The evaluation of a project to transform Wigan into a “missional powerhouse” — which entailed the grouping of 33 churches in a single benefice — has reported mixed success after seven years and the spending of £1.2 million.
Angela Tilby points out that these schemes have failed before and parishes can say no. There are other ways of trying to reinvigorate the rural parish system without resorting to…
The Archbishop, who has been in post since 2013, said the decline in church attendancewas something that “personally, I count as failure”. The total average attendance for Sunday services across…
If the Archbishop of Canterbury abstains from too much hectoring about the sins of the past or the present, and encourages the faithful few in the parishes, then her six years in the post will not have been wasted.
Emma Thompson writes in The Telegraph that the Church of England shouldn’t rush into making appointing a new Archbishop of Canterbury.
Our country desperately needs a new sense of what it is to be English to guide our future development, one which will embrace all who live here and not the slogan of racists. True patriotism comes, as Rumsey notes, from realising we do not own the land but that it belongs to God. Renewal will come from an ‘imagined community’ that memory creates.
10% of churches have been closed since 1969. Current restructuring of the way the CofE works will result in many more. Synod will be asked to consider the possibility of…