A £3-MILLION grant has been awarded to the diocese of Monmouth to create 4 latest church-plants aimed toward people under 40.
The funding is from the Church in Wales’s Evangelism Fund, arrange six years ago to offer funding for large-scale, transformative diocesan projects — an echo of the Church of England’s Strategic Development Fund (News, 21 September 2018). Grants of between £250,000 and £3 million can be found.
Over the subsequent five years, 4 latest plants, or “hubs”, are to be established, each with a frontrunner and a children’s and families’ pioneer — an approach that may allow them to “develop organically and without placing burdens on existing clergy”, the diocese said. It is envisaged that they might be self-sustaining by the top of 5 years.
Between 2020 and 2023, Monmouth diocese underwent significant organisational change, with the amalgamation of 121 parishes into 16 larger ministry areas — “rectorial benefices” led by teams of lay and ordained ministers, including no less than two stipendiary clergy — with the aim of encouraging collaborative working, including shared resources and the harnessing of economies of scale.
The Bishop of Monmouth, the Rt Revd Cherry Vann, has warned that many congregations “have few if any members under 60: the lifetime of the Church doesn’t look sustainable beyond a decade or so”.
On Tuesday, the Archdeacon of the Gwent Valleys, the Ven. Stella Bailey, said that seven applications had been received in spite of everything the ministry areas had been asked “what it could appear like to plant a latest worshipping community into their context with additional ministry support and a resource budget”. The Evangelism Fund committee had supported the funding of the primary two plants, and one other two were attributable to be launched in 2026.
In Tredegar, a post-industrial valleys community, “which lives with the social impact attributable to the decline of the iron and coal industries”, a team led by the Area Dean of Mynydd Bedwellty, the Revd Matthew Davis, was already “creating activities that deepen their relationship with the community and create a welcoming space for families”. The aim was to launch a worshipping community “away from the normal Sunday-morning context, that might be shaped in its discipleship and outreach to interact with those under 40”.
In Chepstow, a commuter town having many families with members who worked within the Bristol area, there was “enormous potential” to construct a latest congregation with a “younger demographic, working alongside and helping to encourage the present congregations in that ministry area”. There had been “amazing support and enthusiasm from across the ministry area congregations for this project”.
The diocese is currently promoting for the “hub leader” and kids’s and families’ pioneer posts. Applications from each lay and ordained candidates are welcomed, it says.
“In a society which might now be described as pre-Christian, we acknowledge that the jump from being unchurched right into a eucharistic tradition is a barrier which might inhibit people’s abilities to listen to the excellent news and hope of the gospel,” Archdeacon Bailey said.
“We are searching for to strengthen a culture where we take risks for God in a way that allows us to live out the good commission and to evangelise the gospel afresh for this generation. As such, the project has targets around numerical and spiritual growth, in addition to accountability and good stewardship. We expect that lessons learned from the project may be replicated in other contexts across the diocese.”
Evangelism grants so far have included funding for 2 plants in partnership with the Church Revitalisation Trust established by Holy Trinity, Brompton: Hope Street, Wrexham; and Citizen Church, Cardiff, where attendance is now in excess of 500 people (News, 22 March 2019, 16 September 2022).
In 2021, funding was allocated to the £3-million Llan project to re-establish and located latest pilgrimage routes in north Wales, and switch six churches into “pilgrim churches” (News, 9 April 2021).
