Save The Parish – Leicestershire goes live
If you would like help starting a branch of Save The Parish in your diocese please do get in touch. It just needs a few volunteers to get started.
Message from the Chair of STP – Leicestershire
I am very excited to inform you of the launch of Save The Parish Leicestershire, in the hope of giving our much-loved parish churches more of a voice. Whether your parish church is urban or rural, “high” or “low”, we want to hear from you. Some of you may have attended the meeting hosted by Save The Parish in Loughborough last November. If not, you can find details of that meeting here: https://www.savetheparish.com/the-future-of-parishes-in-north-leicestershire/
Since then, we felt we needed a local network to focus specifically on the problems facing our diocese. We are particularly concerned about the Minster Community schemes now being proposed in your deanery. According to Diomail, we can expect a reduction of at least 20 clergy through this scheme. In Launde, 35 churches have been reorganised into Leicestershire’s first Minster Community and are now served by just two clergy.
We are often told there is no alternative. Diocesan finances currently have a £2.2 million deficit, it’s true, but with Leicester Diocese’s administration costing millions more than other, similarly sized dioceses, we do not believe it should be parish churches, their priests and worshippers who have to pay the price. There is no evidence to show that Minster Communities will save money. To date, no business plan has been published. On the contrary, existing evidence demonstrates that such schemes will only make the financial situation worse.
Leicester’s own Launde Mission Community Implementation Report from November 2022 stated that: “Parishioners will ask what the Parish Contribution is going towards when there is a low level of spiritual support provided. This may well create a ‘doom loop’ where giving further reduces, and thus less funding further shrinks the number of clergy available”.
Effectively, our parishes are being asked to pay more for fewer priests. Parish contributions to the diocese have already dropped, and some parish churches are threatening to withhold them altogether. This is not what we want, nor can it be what the diocese wants.
What we do want is to see is our parish churches revitalised. Aren’t we the ones who believe in resurrection, after all? Your PCC has the legal right to say that Minster Communities aren’t for you, and enough money can be saved if the diocese chooses to cut its administration costs rather than our clergy. Admittedly, many of the funding problems stem not from any one diocesan bishop, but have their root cause in the national Church. But we have to start somewhere, and while Save The Parish makes its case nationally, you and I can do our bit locally.
We would be delighted if you came along to our open meeting on 18th September at 7.00 pm in Scalford church.
If you would like to join us, please do respond to this newsletter, share it widely, and above all, pray for us and our parishes.
Joey Newton
Chairman, Save The Parish Leicestershire
joey.newton@savetheparish.com
