Christmas is coming. Advent is upon us and carols, christingles and candle-lit services abound.  Churches up and down the country will be flinging open their doors and welcoming in worshippers — regular congregants, those who are primarily “C and E” (Christmas and Easter) rather than CofE (Church of England), or those who wander in seeking solace at a difficult time of year.

After an ill-advised valedictory speech in the House of Lords this may even include the Archbishop of Canterbury. Almost exactly a year ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a very different speech to the House of Lords, where he observed that “you could get rid of the House of Bishops tomorrow and it would be years before anyone noticed the difference, but if you got rid of parish priests, the whole thing would collapse overnight”. He wasn’t wrong. It is the parishes that are the heart and soul of the Church of England. They are integral to the identity of the Church of England — serving not just those who show up on a Sunday, but doing their best to support anyone who lives in the locality. A particular place and its people — this is the parish. Yet despite declarations from our Archbishops that parishes are “the lifeblood of our mission” and “our inheritance and our future”, a report recently published from Civitas reveals the pressure our parishes are under. Restoring the Value of Parishes by Esmé Partridge draws together clearly and coherently many of the issues that those seeking to “Save The Parish” have been emphasising since the campaign group’s inception just over three years ago.  She is clear that it is the parishes that are the foundations of welfare, community and spiritual belonging in the Church.

The huge challenges faced by parishes will, sadly, not be a surprise to anyone with even the slightest interest in the Church of England. Its shrinking congregations, aging demographics, dwindling financial giving, decline of younger people putting themselves forward for ordination have been clear for some time. With the cost-of-living crisis biting, many parishes are becoming almost a byword for doing more with less — from food banks to warm hubs, to childcare and counselling.  The economic value of the support churches provide has been valued by the National Churches Trust (NCT) at £55 billion per year.  Parish clergy too, are expected to step up and do increasing amounts.  Mergers result in larger “team ministries” of up to 23 parishes, leaving less and less time in any one place or parish, making the traditional cure of souls look somewhat different on the ground.

The feeling in parts of the church is that compliance is a beast growing in size

The diagnosis offered by the report is stark — cuts to clergy become a self-fulfilling prophecy, the more you cut, the more people you lose. On average, we are told, the Church now employs one administrator for every three and a half priests. Some of this spending is doubtless the result of very necessary improvements in safeguarding, as befits a modern church, but there are also external affairs, racial justice, strategic development officers. The feeling in parts of the church is that compliance is a beast growing in size as its culture increasingly consumes the church. And a volunteering crisis is starting to rear its ugly head — arguably in response. Who wants to volunteer for a church drowning in paperwork, protocols, and just-one-more-then-you’re-done training sessions? With reductions of both giving and priests, more volunteers are exactly what will be needed. Yet the report argues that as the chips (and the giving) are down, and investment is desperately needed, instead there is disinvestment in the parishes. The Church Commissioners have a £10 billion endowment, with income to be spent on the mission and ministry of the Church of England. Where, the report asks, is all the money going?

Restoring the Value of Parishes suggests that the changing priorities of the Archbishops’ Council have come at the expense of parish churches. Huge targets have been set in the national church’s strategy to have 10,000 new worshipping communities by 2030. It is hoped that many of these will spring up as creative ways for existing parish structures to attract newcomers. Yet there are those who suspect “church plants of colonising parishes”; Professor Alison Milbank suggests that the Commissioner’s money is “being spent on a form of church that has no links with Anglican liturgy and practice or even, arguably, belief.” For a Church trying to take “pay attention to power” as one of its pastoral principles, it is especially interesting to note the comments of priests like Dr Colin Heber Percy, who argues that the church has become “centripetal”, whereas historically it was more “centrifugal” — parishes now find themselves subject to the diocese and the executive power of the Archbishops’ Council. Is this centripetal church sacrificing the legacy of the historic in the pursuit of the new?

The church economy has changed dramatically in the last decade, but the desired results of this don’t seem to have materialised as yet. The previous “Darlow formula” was ditched – and replaced by a new system that promised “a bias to the poor and a commitment to spiritual and numerical growth”. Save the Parish are clear that it is the latter rather than the former that has felt more prevalent as time has gone on. This is now an economy that rewards a desire for shiny new things. Innovation should never be feared but could surely be encouraged within a parish context rather than in competition with it. Guttingly, any evidence of growth from what has been funded seems to be slight, as the Civitas report reveals.

When it comes to the numbers, the Church of England has pushed back on the Civitas report, protesting that “Church of England churches have seen notable growth in the last year — with overall congregations passing a million again in 2023”. But whilst overall congregations have indeed grown from 2022 to 2023, this growth is anaemic at just 2.5 per cent. More importantly, this growth almost certainly reflects some element of “post COVID bounce-back” rather than being genuine new growth. It is sobering that the Church’s own Statistics for Mission report notes that on measures of actual church attendance the church is some 20 per cent smaller than it was just 5 years ago in 2019, and still lower than the projected pre-pandemic trend (which was of sobering decline) adding “for many people, therefore the response to these figures will understandably be a combination of both optimism and concern”.

So what can be done? The report helpfully has a “constructive reforms” section, but I fear much of it may remain wishful thinking. The hope that the 1970’s reforms that saw parish glebe land transferred to the dioceses reversed are fascinating to consider — but risk a return to huge disparities between parish income levels without some sort of equalisation. One parish might be rolling from their glebe, another be even poorer than they are at present.

The emphasis on the funding model for church buildings feels timely, highlighted by the recent re-opening of Notre Dame and the consequent potential funding crisis for France’s sacred spaces. So too are the suggestions around building for the future, especially prescient given the Archbishop’s debate in the House of Lords on homelessness last week, where he mentioned the 200,000 acres of land held by the Church Commissioners and dioceses, parishes and trusts, and plans currently being considered to work with government and local authorities on what might be possible for the future. Improving investment strategies at a diocesan level, especially around Total Return Accounting (now what the Charity Commission recommends, though many dioceses have yet to change to it) and considering optimal investment of the diocesan stipends funds are positive. How to best rethink the parish share system and consider what happens to the money that goes into collection plates is worthy of a whole additional report.

But it is at an actual parish level where these recommendations might most come into their own. Helping parishes consider further ways to fundraise, to look again at how to maximise the wedding and burial “market” are interesting, despite the relatively recent removal of the “Life Events” team who provided “administration, creative ideas and practical resources” to those in churches who were hatching, matching and dispatching.  And the proposal of better celebration of parish heritage by focusing on patronal festivals is glorious,  as is the hope that parishes open their doors more – most would love to, if only this could be done in a way that was easy, and safe. (Back to that volunteering/compliance crisis again.)

This Christmas, give yourself and your local parish the gift of your presence

As community services and spaces are shut down — from post offices to pubs — the church can provide a shared space in each community where all are welcome, as well as offer social action and welfare opportunities. But what I longed for most of all, reading this report, is a way to pick up on the author’s suggestion that the church learn to love itself again. That it “embrace its role as a bastion of sacred tradition in a postmodern world”.

The church doesn’t need to be like the culture around it. What the world needs is something different. Historian Tom Holland has previously suggested that what is needed is for the church to emphasise the “weird” nature of the faith. With anxiety all around, this report proposes that “precisely by virtue of being at odds with contemporary culture, the parish is uniquely placed to provide a refuge from the challenges of modern life”. Christians believe in an unchanging God — the same yesterday, today and forever. Philip Larkin’s “Church Going” called the church “a serious house on serious earth … In whose blent air all our compulsions meet… And that much never can be obsolete.” Perhaps there are elements of the parish system that are old-fashioned, especially given the modern obsession with choice. But this new Civitas report provides a powerful reminder of why the church needs to take care not to overvalue the whizzy new things at the expense of the irreplaceable historic legacy it has in its parishes. This Christmas, give yourself and your local parish the gift of your presence. It might be quiet, it might be drafty, but there will be something there to value. The hope is that this report helps the hierarchies across the Church of England find a way to recognise that value with more than just words.