Save The Parish has another new branch: STP – York Diocese is up and running with growing membership. They are already making the case for more clergy to be returned to rural parishes.
For more information contact Emma Brooksbank emma@cunelands.co.uk.
Watch this space – there are more area branches in the pipeline.
“…Instead it could become simply a prescriptive sect: an organisation with an official line which its prelates are expected to toe. If ever there was an effective way to make a church unattractive to all but the dreariest of zealots and and empty its pews still further, this is it.”
“Bishops are not intended to be missionary bishops, but pastoral bishops, shepherds of the local shepherds. The point of the parochial system led by bishops was to provide pastoral care…
“This is why thousands of grassroots laity and clergy met, in person and online, last week to plot a General Synod campaign to oppose this new plan and remind our…
“They must visit and speak to the people in Wales, they must study the figures and look at the facts and avoid going down the same disastrous road if they do not wish to kill local community spirit and personal relationships, dry up donations and see church closures and sales which proclaim loud and clear their failure to keep the flame of Christianity alive.”
My local parish is undergoing significant changes. For a long time, our local church in Roos, East Yorkshire has been without a priest and we rely on a rural dean who travels to all of the different churches in South Holderness. Roos church relies on support from the Diocese of York to survive but due to the proposed funding changes, it is unlikely that we will be able to afford to pay for the employment of the clergy.
“The answers by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, the Rt Revd Martin Seeley, to the General Synod (11 February) point to the essence of the financial dilemma being addressed by development of an uncosted Vision and Strategy alongside the massacre, through ever more mergers and closures, of parishes that are the source of £1 billion of funding.”