REPORT ON JULY 2023 GENERAL SYNOD by Emma Thompson This article published in the Daily Telegraph on 20 July 2023 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/20/church-parishes-are-on-the-verge-of-being-lost-for-good/ is a cut version of the report below: The CofE’s General Synod meeting finished last week (on Tuesday 11 July 2023). Synod is the body which governs Church Read more…
“THE first challenge is recognising that each rural area is distinctive. Central church bodies tend to view rural churches through urban or suburban lenses. This is to the detriment not only of the life and mission of rural churches, but also, paradoxically, to that of urban and suburban churches. People Read more…
The PCC have therefore decided that continuing payment of the Common Fund (2023 – £7,754) is unsustainable and, until they know the cost of stage 2 of the repairs to the tower in July 2023, they will limit their Common Fund contributions to £100 per month from January to June 2023.
St Cuthbert’s Darlington has been awarded £2,000,000 by the CofE to renovate the building and to appoint a pioneer chaplain, youth worker, operations director, and director of music, all for a period of 5 years. The current congregation is very small, and the aim is to make the new payroll Read more…
Save our Parsonages (SOP) was founded in 1994 as a result of deep concern in the parishes about the number of fine rectories and vicarages that were being sold off against their wishes and without prior discussion. Our aims are a) to make the Church understand the value of its Read more…
In the Diocese of Gloucester’s Cotswold parish of Saint Peter, Willersey with Saintbury, the announcement of the most sad death of Our Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth initiated an urgent and thoughtful conversation between Churchwarden and Tower Captain. Arrangements were immediately in hand to raise the Saint George’s Flag to half-mast Read more…
“I carried on drawing. Slowly, I was noticing the world and finding the beauty in it – not seeing the beauty but actively finding it. A lot of that beauty was in the churches where I stopped to sit down – particularly Holy Trinity, Sloane Square decorated by the Pre-Raphaelites Read more…
We are in a benefice of four churches and have been in vacancy for two years. There are three benefices in this deanery amounting to eleven churches, in vacancy. In an adjoining deanery there are three benefices in vacancy – perhaps ten or twelve churches and in another adjoining deanery Read more…
What has been achieved in this year [by STP] is very inspiring and hopeful. People do care passionately about their local churches and local ministry based in the parish church is very often the most effective manner in which we can provide pastoral care and share the Good News of Read more…