“It is a part of wider changes in ecclesiology: the elevation of the diocese over the parish, the loss of local connection, the attempts to turn bishops into enforcers of top-down polity, and the subsequent current moves to coerce parishes into diocesan schemes that will rid them of their agency and reduce the clergy to puppets.
"[The archbishops] must also follow up on their commitment to consider what I think is fundamentally wrong with the parish system: there are too many dioceses. It is impossible to justify the present 42 when, 200 years ago, in the Church’s heyday, there were 26."
Frontline parish ministry is tough and getting tougher. Clergy cuts mean ever greater demands on the dwindling band of vicars or ‘priests-in-charge’ often running around several churches. How many CofE bishops know how it feels looking after multiple churches with the growing burden of bureaucratic demands from diocesan HQs?"
BRUTAL cuts” to clergy posts in the diocese of Truro are on the horizon, a group of concerned parishioners has warned. The group of eight, from four of the diocese’s 12 deaneries, includes several PCC members and a lay member of the General Synod.
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