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“So, the CofE picked up on the social damage done by closing railways (churches), but hasn’t picked up on the underlying causes of why the railways (churches) weren’t being used, nor has it picked up on the fact that once the railway as been ripped out (church closed) then you can’t put it back again. I do not know if I wasn’t clear, or whether there is willful or accidental blindness on the part of the CofE hierarchy.”
“What we vicars need is a bishop who, like an elder sibling will swoop into our parishes and help sort out nonsense, and if required (safeguarding rules permitting) give us a hug. Bishops should be able to hang around in a parish for a few days, not just a few hours. In my mind a bishop should be to the vicarage family like a grandparent who says to the vicar and his wife, “You are overworking, so tonight I’ll look after the kids so you two can go off to the cinema.””
The biggest difference to my mind is the decision to stop cutting clergy numbers. The effect
on clergy morale, and levels of trust between parishes and the wider diocese is
remarkable. It helps that we have a genuinely supportive senior team.
Dioceses, by and large, have failed to manage their housekeeping, some indeed facing bankruptcy, all the while begging for more and more money from beleaguered parishes facing rising costs in their local churches, businesses, and families. Given this record, it would surely not be wise to give them more?
My parish is among those which have accumulated reserves but, like most others, has suffered from the same declining income from an ageing congregation and the effects of covidon giving, so finds its reserves being gnawed away. The Parish Share has become an onerous burden for all of us, forcing many into closure and others into unhappy amalgamations, which impose impossible burdens on the incumbents.
I have been a parish priest for nearly 30 years and, over that time, it has become increasingly obvious that the diocesan structures have become parasitic, feeding off and weakening the parishes. Forty-two dioceses, 112 Bishops, these ‘birds that cannot sing’.
We risk being, as with climate change, beyond the ‘tipping point’ of this new cycle of repetition, into a further age of cultural obscurity. Now, only drastic action, from the ‘bottom’ upwards, is likely to halt the cultural damage which is caused by undermining the parish. This comes at a time when we need our local communities, and the sustaining beauty of architecture and music, as much if not more than ever.
Parish resources and parish boundaries were, in origin, created locally. They were not provided by a central authority. The maintenance of parish church buildings, churchyards, and their contents has been paid for by the parish community for over a thousand years.
The Church is set upon a centralising model. Well funded urban churches, with ‘flying vicars’ sporadically serving the periphery. For some, this is seen as an economic necessity and for others, far too many others, it is an ideological mission.
“‘Presence’ and ‘memory’ are important to the identity of a locality. Surprisingly, this is the case in the highly urbanised, constantly changing social context where I worked in London’s East End. Even there it was recognised that the parish church carried something of the history; something of the story of the local area that was an essential part of its identity.”