FUNDS allocated by the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI) Board and totalling greater than £300 million since 2014 are believed to have contributed to about 37,000 people newly attending a church or “worship setting”.
The Board’s latest annual report, published on Friday, also lists 6000 latest people “volunteering or stepping as much as lay leadership or exploring ordained vocations for the primary time” and 1300 latest worshipping communities. It estimates that a 3rd of England’s population live in parishes that are supported through SMMI or Strategic Development Fund (SDF) projects. Lowest Income Communities Funding supports 2000 parishes, where nearly 15 million people live.
The SDF programme, which allocated funding of virtually £180 million between 2014 and 2022, was expected to create 89,375 disciples (News, 11 March 2022). Its successor, SMMI, has several components, including the Diocesan Investment Programme (DIP), which was expected to distribute as much as £338 million in the present triennium (2023 to 2025). There are currently £156 million of “lively grants”, with £81 million allocated to 12 dioceses in 2024.
The report states that the Board “continues to take a position to be certain that the training from funded programmes — each what works well and what doesn’t — is widely shared in order that it will probably profit the entire Church”.
Although the report concludes with a two-page summary of insights, few evaluations of diocesan projects have been made public (News, 21 May 2024; Features, 8 November 2024). In 2024, 12 evaluations were commissioned, predominantly for SDF projects coming to an end. These included projects in Bath & Wells, Blackburn, Chelmsford, Eastbourne, Liverpool, London, Sheffield, Winchester, and Worcester. Evaluations are circulated to a limited audience but not made public — except when the diocese itself chooses otherwise.
The SIB annual report states that 45 per cent of DIP has focused on the Vision and Strategy end result of “revitalising the parish system for mission in order that existing churches can reach and serve everyone of their community”, and that no less than two-thirds of the funding is “invested directly in parishes”. Funding is “focused on parishes in areas of deprivation”.
The Board’s evaluation suggests that parishes in dioceses which have received funding have attendance that’s 14 per cent higher than that of the same parish in a diocese that has not received this funding. On average, giving in parishes supported by SMMI funding is 40 per cent higher.
In 2024, £32.8 million of Lowest Income Communities Funding was paid to dioceses. The proportion going to parishes serving probably the most deprived 25 per cent of the population stood at 67 per cent in 2023 — a figure that got here under criticism in a recent General Synod debate (News, 28 February).
ONE SDF project evaluation in the general public domain is the diocese of Ely’s five-year “Changing market towns”, which in 2018 was awarded £2.13 million towards a complete £4.36 million cost (Features, 16 November 2018). This sought to reverse the declining church attendance in eight deprived Fenland towns. Each town was allocated an ordained “town leader”, along with an operations manager and a Changing Market Town employee — often working with children and young people.
An impact report published by the diocese in February records successes, including a “significant and positive change in perception concerning the role of the church” in lots of towns, and the positive impact of kids’s, families, and youth employees. Many schools that had been “unenthusiastic” about church involvement were now “actively requesting” it.
Attendance in inherited churches across the towns fell from 1029 — the pre-project baseline — to 784 in 2024. But attendance in Fresh Expressions grew from 12 to 1003. Covid had “significantly impacted” work, the report said, but progress was being made towards targets reset in 2022.
Alongside this report, the diocese published a lessons-learned review written by John Truscott, a church consultant. A key theme of his review — echoed in other evaluations of SDF projects — is the necessity to get “buy-in from everyone collaborating, fairly than having an enthusiastic group trying to influence others to see things like they do”. His mid-term review of the project, published in 2021, found that, usually, the churches involved had “little passion for the vision of the project, especially inside PCCs . . . There was no bottom-up movement of churches begging to be involved, longing to welcome latest staff resources to enable them to make progress.”
The “sudden transformations” within the churches involved were ones that “most were unready for,” this review observed. The idea of Fresh Expressions had been “a rude shock to many congregations”. Congregations that had hoped to see “growing Sunday attendance with none change to their traditional, liturgical Eucharist” had been upset by the project’s outcomes.
Mr Truscott’s research identifies the challenges faced by SDF-funded staff arriving in contexts where there may be a scarcity of local buy-in — one other finding echoed in other evaluations. One Operations Manager said: “We were alleged to be a help, but as a substitute have been treated like an outsider attempting to force things on them.” His 2024 report recommends that: “Staff ought to be appointed only to churches desperate to work with them.” The importance of considering local culture can be emphasised: “Simply forcing an open evangelical culture on a liberal catholic church isn’t going to be received well.”
A theme of the reviews in Ely — also echoed in other evaluations — is the complexity of setting targets for church projects, and the risks of setting vague or over-ambitious targets. Mr Truscott recommends that dioceses be “very careful over specific numbers which have little evidence as being sensible. A fresh expressions element won’t produce financial giving inside just five or so years. A schools project won’t produce a direct increase in families at Sunday services.”
“Many churches operate inside a culture that has developed over many many years, and an aim to vary that in a matter of a number of months and even years will lead to disappointment,” he writes.
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