which are safe, and which allow them to 'be themselves' and live out of their cadre values—a love of God, and a love of neighbour in an actual place with actual people. Whether this is a course of new monasticism or a parish, a country town or city centre resource church—where all of these responses to the crisis all coalesce is in a resounding rejection of managerialism. In this there is an unlikely unity, fifty-fifty if in all other things there is variety. Could I be and so assuming as to suggest that 'if you have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches' several idiosyncratic prophetic voices are articulating a heart cry.
'We are here, nosotros are hither…'
It is like the moment, if you have always been treated to watching or listening to Dr Seuss'due south Horton hears a Who when the kindly elephant suddenly realises he tin can hear a shout from the pinnacle of the speck: "we are hither, we are here".Horton the Elephant becomes the one who realises that an entire tiny civilisation may be destroyed.The residents of Whoville shout because they fright that they may overlooked, and they are waiting for an apology and for someone to say 'I am listening, I hear you.'
At the beginning of my ministry building, as a young vicar in the inner-metropolis, my bishop was acutely enlightened of me, my parish, my family and the needs of our church building and neighbourhood. He rang me regularly to ask how I was, he found practical means of supporting and encouraging us, visited the church, and if yous don't mind me saying so, information technology felt like he gave a damn.
I know there are many Bishops who know their parishes and clergy and who practically contribute to mission on the front line, and have constitute a way to be human being with those entrusted to their intendance. To all of you—thank you, and delight don't be discouraged. Mayhap at to the lowest degree part of the pathway to flourishing is to recapture a love for the clergy and parishes in the frontline of the Church of England. At that place is about certainly legislation that needs to be inverse that will punch back the failures of the past and help u.s. regain our morale and energy for service and growth, just near of all, it is time to mind.
So yes, let's listen to Save the Parish and to those who want to institute more churches.
Rev Canon Dr Frog Orr-Ewing is Beau-in-Mission at University of Winchester, Honorary Canon Theologian of Winchester Cathedral, and Founder of Latimer Minster. He is married to Amy, a well-known speaker and writer on apologetics.
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