On the ground, many of us parish clergy are getting increasingly cheesed off. In The Church Times this week there is yet another advertisement for a non-parish job loaded full of vacuous HR devised buzzwords. Sheffield Diocese are looking for an Associate Archdeacon — which is a new one on me — to be a “transition enabler”.
Their job will be to “grow teams of lay and ordained leaders shaping a mission-focused church fit for the challenges of the 21stcentury.” This is the new church-speak, a strange combination of woke-ish managerialism and charismatic Christianity, and which represents an almost unreported revolution within the Church of England.
It is one of the biggest changes in the Church’s history, although a revolution more Thatcher than Tudor in nature. It is the story of how the parish church was stripped of its treasure, its talent and its energy — and the most miserable part of the story is that it was an inside job.
The parish church is the oldest institution in the country, predating the Church of England itself by several hundred years, and the cornerstone of the historic relationship between Christianity and the land. The existence of a parish church in every community is the main reason that the C of E is given a seat at the high table of the establishment.
These days, however, many parishes are close to collapse, exhausted by financial worries and increasingly by a shortage of suitable clergy. Many parishes in the countryside are being forced together into ever greater economies of scale; just recently Chelmsford Diocese announced that it will lose 60 clergy posts over the next 18 months. The squeeze is on.
Yet other parts of the Church seem to be growing fast. Last year a report to the General Synod of the Church of England (GS 2142) spoke of the rapid expansion of what it calls “Pioneer Ministry”. “Recently Ministry Division has set an ambitious goal to double and double again the number of pioneers by 2027,” it stated: “If achieved this would see approximately 6,000 pioneers.” Such pioneers can be what are called “fresh start” pioneers, which means they “work from a blank canvass, in unreached places, released from inherited incumbency obligations”.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe