Conservative MP Nick Timothy says the £100m the Church of England plans to spend on slavery reparations should be going on church building repairs. But how about spending the money on frontline parish vicars?
The MP for West Suffolk this week wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, after she reaffirmed her commitment to the Project Spire reparations scheme during a visit to the former British slavery site, Cape Coast Castle, in Ghana.
He wrote: “I do not believe this is an appropriate use of the Church’s resources at a time when local parish churches are struggling. In my own constituency, for example, All Saints in Gazeley struggled to fund roof repairs without which the unique wood carvings in the chancel – dating back to the 1500s – would have been lost.”
There were many other examples, he said, of historic parish churches “struggling to raise funds, not helped by the Government’s decision to apply VAT to church repairs”.
“Parish churches are the beating heart of our villages and towns, and they are a vital part of our inheritance and our national identity. They are monuments to the glory of God. And they need all the help they can get,” he wrote.
As a former parish vicar myself, I know the importance of the church building for a local community. In the South Yorkshire parish I served, the overwhelming majority of people didn’t go to church. But if the early Victorian church building had closed, that would have nonetheless impacted powerfully on people.
A considerable number of the older residents had been baptised as babies in the church and had been married there. Even though they did not come to church on Sundays, I would often see such people at the funerals of their relatives or friends.
Probably most people who had grown up in that parish had been in the church building at least once, whether as a child at a Christmas or school service or at a wedding, funeral, or Remembrance service. The closure of the building would have represented for them a loss of collective memory in their village.
So, though I believe biblically that the most important thing about a local church is its people, I do not take a cavalier approach to the building they meet in.
However, if it was a choice between a building repair that was desirable though not essential and employing a youth worker to enable the largely elderly church family to grow younger, that would have been a no-brainer for me. The practical reality is that if there is no congregation to look after the building, it has to close.
That is why I believe that the loss of its vicar is worse for a local church and parish than the loss of its building. A church with dedicated pastoral leadership can find another venue to meet in. But without positive pastoral leadership, the church’s future is doubtful wherever it meets.
The evidence of that is surely the steep numerical decline in the C of E over the past two decades with churches merged and frontline clergy numbers cut.
The dwindling bands of vicars are now spread too thinly. With them having to run around multiple churches, what realistic chance do they have of leading any one of their congregations into growth?
If instead of spending the £100m on slavery reparations, the Church Commissioners spent the money on parish ministry, they could fund 100 vicars for 10 years. A diocese in receipt of a grant of £1m could easily cover the cost of a parish vicar for 10 years.
The rules for such grants to dioceses from the Church Commissioners would need to be quite strict for the proper stewardship of resources. To use an example of a parish church that is all too common in the C of E, a congregation of around 15 people in their 70s and 80s is facing a vacancy through the retirement of their vicar. For the last three years of his ministry, the church was without a treasurer and had only one churchwarden.
That is unfortunately an unviable church and to put another vicar in there would actually be grossly unfair as he or she would not have the support they need.
The grants should be targeted at parish churches that have at least 30 to 35 people with a functioning Parochial Church Council (PCC). Under normal circumstances when its vicar leaves, such a church would likely get merged into a larger unit with one vicar having to run around several churches. But under the grant scheme the diocese could give that church its own vicar for 10 years.
If after that time the PCC is able to cover the cost of its ministry, the diocese should allow the church to keep its vicar.
Ideally, the grants would enable potentially viable churches to have their own vicar. But in rural dioceses where single-church vicars are few and far between, the Church Commissioners should stipulate that the vicars they fund should not have to run around more than three churches.
Instead of going on an expensive guilt trip, why don’t the Church Commissioners invest in church growth by spending the money on frontline clergy devoted to the salvation of eternal souls?
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire, UK.
