A PARISH church within the network of Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB), and situated in one of the vital deprived parts of the south-west has been allocated greater than £400,000 for mission to children, young people, and families through the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB).
St Clement’s, Boscombe, then an Anglo-Catholic church, received a church-plant in 2016 from St Swithun’s, Bournemouth, itself a plant from HTB (Features, 21 April 2017). The benefice of St Clement and St Swithun, Bournemouth is now generally known as “LoveChurch”.
The allocation of £412,333 will fund an administrative post and a children and family employee for schools outreach, with the hope of a youth employee in the end. Funding can even go towards improvements to the church hall and church constructing.
The money is a drawdown from the SMMI funding of £4.5 million for six parish-revitalisation projects announced by the diocese of Winchester in 2023 (News, 28 July 2023). The other two up to now confirmed are: St Andrew’s, Bournemouth (in Charminster), “revitalised” with a team from LoveChurch, and Lord’s Hill Church, Southampton, “revitalised” with a team from St Mary’s, Southampton, one other HTB plant in receipt of Strategic Development Funding (SDF). Last yr, the diocese reported that Lord’s Hill Church, renovated with the assistance of the national funding, had had a rise in its congregation from 30 to 130 in lower than a yr.
Between 2017 and 2021, the diocese received £9 million in SDF grants towards its three-phase mission motion plan. In October, the diocese published an external review, Going Far or Going Fast?, of the primary phase of the project. Conducted by Brendan Research, it concluded that the project had “achieved a remarkable amount considering the standing start and complicated political dynamics within the diocese”.
It highlights the centrality of the HTB network to the diocese’s strategy for growth. All 4 of its resource churches are a part of this network. The review describes “transformative” growth in areas that should not “typical” HTB planting contexts. But it says that “tracking where growth is coming from has proved almost unattainable. . . leaders have chosen to not make this a priority.”
At Andover Parish Church, only seven per cent of worshippers are recorded as “un- or de-churched” against a goal of 30 per cent. It also notes a five-figure overspend on the constructing at St Mary’s, Southampton, and comprises a warning against “allowing architects to run amok”. Resource churches “appear to have a somewhat detached relationship with the diocese”, it says.
Also studied is the “Benefice of the Future” programme (News, 8 September 2023), the aim of which was to grow worshipping communities in pilot rural benefices by 15 per cent. This is described as “unrealistic”: they declined by 4.8 per cent. But a goal for brand new lay leaders was exceeded, reaching 38. Other successes included simplified structures and governance, and culture change “where parishes now give sacrificially to support the distinctive ministries of other parishes inside their benefice”. The review concludes that the project, which has given rise to the “Growing Rural Parishes Programme” within the diocese, was “successful in honouring the Christians already serving their rural contexts.”
Another aspect of the programme was the establishment of pioneer hubs to grow Fresh Expressions of church in areas of urban deprivation. The review concludes: “The slow, small, relational ‘serving-first’ approach to pioneering church seems very much at odds with an SDF programme designed for rapid growth in three to 5 years.” The approach is, it says, “unaffordable inside a SDF programme where a full-time stipendiary pioneer is required to guide”. But, it adds, that this mustn’t be the tip of “the sort of pioneering that may help reach those who attractional church or ‘worship-first’ models can’t reach”.
Against a backdrop of intensive housing development, the programme aimed to achieve 6000 people across six “major development areas”, through church-plants, Fresh Expressions, schools, and nurseries. The review refers to challenges equivalent to delays in housebuilding, the cutting of a vicar’s post, and Covid-19.
The diocese was “justified in closing some projects early because of weaknesses in programme design although more care was needed over how they were closed”, it says. Some at local level were “made to feel it was their fault that projects failed”, and the review was told that “some superb mission-minded parish priests left the diocese in consequence.” A student-evangelism project, whose goal was to have 1400 students “come to Christ”, recorded just 20. This “calls into query how much student growth in large churches is a results of transfer growth”.
Among the observations is that, with regard to pastoral reorganisation and other changes, “considerable time, energy and ‘trust capital’ were expended within the diocese fighting for the brand new. . . It would have been much better to attend for key clergy or laity to maneuver/retire reasonably than fight parish structures that, as one interviewee commented, will ‘haunt the diocese for years to come back’.”
All continuing projects remain reliant on further SDF (or SMII) funding. The resource churches are paying a lower or subsidised rate to permit them to prioritise numerical growth. Among the questions posed is “Who will reach people in contexts that resource churches can’t?”
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