STUDY criticism of the direction the Church of England over the past decade, and certain words are certain to appear: “centralised”, “technocratic”, and “bureaucracy” among them. The agreed wisdom in these quarters is that, under the previous Archbishop, power was increasingly assumed by a managerial centre — at national and diocesan level. The Church’s leadership turned to secular, corporate wisdom in a bid to reverse numerical decline, and the parish suffered. Cuts to stipendiary clergy have been the most obvious indicator.
It is a narrative that was debated in the General Synod in July, when the announcement of funding plans for the next three years brought to the surface disagreements about how the Church Commissioners’ funding — £11.1 billion at the last count — should be distributed. Calling for more to be distributed directly to dioceses rather than as grants for which dioceses must bid, the Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, urged members to “put your faith in the local”.
“Do we still have faith in the parish system — or are we going to let it wither on the vine, to be replaced with regional centres and lots of forlorn empty buildings? That is where the current trajectory will take us,” he warned.
IT IS now ten years since the General Synod was told that the “doomsday machine” (by which C of E membership falls year on year as the deaths of older churchgoers are not matched by the arrival of younger people) necessitated breaking the Commissioners’ rule on intergenerational equity. Funds were released for the Renewal and Reform programme, described by Archbishop Welby as “the biggest reform of the Church since the mid-19th century”.
The 2015 report Resourcing the Future, published as part of this programme, warned that under the existing funding approach — grant blocks to dioceses — “more subsidy is being put into parishes that are less deprived but declining than [into] those that are more deprived but growing.” There was “little accountability over its expenditure or impact”, the report warned. “But it is clear that it is not being explicitly targeted on mission work in poorer communities; nor is it proactively supporting growth.”
Spearheaded by the then chair of the Archbishops’ Council’s finance committee, John Spence (a former chief executive of Lloyds TSB Scotland), the programme was nothing if not ambitious, with a vision to “return this Church to numerical and spiritual growth, and to return Christ to his rightful place — at the centre of this country, its conscience, and its culture”.
The Church that the next Archbishop inherits will be one significantly shaped by these reforms, enacted against a financial landscape transformed since the early 1990s, when it was the Commissioners’ financial woes that made the front pages. In total, £190 million was spent on the Strategic Development Fund (SDF) scheme (a system of grants for investment in mission, for which dioceses must bid).
The new Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB) programme expects to invest £338 million in the current triennium, through the Diocesan Investment Programme, and £236 million in the next.
Meanwhile, the financial situation of many dioceses is stark. A review of diocesan finances which was commissioned by the Archbishops’ Council and published last year found that more than half held less than three months’ reserves. A leaked 2022 paper on the future of episcopal ministry argued that God was calling the Church to “embrace significant change”, including a reduction in the number of dioceses. Data on giving as a percentage of income “strongly suggests that the majority of dioceses are not capable of sustaining themselves”, it warned.
Church House, Westminster, seen from Dean’s Yard
Nothing, apparently, came of it. But the challenges that it highlighted remain, as assets dwindle. “For nearly 30 years, the diocese has kept going only by declining and selling,” the Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Stephen Lake, told his diocesan synod in June. “Now it is time to receive help and invest our own resources for growth.” He was speaking after confirmation that the SMMIB had awarded the diocese £5.15 million.
“This side of the grave, money brings power — the financial flows of the past 25 years have disrupted the ancient balance of authority in the Church; this should not be ignored,” the Gloucester diocesan secretary commented in a recent paper.
PROPONENTS of the funding approach argue that it has rewarded creative thinking about how best to use the Church’s resources in the face of long-term decline. It is based on partnership with dioceses, not power, they argue.
“We could simply release the money, assuming that across the dioceses we would reach the point where we are all equally sharing a passionate and disciplined commitment to mission and growth,” the Revd Dr Ian Paul, a member of the Archbishops’ Council, told the General Synod in July. “The hard truth is that we are not there yet.” The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, feared that a “no-strings subsidy” would “encourage torpor and disincentivise missional imagination”.
Common themes in successful bids are the planting of more churches and “worshipping communities”, the “revitalisation” of struggling churches (often through planting), and the funding of children, youth, and families workers. Plans to “re-imagine ministry” are also unfolding across dioceses, with financially driven cuts to stipendiary posts accompanied by pastoral reorganisation, changes in the deployment of clergy, and plans to recruit more lay people into leadership.
Stipendiary clergy in several dioceses are taking on “oversight” positions, looking after larger areas in which “focal ministers” act as the lead of local churches. Even those dioceses blessed with large historic reserves are warning that they cannot sell land and property for ever, and that structural deficits will require clergy cuts.
The perception that funding has largely benefited Evangelical churches is not without basis. Approaches predicated on investing in churches that are already growing, with the expectation that they will resource and “revitalise” others, have tended to produce lists of churches in this tradition.
RESOURCE churches — and the growth of the Holy Trinity, Brompton, network — are a significant element of the story of the Church over the past decade. The Vision and Strategy team has reported that, in a sample of 25 resource churches, total attendance increased by 238 per cent between 2016 and 2023, compared with a national decline of 25 per cent. Across traditions, diocesan bishops have mostly been keen to join the movement, securing additional sums from the Commissioners to enable these churches to plant and “revitalise” elsewhere.
When it comes to the fruits of investment more broadly, the SMMIB points to “thousands of people newly attending church, new leaders being generated, parishes revitalised and new worshipping communities being formed”. Clergy in Wigan — leading one of the few projects with an independent evaluation publicly available — argue that it took years for the full impact of its project to bear fruit, and that churches are now welcoming new people in large numbers.
With a “mixed ecology” a central priority for the 2020s, as set out in the national Vision and Strategy, resources have been invested in the establishment of “new things” running in parallel to traditional parish churches. There is a goal to establish 10,000 new worshipping communities by 2030. While most are established by parish churches, many may not be take place on Sundays, but gather during the week in other venues. They may be “on the journey” to becoming sacramental.
HTBWorship at Holy Trinity, Brompton
A recent Cranmer Hall report observed that the development of these “new things” is a phenomenon in need of more theological and ecclesiological thinking. They are drawing the unchurched into the life of the Church, but they are also often fragile, and a need for careful support and oversight has been identified.
These include new worshipping communities in areas of deprivation. An often-overlooked element of Renewal and Reform was its commitment to enacting a “bias to the poor” with its funding streams. In the next triennium, the Commissioners will allocate £133.5 million to dioceses in lowest-income-communities funding. The Chote review of the SDF grants programme found that it had funded projects in 39 of the largest urban areas, including 17 out of the 20 where church attendance was less than one per cent of the population in 2019. In total, £74 million had been committed to deprived areas, including Dudley, Rochdale, and Blackpool.
BISHOP JACKSON, who has led criticism of the current funding approach, is keen to emphasise that he is “completely in sympathy” with the theology of Evangelical church-plants. He draws attention to a “theological dispute, which is about Anglicanism as an incarnational presence ministering to everyone, and just being there against a much more intentional missional evangelistic understanding of what we are there for”. In a country in which fewer than two per cent of the population worship at an Anglican church on Sundays, the latter is necessary, he says.
But he worries about failing to sustain the Church’s presence more broadly. “The trajectory at the moment for dioceses like mine is a few small centres which are OK, usually in larger centres of population, and [beyond that] there will be nothing; lots of empty buildings, run by self-supporting ministers, maybe, with a few stipendiary clergy covering vast areas, but not with a role that remotely resembles what a parish priest used to do 100 or 150 years ago. That is where the trajectory is.”
He fears that the current approach is still predicated on “the principle that any money to normal parish ministry is subsidising decline”. Rather than the “labyrinthine” process of applying for SMMIB funding, he would simply like the money to pay for four associate vicars to support the “overwhelmed” clergy in four market towns. “I’ll write you that on a sheet of A4.”
It is a viewpoint in sympathy with the Save the Parish movement, whose growth is another key story of the past decade, galvanising calls to end the perceived neglect of ordinary parish churches. “We have a congregation of 30 and a parish share of £59,000,” one laywoman commented online during the General Synod. “Each person needs to raise £2000. The majority of them are over 75. And we’re in interregnum. Synod has no idea just how bloody grim day to day life is rural ministries.”
ONE of the findings of the Chote review of the SDF programme was that it had acted as a “lighting rod” for a lack of trust — a finding echoed in other reviews, culminating in a 2024 report on trust and trustworthiness which identified “high levels of distrust” between parish priests and bishops. In July, a planned follow-up survey was cancelled, on the basis that it would “foster distrust further”.
Ministry in the 21st century can be “a lonely, unaffirmed, contested and resource-starved experience for many clergy”, the 2024 report observed. “This sense of declining affirmation from wider society can not only prompt a viral sense of despondency but also an overly critical and negative analysis of the institution and its leaders, almost as though a default position of distrust is a safety protection for many clergy from the possible disappointment from trusting too much. This prompts too many narratives and discourses in the national Church about decline and distrust.”
The latest survey of clergy through the ten-year Living Ministry study found that more than one third of the incumbents questioned exhibited signs of clinical depression.
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesDr Joanne Grenfell, in the debate about the future of safeguarding, in February 2025
Some believe that the low level of morale among some of the clergy is a main cause of the decline in vocations. The Renewal and Reform goal to increase the number of ordinands by 50 per cent produced a peak of 591 in 2020, the highest annual figure for 13 years. But this has since fallen to 329 — almost half the number that the Ministry Council has forecast that the Church will need to achieve the outcomes in the Vision and Strategy projections (News, 14 July 2023).
With a “retirement bulge” in the offing, but without a rise in the number of ordinations, the number of stipendiary clergy will fall to 5400 in 2033 — more than 2000 fewer than the target set under Renewal and Reform, and a 40-per-cent reduction on 2000 numbers, projections by the national Ministry Development Team suggest. In some dioceses, as many as 25 per cent of posts are vacant. Some argue that, even were bishops’ pleas for more funding for clergy successful, there would be a struggle to fill the vacancies.
Tied up with the numbers are the fortunes of the theological-education institutions. The Synod learned in July that just 65 candidates entered residential training in 2024, down from 218 in 2014. On average, the ten residential colleges had just seven ordinands starting training. In parallel, the past ten years have brought an expansion of St Mellitus, which offers context-based training in London, the south-west, and the East Midlands.
The new Archbishop will also inherit a clergy that looks dramatically different from that of earlier decades. For several years, women ordinands have outnumbered, while almost two in five priests are women. The number of ordinands from minority-ethnic backgrounds reached 13 per cent in 2023 — up from six per cent in 2017.
Recent months have also demonstrated that the dial can be shifted when it comes to funding commitments, not least through concerted clergy organising. At its meeting in July, the Synod confirmed a significant rise in both the stipend and the pension, after months of campaigning.
Meanwhile, in the wake of safeguarding debacles, the question of the status of clergy has returned to the table. Fourteen years after the establishment of common tenure, frustration with the limits of due process as it stands have led some to call for more radical change, including the possibility of making the clergy into employees rather than office-holders.
RENEWAL and Reform was launched in January 2015 — almost two years after Archbishop Welby’s enthronement. His successor, likely to be in place by the spring of 2026, will inherit a Church with far more central programmes — and targets — in place. The Church will be halfway through the ten-year span of Vision and Strategy, which envisages a younger and more diverse Church of “missionary disciples”, in which “mixed ecology is the norm.” The “priority of priorities” is to double the number of children and young people by 2030.
The Church will be at the start of a three-year funding cycle, during which the tidy sum of £1.6 billion will be disbursed. Financial commitments include a £100-million fund for healing and repair — which continues to generate controversy and is yet to get off the ground — and a commitment to reaching “Net Zero” by 2030, backed by a nine-year investment of £190 million.
One possibility is that, with such guardrails in place, the new Archbishop will seek to change the narrative and “feel” of the Church. The Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, has spoken of discovering in her diocese “a deep and invasive exhaustion with subtle overtones of disillusionment”, fuelled by “a deep sense of fear and anxiety about our future”.
“We are shrinking in numbers and influence; and we feel it is our responsibility to do something — anything — to avoid this existential threat,” she has observed. The language of Vision and Strategy risked “putting too much emphasis on our human powers”. She pleaded for a return “to our basic vocation, which is to love God through prayer and worship and love of neighbour through devoted service”.
WHETHER or not the next Archbishop is comfortable with strategies for growth, other diocesans have to make difficult decisions.
The “four-headed beast” described in the diocese of Sheffield — falling attendance, financial stress, the problems presented by buildings and structures (leaving clergy, lay leaders, and congregations “overwhelmed by compliance, safeguarding, and administrative demands”), and reliance on the “magnificent” contribution of older members” — cannot be ignored. In one rural diocese, 45 per cent of churchwardenships are vacant. One bishop has warned that the Church will run out of people before it runs out of money.
With the national finances in a deteriorating state, further support for the upkeep of the Church’s 16,000 church buildings —12,500 of which are listed — is unlikely to be forthcoming. The diocesan funding review mentioned the need to “right-size” the Church’s “physical and organisational infrastructure”. A governance review out by Paula Vennells, the former CEO of the Post Office, in 2019, revealed that some at the Commissioners believed that more than 1000 closures were needed.
Her review also reported dysfunction at Church House, Westminster, including failures in project management, divided loyalties, and power struggles described by one interviewee as “turf wars”. Concern about the level of power enjoyed by the Commissioners was voiced.
An extensive governance review in 2021 criticised a complex, unwieldy, and dysfunctional system, with a multiplicity of bodies, which encouraged “confusion, duplication, and accountability gaps”. More clarity, the review suggested, was needed about “who makes decisions and how those decisions are reached”.
The number of Archbishops’ Commissions (on housing, care, families, and racial justice) indicated “a failure of the Church’s existing governance structures to tackle radical issues, make bold policy recommendations, move quickly and to secure the confidence of the Archbishops”, it concluded.
After its extended scrutiny by the Synod, the new Archbishop will be working with a new central body that is to replace the Archbishops’ Council. Church of England National Services (CENS) will be responsible for allocating and disbursing funding. Its chair — to be appointed in the first instance by the Archbishops and thereafter by the members of CENS — will hold significant power.
The Archbishop will come into post against the background of a Synod in its final year, acutely alive to questions of power, and a new “synodical scrutiny committee” in the offing, set to address a deficit of trust.
LAMBETH PALACE proved, at times, a fraught workplace under the previous Archbishop. At the Palace, after the recent refurbishment, there will be decisions whether to continue the St Anselm Community and on the future of the Chemin Neuf community invited to reside there by Archbishop Welby.
The 63rd occupant will lead a Church with plenty of challenges — not least the need to restore both morale and trust. But they will also inherit the Established Church of a country that shows signs of renewed interest in faith, including its Christian foundations.
