THE Church Army Research Unit (CARU) is to close, after almost three decades of providing churches with independent studies in mission, church-planting and fresh expressions.
In recent years, it has been one of the main providers of evaluations of the Church of England’s multi-million-pound Strategic Development Fund projects.
The decision follows an announcement in February that the Church Army would be undertaking extensive restructuring, including the closure of significant projects, to address rapidly declining financial reserves (News, 7 March).
A statement last week said that, since then, the CARU had “explored alternative ways of continuing its work, including the possibility of launching a new independent charity. However, despite our best efforts, this has not proven viable.”
Formerly known as the Sheffield Centre for Developing Church Planting and Evangelism, the unit was established in 1997. For the first 20 years it was led by Canon George Lings, with a brief to “explore, evaluate and disseminate what is happening in mission today”. Between 1999 and 2012, it published quarterly booklets, Encounters on the Edge, tracking the development of Anglican fresh expressions (News, 12 July 2019).
The Mission-Shaped Church report of 2004 was shaped by this initiative, with Canon Lings a member of the working group that produced it. In subsequent years, the Research Unit and Church House Fresh Expressions Team worked closely to support the implementation of the vision. In 2016, the unit published The Day of Small Things, a study of more than 1100 fresh expressions across 21 dioceses (News, 11 November 2016). In 2017, when Canon Lings retired, the Archbishop of York, the Most Revd Stephen Cottrell, said that, when it came to fresh expressions, “none has done more . . . His ministry as theologian, researcher, and church-planter has provided the impetus and inspiration for the Church to try new things.”
Since the launch of the Strategic Development Fund grants by the Archbishops’ Council, the CARU has been one of the few organisations that has published evaluations of the projects funded, highlighting successes, failures, and lessons learned (Features, 8 November 2024). These include a study of pioneering and planting in the diocese of Portsmouth (News, 5 January 2024), and a report on fresh expressions in the diocese of Leicester that explored changing definitions (News, 4 October 2019).
It has studied Messy Church (News, 22 February 2019), online worship (News, 18 March 2022), and the diocese of Sheffield’s SDF-backed project with children and young people (News, 2 May 2025). It has also produced reports on HTB church-planting, from an early report in 2002 (Features, 21 April 2017) to a more recent study in the diocese of Bristol that studied what proportion of members of the congregations at resource churches were “unchurched” (Features, 9 August 2024).
Last week, the Church Army’s chief executive, Matt Barlow, said: “Over the past 28 years, Church Army’s Research Unit has served as a powerful, provocative, and — importantly — prophetic voice in evangelism on the margins and in the development of fresh expressions of Church. We thank God for its lasting legacy and the many lives, churches, and ministries it has impacted over these past three decades.”
Two of the team’s members will remain at Church Army but in new posts, while others — including Dr Andy Wier (Research Team Leader), Elspeth McGann (Research Lead — Impact), and Dan Ortiz (Qualitative Researcher) — will “continue to serve the Christian research sector in freelance or new organisational roles”.
