Church of England invests £1m in deprived areas

Grants totalling £1m have been distributed nationwide to help churches rejuvenate deprived areas.

The Archbishops' Council and Church Commissioners have given £100,000 grants to 10 projects across nine dioceses where church projects have had a proven positive impact.

The grants are part of an ongoing research and development programme to assess church projects and their effectiveness.

Two of the grants are going to support projects in Liverpool.

One is Liverpool Cathedral's Mission Project, which uses the cathedral as a resource to support the replication of two examples of Fresh Expressions into deprived parishes.

The other has been given to St Andrew’s Clubmoor, situated in one of the most deprived parts of city and the UK.

Clubmoor serves the community by running a foodbank, debt advice, self help groups, and parent and toddler groups.

The church also runs missional communities that work alongside particular groups in the community.

The grant will be used to to bring the mission and practical work closer together by employing two people to work with local families and people in recovery, establishing work pattern and practices that can be used elsewhere.

The Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, welcomed the grants.

“The support for the developing work of the Cathedral and in Clubmoor is a huge affirmation of our diocesan commitment to growth and the importance of high quality local leadership," he said.

"I think both awards are excellent examples of the potentially transformational nature of such strategic investment.”

In Bradford, the grant will be used to develop the successful ‘Sorted’ youth evangelism project, which works with multi-cultural communities in deprived areas.

The Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev Nick Baines, said he was "hugely encouraged" to see the Archbishops’ Council and Church Commissioners committing money to church growth in areas of the country "traditionally not associated with such expectations and where resources are often harder to access".

He said the £100,000 grant underlined the importance of investing in research and development so that the Church's work could be evaluated and rolled out elsewhere.

“The Sorted Project in Bradford is a fantastic example of inspiringly led youth evangelism that is home grown and is now being replicated elsewhere," he said.

The Church Commissioners and Archbishops' Council plan to distribute a further £2m to similar projects in 2012.