Church Times

“Where is the accountability for such mismanagement? The Bishop of Grimsby is quoted as saying that Lincoln plans more clergy reductions, despite its being “the diocese that proved that cutting stipendiary clergy is disastrous”. Rather than embark on more restructuring of parishes, perhaps this diocese should be put into special measures, whereby (i) its bureaucracy is put into the hands of a financially competent diocese, (ii) all the ordained staff from Church House, including archdeacons, are put into parishes, and (iii) the space thereby made vacant in Church House is let out.”

“Even the Church of England’s 2021 paper GS 2222 acknowledged (para. 35) that “Anecdotal evidence from Wales suggests a super-parish type model has not worked well.” It added “but there is an absence of hard data.” Where is there any empirical evidence that mega-parishes are more viable and sustainable than the local parish system?”

More clergy in the front line is the most fundamental step to “overcome this discrepancy between our ambitious aspirations that require stipendiary clergy and our current short-term situation in relation to finance”.

“The answers by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, the Rt Revd Martin Seeley, to the General Synod (11 February) point to the essence of the financial dilemma being addressed by development of an uncosted Vision and Strategy alongside the massacre, through ever more mergers and closures, of parishes that are the source of £1 billion of funding.”

“Bishops are not intended to be missionary bishops, but pastoral bishops, shepherds of the local shepherds. The point of the parochial system led by bishops was to provide pastoral care for every locality. When that original view of the Church of England was followed, there were more parish clergy, more Read more…

“As centuries of faithful witness and service in rural parishes slowly expires, and churches and vicarages disappear, how will the Church ever reconnect with countryfolk with neither the means nor inclination to travel to the nearest town or city every Sunday? Or live up to its strapline to be “a Christian presence in every community”?”