“[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.”
“If a church is sold, the diocese receives two-thirds of the proceeds, and the Church Commissioners one third. The parish gets nothing.”
“The number of worshippers will only grow if the Church recovers its understanding of its central purpose.”
“As the Civil Service, the NHS, and the Home Office, the first response to any problem is to recruit more bureaucrats. So, over the past 30 years, we have seen diocesan bureaucracies increase drastically, while the number of parish priests has fallen.”
More than 400 churches have been shut down in less than a decade, The Telegraph can reveal, as senior clergy warn of the “shocking” threat to parishes as “the bedrock of the Church of England”
Community and answers to life’s deepest questions draw people to church. Some of us prefer to gather in a church erected by the people who inhabited this place before us, rather than a converted warehouse or cinema. Judge this not as mossy traditionalism. The historical continuum of place (and ministry) inspires the reassuring feeling of each generation’s being moored to something precious. Despite society’s secularisation, there is some hope that the baton of faith can be passed on. One-third of this country’s schools are church schools.
“Like the Trust, the CofE seems to specialise in making things soul-destroyingly difficult for volunteers. Churchwardens and PCC members, like my mother, are expected to bear much of the local heavy lifting – fundraising, helping to maintain church buildings and dealing with endless diocesan micro-management along the way. Yet as Read more…
“How awful our townscapes and landscapes would look if parish churches were allowed to disappear.”
“The Church of England deserves to be preserved for our children. But it is clearly in decline, and those at the top of its hierarchy are only hastening its demise by pouring money- our money- into “growth” projects that are providing no visible benefit and simply adding to our overheads.”
“In our rural deanery, we have five parishes in vacancy, and another five to become vacant soon.”