FUNDS allocated by the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI) Board and totalling more than £300 million since 2014 are believed to have contributed to about 37,000 people newly attending a church or “worship setting”.
The Board’s latest annual report, published on Friday, also lists 6000 new people “volunteering or stepping up to lay leadership or exploring ordained vocations for the first time” and 1300 new worshipping communities. It estimates that a third of England’s population live in parishes which are supported through SMMI or Strategic Development Fund (SDF) projects. Lowest Income Communities Funding supports 2000 parishes, where nearly 15 million people live.
The SDF programme, which allocated funding of almost £180 million between 2014 and 2022, was expected to create 89,375 disciples (News, 11 March 2022). Its successor, SMMI, has several components, including the Diocesan Investment Programme (DIP), which was expected to distribute up to £338 million in the current triennium (2023 to 2025). There are currently £156 million of “active grants”, with £81 million allocated to 12 dioceses in 2024.
The report states that the Board “continues to invest to make sure that the learning from funded programmes — both what works well and what does not — is widely shared so that it can benefit the whole Church”.
Although the report concludes with a two-page summary of insights, few evaluations of diocesan projects have been made public (News, 21 May 2024; Features, 8 November 2024). In 2024, 12 evaluations were commissioned, predominantly for SDF projects coming to an end. These included projects in Bath & Wells, Blackburn, Chelmsford, Eastbourne, Liverpool, London, Sheffield, Winchester, and Worcester. Evaluations are circulated to a limited audience but not made public — except when the diocese itself chooses otherwise.
The SIB annual report states that 45 per cent of DIP has focused on the Vision and Strategy outcome of “revitalising the parish system for mission so that existing churches can reach and serve everyone in their community”, and that at least two-thirds of the funding is “invested directly in parishes”. Funding is “focused on parishes in areas of deprivation”.
The Board’s analysis suggests that parishes in dioceses which have received funding have attendance that is 14 per cent higher than that of a similar parish in a diocese that has not received this funding. On average, giving in parishes supported by SMMI funding is 40 per cent higher.
In 2024, £32.8 million of Lowest Income Communities Funding was paid to dioceses. The proportion going to parishes serving the most deprived 25 per cent of the population stood at 67 per cent in 2023 — a figure that came under criticism in a recent General Synod debate (News, 28 February).
ONE SDF project evaluation in the public domain is the diocese of Ely’s five-year “Changing market towns”, which in 2018 was awarded £2.13 million towards a total £4.36 million cost (Features, 16 November 2018). This sought to reverse the declining church attendance in eight deprived Fenland towns. Each town was allocated an ordained “town leader”, in addition to an operations manager and a Changing Market Town worker — often working with children and young people.
An impact report published by the diocese in February records successes, including a “significant and positive change in perception about the role of the church” in many towns, and the positive impact of children’s, families, and youth workers. Many schools that had been “unenthusiastic” about church involvement were now “actively requesting” it.
Attendance in inherited churches across the towns fell from 1029 — the pre-project baseline — to 784 in 2024. But attendance in Fresh Expressions grew from 12 to 1003. Covid had “significantly impacted” work, the report said, but progress was being made towards targets reset in 2022.
Alongside this report, the diocese published a lessons-learned review written by John Truscott, a church consultant. A key theme of his review — echoed in other evaluations of SDF projects — is the need to get “buy-in from everyone taking part, rather than having an enthusiastic group trying to persuade others to see things like they do”. His mid-term review of the project, published in 2021, found that, in most cases, the churches involved had “little passion for the vision of the project, especially within PCCs . . . There was no bottom-up movement of churches begging to be involved, longing to welcome new staff resources to enable them to make progress.”
The “sudden transformations” in the churches involved were ones that “most were unready for,” this review observed. The idea of Fresh Expressions had been “a rude shock to many congregations”. Congregations that had hoped to see “growing Sunday attendance without any change to their traditional, liturgical Eucharist” had been disappointed by the project’s outcomes.
Mr Truscott’s research identifies the challenges faced by SDF-funded staff arriving in contexts where there is a lack of local buy-in — another finding echoed in other evaluations. One Operations Manager said: “We were supposed to be a help, but instead have been treated like an outsider trying to force things on them.” His 2024 report recommends that: “Staff should be appointed only to churches eager to work with them.” The importance of considering local culture is also emphasised: “Simply forcing an open evangelical culture on a liberal catholic church is not going to be received well.”
A theme of the reviews in Ely — also echoed in other evaluations — is the complexity of setting targets for church projects, and the dangers of setting vague or over-ambitious targets. Mr Truscott recommends that dioceses be “very careful over specific numbers that have little evidence as being wise. A fresh expressions element will not produce financial giving within just five or so years. A schools project will not produce an immediate increase in families at Sunday services.”
“Many churches operate within a culture that has developed over many decades, and an aim to change that in a matter of a few months or even years will result in disappointment,” he writes.
