PLANS for parish renewal and revitalisation will receive a share of the most recent tranche of funding from the Archbishops’ Council’s Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI) Board, totalling £64 million. It includes £29 million for the diocese of Southwark — the most important sum ever approved for a single diocese.
The diocese of Blackburn has been awarded £25.5 million for a nine-year programme that features “parish renewal”. The diocesan strategy records that “most of the significant challenges being faced by parishes within the diocese are concentrated in 15-20 per cent of parishes which can be struggling missionally or financially. These parishes are sometimes facing long-term and deep-seated challenges. Renewal in such parishes will involve matters of spiritual health in addition to a wide selection of complex inter-related issues corresponding to governance, finance and buildings.”
Parishes considered for inclusion within the scheme, which offers non-financial support, are those “where there may be hard-working and faithful leadership in post but who’re coping with highly complex issues. These parishes have significant potential for growth.”
A diocesan press release said that “people in our parishes were fastidiously consulted over an prolonged period” before the submission of the SMMI bid, which incorporates plans for “the renewal of church life in urban areas”. In 2021, the diocese was awarded £3.5 million in SDF funding for 2 resource churches: St Luke’s, Blackburn, and St John’s, Blackpool, each within the HTB network (News, 21 May 2021). They were each planted from Preston Minster, itself the topic of a £1.5-million grant in 2019 (News, 25 January 2019).
The latest tranche of funding may even support the expansion of M:Power, a nine-month training programme focused on aspiring lay leaders in urban contexts (News, 8 March 2019), which is able to now train 18 parish-based lay pioneers; and the recruitment of 30 latest parish-based posts to form the Ignite Team across Lancashire, focused on youth ministry. A Canon for Presence and Engagement, based at Blackburn Cathedral, and an Inter-Cultural Mission Enabler in Burnley might be appointed. The diocese goals to create 250 latest congregations by 2030. Plans to speculate in clergy include continued provision of ten curacies annually, half funded by the diocese.
Parish renewal can also be a spotlight of Southwark’s successful bid: a “whole-diocese transformation programme”, which might “resource and enable churches of various sizes and kinds to flourish and grow, after which share the training to learn every parish within the diocese”. Of the £29 million, £7.44 million might be released at a later date, when locations for “hub and resourcing churches” are identified, with plans for planting and grafting.
A diocesan press release described a latest “parish development and renewal programme, which invites teams from parishes to have interaction in a two-year learning initiative addressing the true challenges of parish life and exploring missional change of their local context.” Other elements of the scheme include an apprenticeship-style scheme to handle the necessity for more children and young people’s staff, offering young people a qualification and a path to paid employment. To further develop diversity amongst lay and ordained leaders, a research project will explore the barriers to ministry for people of all backgrounds.
The money may even be used to support Fresh Expressions, bilingual congregations (News, 7 September 2018), and estates ministry. The diocese has a strategic goal to extend average weekly attendance by five per cent by 2025, compared with 2013. Adult average weekly attendance fell by 20 per cent between 2013 and 2022, from 30,800 in 2013 to 24,400 in 2022, in comparison with a median national decline of 32 per cent. Other goals were met: there are actually greater than 100 Fresh Expressions within the diocese.
Canon Will Cookson, director of mission and dean of pioneering ministry and Fresh Expressions, said: “Mission will all the time be driven by the needs and character of the area people. That’s why we’ve created a programme that parishes of all types – from urban to rural, Anglo-Catholic to Evangelical, and all the pieces in between – can become involved with and profit from.”
The diocese of London has been awarded £9.4 million to support its Hackney and Islington Programme over six years. A diocesan press release said that a 3rd of the population of the 2 deaneries were aged under 19 and that t hey had the very best variety of socially-rented households within the UK. About half of the parishes were in “the broad Catholic tradition” and lots of faced “significant mission and financial challenges”.
The programme had emerged from discussions with clergy and diocesan leaders, the Archdeacon of Hackney, the Ven. Peter Farley-Moore said. “It became apparent that by working collaboratively, benefiting from our strengths, and with a lift of investment to get us going, we could reach many more young people, impact our estates in latest ways, and grow mission in our churches from a distinctively Catholic tradition.” The programme would entail “drawing on the experience and expertise of church leaders with an excellent track-record in these areas”.
The money might be used to fund greater than 20 latest positions, including 4 “clergy missioners”. There are plans to determine ten latest worshipping communities through “strategic church plants and partnerships”, five more “youth minsters” to serve 21 parishes (each supported by a youth employee, a youth apprentice, operational support, and seed funding) and five estates missioners. Catholic renewal might be supported through the formation of two “Catholic clusters” to serve eight parishes, supported by a dedicated mission enabler, two missioners, two support officers, and a music director, with seed funding and plans to determine nine latest worshipping communities.
A goal of Capital Vision 2020, an earlier strategy, was to double the variety of young people involved in local Christian communities within the diocese (News, 14 June 2013). This was redefined in 2017, after it was concluded that the baseline of 2000 was not “reliable”. An annual report noted that “patchy data and data collection challenges also made attempting to assess the changes in numbers of young people across the diocese difficult” but that Capital Youth had made “a big impact to growing numbers of youth in church communities”.
Last month, the SMMI Board announced that plans were under technique to improve measurement of the outcomes of its funded projects and share the training acquired (News, 24 May 2024).
