“Soaring energy costs are leaving churches with a choice between keeping their buildings open for community groups or paying their fuel bills next winter. Churches and charities are not subject to the cap on energy bills, and most are classed as businesses for their tariffs, which has meant that they Read more…
“The Archbishop’s interrogator was Canon Giles Fraser, Vicar of St Anne’s, Kew, and a member of the Save the Parish steering committee. He spoke of “anxiety that the centre of gravity is shifting away . . . as clergy numbers have been cut and parishes become more and more amalgamated and bigger, and that there are more and more people around the diocesan photocopier doing jobs that we don’t understand, and this creates a sort of crisis of trust.” This generated loud applause.”
SDF has enabled many people to be “brought to faith”, a new review of the programme concludes, despite the difficulty of measuring the creation of new disciples. The programme has also served as a “lightning rod” for a lack of trust within the Church of England, the authors say.” View Read more…
Read original “The Parish Share often goes towards vital resources such as paying for a vicar. However, rural congregants and clergy are warning that they have been forced to share one vicar across multiple parishes, or claim they have been threatened with not receiving a vicar unless they pay thousands Read more…
Withdrawing resources from local communities results in loss of trust and confidence, argues Alan Billings DURING the past few years, the police service in England has had to learn something that the Church of England is currently in the process of forgetting: the importance of being locally embedded. The parallels Read more…
Emma Thompson has a hugely important article in the Spectator today, about a piece of draft legislation heading to General Synod. There is a proposal for draft legislation heading to the General Synod. Its name is ‘GS2222’, but we call it the Church Closers’ Charter. It is designed to make Read more…
“From leading online worship to managing a booking system for sunrise services, multi-parish clergy face a daunting task at Easter”