Save the Parish has launched a manifesto ahead of elections to the Church of England's General Synod calling for more financial resources to be redirected towards parish ministry and away from costly centralised programmes and funding initiatives which it says are failing to deliver.
The manifesto, launched in London on Saturday, sets out six commitments to address what the group describes as an "existential crisis" facing the Church of England, with Save the Parish chairman, Rev Marcus Walker, telling the group's summer conference that the Church risks losing "not just some old buildings, or the clerical stipend, or one mode of training over another, but the essence of the Church of England itself".
The manifesto calls for a renewed commitment to parish churches, clergy and local congregations, arguing that the priority for the Church Commissioners' £11.6bn fund should be restored to its founding purpose of stipendiary parish ministry, and directing parish share income more explicitly toward mission and "the cure of souls".
Save the Parish says that at present only a small proportion of the Commissioners' distributable income is directed to frontline parish ministry, resulting in increased financial pressures on dioceses, clergy reductions and church closures.
"Until 2018 any decision to spend the income of the Church Commissioners’ endowment had to be taken 'with particular regard for the provision of the cure of souls in parishes where such assistance is most required'. In 2018 this ringfence was diluted - which has opened the floodgates for the church to redirect millions away from parish ministry," the manifesto reads.
Rev Walker said the first priority was "to rebalance the Church of England’s finances" - although he expects this will not be easy.
"That’s the big one. It’s the one that people are going to fight hardest because nobody whose nose is firmly in the trough likes the taps at the top of the trough being turned off," he said.
"But it’s not their money. This is money either given directly by the parishes - £319 million a year in parish share - or money left in perpetuity to fund parish ministry, handed over by its custodians for other purposes.
"Church House has no money of its own, neither does the Archbishops’ Council, neither do the Dioceses. There is no such thing as ‘central church funding’. There is only the money that is given by parishes or the money that has been left for parishes.
"But the trouble with all these central strategies is not that eventually they are going to run out of the parish’s money. They’ll run out of people. Sitting on the largest church endowment the world has ever known and nobody in the pews. That’ll make the churches much easier to manage too. But the parishes and the dioceses by this point will have gone broke."
Save the Parish was established in 2021 in response to concerns over church closures, reductions in stipendiary clergy, and the increasing centralisation of funding within the Church of England. It includes Anglicans from different theological traditions united by a common commitment to strengthening the parish system.
Rev Walker criticised the Church's strategic grant funding model, arguing that it has failed to deliver the intended results while encouraging cuts to parish ministry.
The manifesto points to data on church closures, citing Church Action on Poverty research that found 40 per cent of church closures fall within the 10 per cent most deprived parishes, and that churches in the poorest areas are roughly five times more likely to close than those in the wealthiest. The manifesto said this amounted to the "abandonment of the poor".
Walker connected this pattern to a broader critique of centrally funded "strategic development" schemes, an approach the Church adopted from 2017 in place of direct funding formulas.
He cited an independent review by Sir Robert Chote, former head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which found that the first iteration of this funding model had aimed at bringing 89,000 new worshippers into the Church at a cost of £176m, but in the end had resulted in only around 12,700 in reality.
"That’s £13,854 per new disciple. Friends: I’d have got a much better result just by using bribery," he said.
At the same time, the manifesto decries the creation of "mega-parishes" where churches have been consolidated into larger groups, some containing 20 to 30 churches, what it describes as "an impossible task for any priest".
Rev Walker cited the example of a merger scheme in Wigan where 29 parishes were consolidated into a single benefice and clergy numbers were reduced. According to Walker, the scheme had been projected to save the deanery around half a million pounds a year. Instead, attendance and giving fell by around a third, and the deanery's finances also deteriorated by a similar amount.
Walker said that funding cuts were not the way to renewal: "You can no more cut your way out of decline than you can eat your way out of being fat."
In the meantime, central diocesan spending, particularly on staff, has continued to increase.
"£154m is now spent on diocesan overheads - which have ballooned by 29% in three years! One diocese has grown from 69 employees in 2014 to 134 in 2025 (and only 8 of the increase were safeguarding officers)," the manifesto said.
Addressing this point in his speech on Saturday, Rev Walker said, "You can’t cry about not having enough money while you’ve increased your diocesan overheads by 29% in three years - that’s the aggregate of all the dioceses by the way.
"And you can’t cry crocodile tears for flogging off parsonages when the number of diocesan employees have grown from 69 to 134 in ten years.
"No, I won’t name the diocese. Nor the two which have more employees on their diocesan books than they have stipendiary clergy. Nor the one that has a Vision and Strategy team with more people in it than any single deanery has priests."
The manifesto's proposed Clergy Charter of Care calls for an end to using stipendiary cuts to balance diocesan budgets, and suggests a move away from what it calls "managerial metrics of success".
It highlights findings from the Church of England's own Living Ministry survey, which found that 35% of incumbents suffer from depression, while 40% of clergy report chronic loneliness, and only 3.9% of frontline clergy viewing national or diocesan leadership as "a source of hope". The same survey shows more clergy resigning from active ministry than retiring, leading to a "haemorrhage of clergy".
Save the Parish wants a cap limiting benefices to a maximum of five parishes and a renewed commitment to the parish to be put into legislation.
It is encouraging members to stand for election to the General Synod when nominations open next month.
"How can we ensure that the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered ... in every community, up and down the land?" said Rev Walker.
"How can we look after the churches which make up 45% of all Grade I listed buildings? How can we continue to engage in community activities estimated at £55 billion of value a year?
"Having well-trained priests embedding themselves in those communities and ministering in buildings designed for the purpose which reflect the deep and ongoing history of those communities would be the perfect place to start. We have that system; we must resource it and allow it to thrive."
Closing his speech, he added: "Our manifesto is just the start of a campaign that needs to run through every parish and every diocese; to renew hope in how this church has a future – a future which honours its past, and loves the people that make up its present, and knows that the weight of this calling is not ours alone but God’s. So let us transform our church and give it back its future."
