IN THE first of a series of pastoral reorganisations set to scale back drastically the variety of parishes within the diocese of Liverpool, the brand new larger parish of Church St Helens got here into being on 1 May, bringing together 11 of the 19 churches within the deanery.
The St Helens deanery, together with West Derby, was the primary to embark on the diocese’s Fit for Mission programme, which began in 2022 and is ready to run until 2028. Over the course of the period, cohorts of deaneries will spend two years planning and consulting on changes, culminating in PCCs’ voting on parish reorganisation.
The aim is that, by 2028, 80 per cent of parishes can have joined latest and bigger parishes. Diocesan documentation refers to a “working assumption” that every of the brand new and bigger parishes will bring together at the least eight existing parishes, as much as a maximum of 15. The variety of parishes within the diocese could fall from 250 to 25, or fewer. Each can have one rector supported by associate lay and ordained leaders, some paid, some self-supporting.
In St Helens, eight of the churches within the deanery selected not to affix the Fit for Mission programme. Creation of the brand new parish follows approval of a draft scheme by the Church Commissioners. A diocesan press release said that the brand new structure would entail “closer collaboration, increasing clergy support, and centralising administration services, to liberate more time to concentrate on mission and ministry”.
The parish has one Team Rector, Canon Christine Daniel, and nine Team Vicars (six of whom are full-time), along with 4 curates. Each member of the team will remain at their existing churches, “but work more closely together to support wider mission and ministry”.
A latest PCC, representing all 11 churches, is to “act as trustees to the larger parish and handle governance matters”, while an employed team of 4 part-time staff will offer support services for buildings, funds, and administration.
The past two years had “at times been complex and difficult”, Canon Daniel said last week. But the method had “empowered us to make our own decisions concerning the way forward for life in our parish. . . We imagine this legal change will proceed to foster strong working relationships and collegiality between all of us, and strength our wider mission, which is to renew hope.”
Proposals to shut one constructing and do further “feasibility work” on 4 others have been approved by the deanery synod, following consultation with PCCs.
In 2022, the Church Commissioners awarded Liverpool a strategic transformation fund grant of £7.5 million: the biggest grant of its kind allocated thus far. The diocese reports that 70 per cent of its churches are in “sustained decline”. In the past 30 years, attendance within the diocese has declined by 65 per cent.
Diocesan guidance about Fit for Mission suggests that it “is likely to be the last likelihood we’ve got to make a step change in the main target of clergy and lay to grow. If decline continues then as a diocese we will likely be taking a look at clergy cuts.” The diocese has the bottom assets per capita of any within the Church, leaving its churches “increasingly financially vulnerable”.
A bigger parish will “enable us to simplify decision-making, create higher support services, and free people up from cranking the various handles of the institution of the Church of England, and as an alternative concentrate on taking the excellent news of Jesus to a lost and broken world”, a document responding to “ceaselessly asked questions” argues. The parish boundary and individual charitable status is “a barrier to collaboration”.
There aren’t any plans to scale back the variety of stipendiary clergy as a part of Fit for Mission, but, in common with other dioceses, Liverpool is encouraging the appointment of “focal leaders” for churches, who may or will not be ordained, under the oversight of a priest. Each parish can have a rector.
A scoping document states that, in larger parishes, “amalgamation of services, and a few changes to service times, along with closure or change-of-use of a few of the many church buildings is inevitable going forward, and is a nettle that must be grasped by the Rector, leadership team, and PCC from the outset.”
Another summary document says that caring for buildings that were “built for an additional age”, is “a strain on funds and on time-poor volunteers, who don’t have specialist constructing management skills”.
The funding from the Church Commissioners is getting used to fund a variety of diocesan posts, including a buildings strategy manager, who will support a locally appointed “right buildings team” for every deanery, given the duty of constructing a “best-option proposal about which buildings the larger parish needs for its future mission and ministry”.
While no church may be forced to take part in Fit for Mission, the FAQ warns that, for people who don’t, “there won’t be any access to the support services or wider resources provided under Fit for Mission. . . That could possibly be a troublesome, vulnerable, and exposed place to be.”
“Viability” is a key theme of this document, which warns that “where there are unviable buildings and/or unviable congregations and worshipping communities there can’t be any blank cheque that claims they may be sustained for ever.”
Churches that join the brand new, larger parishes will each have their very own fund, to which all money given to the church will likely be credited. They will likely be expected to balance income and expenditure.
Alongside fewer parishes, Fit for Mission goals to create a whole bunch of newly planted worship communities, delivering “less bureaucracy, more mission”, with an emphasis on lay leadership supported by the “Cultivate” local missional leadership programme. Last yr, the diocese reported that, in St Helens, greater than 113 people had already engaged with Cultivate. Among the general targets for 2028 are the planting of 100-200 latest worshipping communities led by local missional leadership teams, with as much as 4500 worshippers.
Rollout of the Fit for Mission programme follows Transforming Wigan, a seven-year project supported by the Church Commissioners that entailed the grouping of 33 churches in a single benefice, reducing the variety of parishes from 29 to seven (News, 29 September 2023).
An independent evaluation published last yr reported the creation of 29 latest worshipping communities, but recorded that the project had not halted an overall decline in attendance. The churches’ financial deficit had increased eight-fold, linked to the “considerable upset and dissatisfaction” attributable to the reconfiguration.
The Fit for Mission FAQ sets out the “lessons learned” from the Wigan experience and the differences going forward. It was a mistake, it says, not to scale back the variety of parishes in Wigan more drastically: “Having multiple parish remains to be far too complex when it comes to coordination they usually need to reduce down much further . . . parish structures with numerous layers don’t work.”
Another lesson, it says, is that “clergy and other leaders work higher in teams than when isolated.” Clergy in Wigan “say that they’d not return to the previous ways of working.” There are “loads of lay people able to be excited by the probabilities God has for them,” and “many opportunities to attach with individuals who aren’t connected with church,” it says.
The scoping document argues that Transforming Wigan was “under-resourced”, and records that, “by not coping with the buildings issue head-on, we put a big drain on missional activity”. Last yr, it was reported that as many as 19 of the 31 church buildings within the Wigan benefice could close after a review warned of reserves “under pressure or exhausted” and parishes that were “not financially viable” (News, 6 October 2023).
The scoping document also observes that: “People discover closely with their church and their leader. They feel the loss — or threatened loss — acutely. The provision of top quality and available pastoral care is significant.” Among the Fit for Mission targets is the addition of 25 everlasting deacons, “growing the ministry of missional outreach and pastoral care”.
“However positive the general case for change, change all the time comes with a price,” the scoping document says. “And the price is real, not only perceived, and can’t be fully mitigated.”
