PARISHES in Margate, in Canterbury diocese, rated as one of the deprived areas within the country, are among the many recipients of the newest tranche of Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI) funding.
In total, the diocese has been awarded £3.2 million for a five-year programme of church-planting, or establishing recent congregations and revitalisation, it was announced on Friday.
SMMI is a recent funding stream through which the Archbishops’ Council allocates funding to dioceses (News, 18 March 2023). It replaces Strategic Development Funding (SDF), Strategic Capacity Funding, and Strategic Transformation Funding. It features a £340-million Diocesan Investment Programme for the present triennium (2023-25), comprising a £100-million of Lowest Income Communities Funding (News, 7 November 2019), and a remaining £240 million fund for which all dioceses can bid. Bids have to be in step with the priorities of the overarching Vision and Strategy priorities for the 2020s.
In Margate, the funding has enabled the appointment of the Revd Mark Nelson as Priest-in-Charge of Holy Trinity, now designated a “resourcing church”. A press release says that the church can be “working in partnership to revitalise the neighbouring parishes of St Paul’s, Cliftonville, St John’s, Margate, and All Saints’, Westbrook” — parishes currently without an incumbent and with low attendance relative to the population. The money can be used to pay for ministry — each lay and ordained — in addition to work on buildings.
The plan is in partnership with the Revitalise Trust (formerly the Church Revitalisation Trust — a charity established to “further the church-planting activity which was previously undertaken by Holy Trinity, Brompton”). On Friday, the Archdeacon of Canterbury, the Ven. Dr Will Adam, said that the parishes were “keen to work together in mission to Margate”, and that the trust brought “significant knowledge and expertise”.
Mr Nelson is currently a curate at SAINT, a gaggle of churches in east London spanning the dioceses of London and Chelmsford (St John’s and St Luke’s, Hackney — one benefice since 2019; St Leonard’s, Shoreditch; All Saints’, West Ham; and St Mary with St Edward, Leyton) where “revitalisations” are under way. The incumbent is the Revd Alexander Gordon, who became Rector of St John’s, Hackney, in 2016, after serving his title at Holy Trinity, Brompton.
St Paul’s, Cliftonville, under the leadership of Canon Patrick Ellisdon (incumbent from 2004 until 2023), began a café-style church, Ignite, in 2008, which became the blueprint for a gaggle of seven recent worshipping communities, served by missioners, now present in areas of deprivation across the diocese. The £1.4-million project received an £887,015 SDF grant in 2018 (News, 13 July 2018; Interview, 16 September 2022)
A second SMMI-funded project in north Maidstone will seek to develop the partnership between St Luke’s — a Charismatic Evangelical church which, under the leadership of the Revd Gareth Dickinson, has trebled its congregation over the past three years to about 150 people — and St Faith’s, a church on a housing estate that has recently had a recent bespoke church and community centre built.
Although Canterbury is the oldest diocese, its assets are among the many lowest per capita: £2.31, in line with 2021 figures. Only Liverpool is ranked below it (95 pence). Archdeacon Adam said on Friday that its only historic financial assets were clergy housing and a “very small” amount of glebe land. All costs must due to this fact be covered through parish share.
The diocese has significant levels of deprivation. Holy Trinity, Margate, is one of the deprived parishes within the country: almost one third of youngsters are recorded as living in poverty.
The SMMI grant follows the launch of a diocesan strategy, Changed Lives; Changing Lives, which incorporates plans to double the number of youngsters and young disciples, launch 200 recent Christian communities, and see every parish, benefice, and deanery “showing signs of revitalisation”.
A 2021 diocesan strategy paper highlighted a 15-per-cent fall in attendance over the past ten years, and set out plans to balance income and expenditure from 2022. It diagnosed a “historic over-reliance on stipendiary clergy”, and forecast a shift to less paid ministry and leadership, warning that, “with declining attendance and declining funds, the identical level of stipendiary ministry shouldn’t be financially sustainable across the diocese”.
On Friday, Dr Adam said that the strategy had “evolved” since 2021. There was no diocesan policy to cut back spending on stipendiary clergy, and numbers had remained “broadly similar. But our financial situation dictates that we’ve got rigorously to think about the affordability of posts when vacancies arise. We are searching for to grow the extent of lay ministry and self-supporting clergy to work alongside our stipendiary clergy. . .
“The story here is about drawing in much needed investment to support growth in our mission, reasonably than attempting to balance our financial books.”
Other awards
Bubble Church, a 30-minute Sunday church service designed for babies, toddlers, and young families, has been awarded an extra £145,423 to fund two support staff, and to assist churches in lower-income communities with start-up costs. First arrange on the Ascension, Balham Hill (a part of the Holy Trinity, Brompton network), during Covid restrictions, it uses puppets and songs to assist to inform Bible stories to young families and talk concerning the Christian faith.
The Vicar, the Revd Marcus Gibbs, reported last yr that greater than 100 people were attending the service, 80 per cent of whom had never been to church previously. He had seen the variety of infant baptisms “explode” — to twenty within the previous yr — and families stay for the next service. “We’ve began with who they’re, and the way we will bless and meet their needs at this moment of their life,” he said in an internet video.
Bubble Church received £250,000 in 2022 for expansion, since when the variety of churches participating has grown from five to 30.
The Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board has also made an award of £45,000 under its People and Partnerships Fund to the Gregory Centre for Church Multiplication, for “research into how local churches support the living out the Christian faith in on a regular basis life”.
The diocese of Hereford has been awarded £457,630 to assist to pay for a series of “hubs”, or centres, to support rural parishes in outreach to children and young people. This can be piloted in two market towns, hosting youth and community employees and providing training in youth ministry while working in partnership with other programmes.
Hereford’s “Vision for the 2020s” listed a series of challenges facing the diocese. There were “only a few children at most acts of worship on a Sunday”. Outside urban centres, the typical Anglican was aged 72. With an annual deficit of £1 million, only 55 of 72 stipendiary incumbent posts were inexpensive, it said.
The grant follows an award of £525,000 in SDF funding in 2017 towards a £1.05-million five-year project to put intergenerational missioners (IMs) in six parishes within the diocese. Goals included a plan to “reach 1800 unchurched individuals with the gospel of whom 450 can be recent disciples. At least half can be young people and adults under 35.”
A review conducted by RSConsult Ltd was published in 2022. It concluded that the project “can’t be described as having generated a step-change in mission. The growth in disciples is modest, the impact on the churches is mixed, and the initiative demonstrates fragility in the flexibility to sustain it each behaviourally and financially.
”However, it has had a catalytic impact on each diocese and churches and the points of friction are key missional topics: what the Church is here for, how best to live out faith, outward vs inward facing views and relationships with the community. It is extremely unlikely that these issues might have been tackled as straightforwardly without using a missioner-type role, be that an existing church leader or an implant. An agent of change is required to kick-start the germination strategy of growth.”
The review heard that greater than 1900 unchurched people had been “reached” (62 per cent of whom were under 35), and 195 people had “change into disciples” (43 per cent of whom were under 35). Of the 195, 120 were estimated to have change into members of a church, though the report said that some had “struggled to integrate into the present Anglican community”. In addition, 16 recent worshipping communities had been established, most of which met monthly.
It set out quite a few learning points. “Bringing into roles individuals who aren’t ordained, are much younger, who bring different backgrounds and experiences and whose outlook is different from the dominant clerical mindset could be very helpful,” it suggested. But this was also a source of tension. In the three market-town areas involved, not one of the IMs accomplished their term. In six of the seven placements, there have been “significant frictions within the relationships between clergy and the IMs”.
The review also reported “a really mixed response from churches not only when it comes to growth but additionally from the present congregants — some positive but others negative despite the commitments made by churches at the beginning of the project. In some cases, congregants simply don’t appear to have understood how you can engage effectively with the brand new relationships that the IM activity generated.”
Around the Church, it suggested, there was “a big challenge in ageing churches due to resistance to the varieties of changes needed to have interaction younger adults more effectively”.
For their part, IMs reported that “mission is about constructing relationships with people through relevant service and activity. The trust and strength of those relationships construct the bridge through which discipleship can develop. This shouldn’t be well understood nor practised in lots of traditional church settings.”
The review also recorded that “targets were felt by many to be high or not of their gift to achieve despite these being understood upfront — notably the numbers who change into disciples — and these points were energy-sapping.”
