Happy 3rd Birthday Save The Parish!
Angela Tilby in her regular column last week celebrated the 3rd birthday of Save The Parish. She commented “It was the third anniversary last weekend of the launch of Save the Parish, the campaigning movement that resists the reorganisation, merger, and closure of parishes, with the resulting loss of front-line clergy and pastoral care for communities.” She pointed out that “Dioceses have also been vulnerable to the attraction of central funds, which have seemed all too readily available for any form of ministry which can describe itself as new or more “mission-focused” than what parishes can offer. I have seen viable congregations thrown out of their churches, while a younger congregation are bused in to take their place. There has been the decline of pastoral ministry, and, in some cases, the ending of funerals.”
She concluded her column by writing “Save the Parish was much mocked in its early days. Attempts were made to portray it as a group of discontents fuelled by nostalgia for a Church that never was. But, in spite of criticism, the movement has grown in both numbers and influence. It is now putting pressure on the national Church to put the Church Commissioners’ £10.2- billion endowment to its proper use: the support of poor parishes — although proposals outlined in the new Governance Measure give greater control of the Commissioners’ funds to the Bishops, which could prevent parishes’ benefitting. Carl Hughes, who chairs the Archbishops’ Council’s Finance Committee, agreed on Radio 4’s Sunday programme this week that front-line ministry was a critical part of reversing decline. Now, let’s make the argument for properly trained clergy, for the maintenance of parsonage houses, and for dioceses’ putting their own dire finances in order before swelling the number of diocesan officers at the expense of parish clergy.”
Read the Angela’s article in full here on the Church Times website.
