Rather than being ‘difficult’ the parishioners are trying to tell their bishop that his plans will not work locally. Separately, the Church’s own research (two different reports) tell the Church hierarchy that his plans will not work.
Managing religion’s decline is now a self-defeating loop.
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.
Read some further comments on +Guli’s lecture about the C of E’s “Vision and Strategy”.
There was also a comment in an article of 4th April 2023 in the Glasgow Times confirming previous reports that poor areas are worst affected by clergy-cutting and the withdrawal of church…
“Church leaders could be appointed to full-time cabinet-style roles such as “Brexit bishop” or Covid bishop” under proposals seen by The Times for the biggest overhaul in centuries of how the Church of England is run.”
Simon Smale suggests that the rump of the last SDF funding might be spent supporting parish ministry in Church’s ‘inherited’ format.