This is why it seems to me to be so important that *new* churches consult with those already on the ground, as it were.
A deprived estate, for example, may have not much of a visible church presence, but it'll be in someone's parish (not that the C of E has exclusive rights, but the parish system does mean that there is a parish church somewhere nearby!).
That church may be seeking how to serve the area better, and there may be congregation members living on the estate who might be glad to take part in a *new* plant - if they're asked or consulted first.
I can find no trace of the mission to Dallington I saw set sail nearly 15 years ago. Can anyone point to such? Anywhere in England? The UK? Haiti? When I got involved in Leicester 12 years ago, there was talk of repeating what was tried in Liverpool, with communal living by example in abandoned council housing. How did that work out in Liverpool? Never happened in Leicester of course. Apart from rumours. As well as the obvious candidate in Lambeth, I've always been impressed by Emmaus. Anyone seen the Jesus Army anywhere? I saw Stanton himself shaming people in to charismatic excess in their Northampton former cinema at the time of the Dallington mission.
Sorry to seem like I am picking on you Martin, but I think this is important. Emmaus mandate that members working for them - and do not forget that people living in Emmaus communities are there as employees first and foremost - stop all their benefit claims in order to be part of the community. This is a huge red flag, and I think a relevant example of the paranoia many Evangelical institutions have towards secular social welfare and related provisions like benefits, counselling, childcare etc. Firstly it stigmatises receiving benefits, which is highly irresponsible when it purposely recruits vulnerable people who often feel a great deal of shame about needing to be on benefits, even though most people on benefits are in work and by far the biggest benefit in terms of spending are state pensions, which most people do not see as shameful.
It also means that members are no longer eligible for things like free prescriptions, eye tests, and dental care - many people who have been homeless, and especially street homeless, have complex ongoing health needs and being able to treat those things for free makes people much more likely to take care of themselves. If you can no longer afford your methadone prescription, why bother quitting heroin in the first place and ditching the stronger hit? It also takes people out of the system where they have regular interactions with people outside of a church or institutional environment, which is incredibly dangerous when those people are at increased risk of abuse and mistreatment. When I was homeless and unemployed and had not yet been granted my disability benefits meaning I didn't have to look for work, I would constantly get job adverts advertising a place in Emmaus communities - and I honestly think they are deeply exploitative institutions that shouldn't be able to recruit vulnerable people in this way. Bed and board in return for no longer being able to access free healthcare? That's indentured servitude, not a wage. Unfortunately so many Christian organisations similarly think they can treat their staff (waged or unwaged) like servants rather than equals.
The Jesus Army is a cult. Not in the sense of 'strange beliefs' but in the sense of 'an actual literal cult'. I have a friend who got involved when I was in Northampton and they insist on access to members' bank accounts, and choose who members date. Extremely bad news.
The bulk of the population seems to be entirely indifferent to the claims of the Christian faith.
Although there are some who (rightly) shout loudly about DH issues and (again rightly) about abuse, I think total indifference is the far more common position.
*snip*
I'm not attending any church at the moment. And I'll be honest, in the turning up on a Sunday to do the things we do when we turn up on a Sunday front, I'm really not missing it. As for some of the other things - Bible studies, prayer groups - I've given them a wide berth for years anyway and would positively avoid like the plague. Consequently I find the general attitude towards church ("bunch of god-botherers") tremendously comprehensible and not a little compelling.
Strangely enough, it's the Bible studies and prayer groups I miss the most. I think it's just because most churches that I would willingly attend without having to hide part of myself - which actually doesn't just refer to DH issues either - don't do them, so even if I was a week-in week-out church attender I wouldn't get them. I don't miss the set of beliefs that went with them, but I miss the community and the socialising that did. I say this as a single childless person though, someone with a spouse and kids understandably doesn't need those things in quite the same way. And therein lies another issue - Messy Church and what have you makes you, your kids, and me all feel like shit for different reasons, and those reasons will just never have occurred to the people that love that kind of thing. Which is depressing.
His old gaff could do 10. So IF Anglicanism got a million pew warmers a Sunday in 16,000 congos 10 years ago, according to the BBC. Which I find hard to believe. 2% of the pop. Which I really, really don't believe. My large village, church had 1/2% So half a mill now then. A quarter. In 15...12 thou. 10. Binary fission would still do it! Surely? Whilst still declining.
15 year ago I was half impressed by a conservative evangelical Anglican from South Africa who spurned Tutu's inclusivism but moved his entire young family to the worst housing estate in Northampton. He got it half right.
Will the Myriad get it all right? Led by an exclusive?
Did he ask the people on the estate if they wanted him there? Northampton has enough to deal with having the Jesus Army locally, when I lived in Northampton the last thing we needed was another conservative to tell us how sinful we were. The local Christian Union was doing plenty of that already.
This is part of my problem with such schemes. Nobody asks those in such mission fields what they actually want from a church, or who they want to lead such a project. The actual people living there are seen as a blank slate for the incomers to project their own needs and desires onto. I've lived in hostels where similar 'outreach' has happened and it's usually some middle-class person's saviour complex rather than actual service. Nobody ever asked what *we* would like or how *we* could be empowered to form our own community.
You'll get no argument from me Pomona. Another very middle class couple moved in to an ex-council house to be a beacon on a hill too. We offer nothing anyone wants. What would you have liked?
A deprived estate, for example, may have not much of a visible church presence, but it'll be in someone's parish (not that the C of E has exclusive rights, but the parish system does mean that there is a parish church somewhere nearby!).
But so often new church plants behave as if they are the only church in the area. Not perhaps true of ecumenical initiatives (although those have other difficulties) but IME often the case with Anglicans or New Churches.
Certainly as regards (Sydney New South Wales ) Anglican church plants in another diocese ( for example Newcastle, New South Wales 160 km to the north of Sydney)
I would have thought that another of the problems with any such church plant is that most of the people in the area who do want what such a church might offer are probably already attending another church a moderate distance away.... or is that off-beam?
I would have thought that another of the problems with any such church plant is that most of the people in the area who do want what such a church might offer are probably already attending another church a moderate distance away.... or is that off-beam?
No it is not. What gets up my (non-evo) nose is that the planters have the idea that only they have a handle on wot is Right & Proper Xtianity and that it is their mission to shove it down the necks of the great Unwashed and Unchurched. Wesley & the like beat them to it 2 centuries ago but the Wouldbegoods are too up themselves to get it.
It sounds as if the people who are pushing this idea are the same people who pushed Fresh Expressions twenty years ago, and went around labelling things we were doing anyway as meeting local needs as Fresh Expressions, such as Toddler Church (must be coming up for its 50th birthday, if not already past) and Market Day Coffee, both of which groups saw the church as their church. Whereas the artificially contrived Cafe Church established by the Elim pastor never took off, as it was an idea imported from elsewhere without a need. I was equally scathing about the Apple Cart church meeting in a pub, as it was bringing in church goers as the congregation to celebrate this new way of "doing church" rather than finding a new congregation. It was an upstairs room in a Whitechapel pub where it was obvious that many there weren't locals (not Bangladeshi, Somali or Cockney).
In fact, I'm pretty certain this idea of Mission shaped church with everyone out and about meeting people as a church in the community did come from the same source fifteen-twenty years ago. It didn't do a lot then either, and we put a lot of time and effort into it.
There is this Guardian story from last week (link) which compares and contrasts a walking church, the Lincoln Forest Church, with the Save our Parishes movement (link to Guardian 6 August coverage), which is pointing out, as is being said all over Twitter, that if the same funding being pumped into these Myriad churches was given to the existing parishes, rather than bleeding them dry to fund these projects, many of the parishes could actually do more, not imported things, but stuff that is needed in their communities.
A deprived estate, for example, may have not much of a visible church presence, but it'll be in someone's parish (not that the C of E has exclusive rights, but the parish system does mean that there is a parish church somewhere nearby!).
But so often new church plants behave as if they are the only church in the area. Not perhaps true of ecumenical initiatives (although those have other difficulties) but IME often the case with Anglicans or New Churches.
There is this Guardian story from last week (link) which compares and contrasts a walking church, the Lincoln Forest Church, with the Save our Parishes movement (link to Guardian 6 August coverage), which is pointing out, as is being said all over Twitter, that if the same funding being pumped into these Myriad churches was given to the existing parishes, rather than bleeding them dry to fund these projects, many of the parishes could actually do more, not imported things, but stuff that is needed in their communities.
<snip>There is this Guardian story from last week (link) which compares and contrasts a walking church, the Lincoln Forest Church, with the Save our Parishes movement (link to Guardian 6 August coverage), which is pointing out, as is being said all over Twitter, that if the same funding being pumped into these Myriad churches was given to the existing parishes, rather than bleeding them dry to fund these projects, many of the parishes could actually do more, not imported things, but stuff that is needed in their communities.
I often hear the 'bleeding the parishes dry' thing said in this diocese. There may be some places where that is true. But I also happen to know that in this diocese slightly less than 80% of the diocesan income comes from Parish Offer and slightly more than 80% of diocesan expenditure is on local ministry. For 2022, the projected costs here are (shared out pro rata among the full time equivalent clergy posts in the diocese):
Stipend £27,695
National Insurance £2308
Pension Contributions £10,153
Other Payroll Costs (eg Costs of Services in Vacancies) £724
Apprenticeship Levy (Government) £190
Housing £7261
Costs of Curates in Training £8113
Other (eg removals, resettlement) £728
Ordination Training £3777
Lay Training £510
CME (ie clergy in-service training) £532
This gives an annual total cost related to a full-time stipendiary minister of £61,190
Parishes which make an offer meeting this basic cost (pro rata if they share a minister) are covering their own costs. Parishes which do not are being subsidised. I emphasise that these figures only apply in one diocese.
The two big changes in my lifetime are (a) the extent to which parishes are now expected to cover the cost of their clergy, having previously been supported by historic resources from the Church Commissioners or their dioceses, and (b) the church at large (and hence parishes) being required to fund the cost of clergy pensions. The Church of England, therefore, is facing a reality which free/non-conformist churches have always lived with. If you want a person to devote their whole time to the life of the church, then some means of paying them needs to be found.
Whereas when I was attending, a decade ago, we were paying £140,000+ Parish Share for this one church in a three church team. The ministry team comprised two paid ministers, plus any training curates (I think we were on a break between them at the time) and various self-funded Readers. The Rector was also working as the Area Dean. So we were subsidising smaller parishes, not just within the team (the other two churches had to fulfil Parish Share too, and I think between them covered the cost of a minister, they were paying something like £40k and £20k), but also across the deanery and diocese. We were also a sending and training parish, losing lay leaders, readers and active members of the congregation regularly to ministerial training, and accommodating people on placements, continuously. As lay administrator I was funded by the church/team, as was the organist.
This Diocese had a system of larger more active churches supporting rural struggling parishes financially. Sadly this also got abused: there were local churches that chose not to pay their Parish Share and got themselves into problems that needed a lot of Diocesan support or used the money they should have been using to build a bell tower.
Comments
A deprived estate, for example, may have not much of a visible church presence, but it'll be in someone's parish (not that the C of E has exclusive rights, but the parish system does mean that there is a parish church somewhere nearby!).
That church may be seeking how to serve the area better, and there may be congregation members living on the estate who might be glad to take part in a *new* plant - if they're asked or consulted first.
Sorry to seem like I am picking on you Martin, but I think this is important. Emmaus mandate that members working for them - and do not forget that people living in Emmaus communities are there as employees first and foremost - stop all their benefit claims in order to be part of the community. This is a huge red flag, and I think a relevant example of the paranoia many Evangelical institutions have towards secular social welfare and related provisions like benefits, counselling, childcare etc. Firstly it stigmatises receiving benefits, which is highly irresponsible when it purposely recruits vulnerable people who often feel a great deal of shame about needing to be on benefits, even though most people on benefits are in work and by far the biggest benefit in terms of spending are state pensions, which most people do not see as shameful.
It also means that members are no longer eligible for things like free prescriptions, eye tests, and dental care - many people who have been homeless, and especially street homeless, have complex ongoing health needs and being able to treat those things for free makes people much more likely to take care of themselves. If you can no longer afford your methadone prescription, why bother quitting heroin in the first place and ditching the stronger hit? It also takes people out of the system where they have regular interactions with people outside of a church or institutional environment, which is incredibly dangerous when those people are at increased risk of abuse and mistreatment. When I was homeless and unemployed and had not yet been granted my disability benefits meaning I didn't have to look for work, I would constantly get job adverts advertising a place in Emmaus communities - and I honestly think they are deeply exploitative institutions that shouldn't be able to recruit vulnerable people in this way. Bed and board in return for no longer being able to access free healthcare? That's indentured servitude, not a wage. Unfortunately so many Christian organisations similarly think they can treat their staff (waged or unwaged) like servants rather than equals.
The Jesus Army is a cult. Not in the sense of 'strange beliefs' but in the sense of 'an actual literal cult'. I have a friend who got involved when I was in Northampton and they insist on access to members' bank accounts, and choose who members date. Extremely bad news.
Strangely enough, it's the Bible studies and prayer groups I miss the most. I think it's just because most churches that I would willingly attend without having to hide part of myself - which actually doesn't just refer to DH issues either - don't do them, so even if I was a week-in week-out church attender I wouldn't get them. I don't miss the set of beliefs that went with them, but I miss the community and the socialising that did. I say this as a single childless person though, someone with a spouse and kids understandably doesn't need those things in quite the same way. And therein lies another issue - Messy Church and what have you makes you, your kids, and me all feel like shit for different reasons, and those reasons will just never have occurred to the people that love that kind of thing. Which is depressing.
You'll get no argument from me Pomona. Another very middle class couple moved in to an ex-council house to be a beacon on a hill too. We offer nothing anyone wants. What would you have liked?
No it is not. What gets up my (non-evo) nose is that the planters have the idea that only they have a handle on wot is Right & Proper Xtianity and that it is their mission to shove it down the necks of the great Unwashed and Unchurched. Wesley & the like beat them to it 2 centuries ago but the Wouldbegoods are too up themselves to get it.
In fact, I'm pretty certain this idea of Mission shaped church with everyone out and about meeting people as a church in the community did come from the same source fifteen-twenty years ago. It didn't do a lot then either, and we put a lot of time and effort into it.
There is this Guardian story from last week (link) which compares and contrasts a walking church, the Lincoln Forest Church, with the Save our Parishes movement (link to Guardian 6 August coverage), which is pointing out, as is being said all over Twitter, that if the same funding being pumped into these Myriad churches was given to the existing parishes, rather than bleeding them dry to fund these projects, many of the parishes could actually do more, not imported things, but stuff that is needed in their communities.
Sadly, this is often the case.
This.
Stipend £27,695
National Insurance £2308
Pension Contributions £10,153
Other Payroll Costs (eg Costs of Services in Vacancies) £724
Apprenticeship Levy (Government) £190
Housing £7261
Costs of Curates in Training £8113
Other (eg removals, resettlement) £728
Ordination Training £3777
Lay Training £510
CME (ie clergy in-service training) £532
This gives an annual total cost related to a full-time stipendiary minister of £61,190
Parishes which make an offer meeting this basic cost (pro rata if they share a minister) are covering their own costs. Parishes which do not are being subsidised. I emphasise that these figures only apply in one diocese.
The two big changes in my lifetime are (a) the extent to which parishes are now expected to cover the cost of their clergy, having previously been supported by historic resources from the Church Commissioners or their dioceses, and (b) the church at large (and hence parishes) being required to fund the cost of clergy pensions. The Church of England, therefore, is facing a reality which free/non-conformist churches have always lived with. If you want a person to devote their whole time to the life of the church, then some means of paying them needs to be found.
This Diocese had a system of larger more active churches supporting rural struggling parishes financially. Sadly this also got abused: there were local churches that chose not to pay their Parish Share and got themselves into problems that needed a lot of Diocesan support or used the money they should have been using to build a bell tower.