The church is likely to close within the next 12 months. There are four main reasons for this:(1) We will not be allocated a priest, at least for the foreseeable future. The Lincoln Diocese has had to take steps to save money. Other churches nearby will also have to operate without a priest.(2) We have been instructed by the Bishop to stop all lay-led services. This means that we can no longer run our own Morning Prayer services that we have enabled every (aprox.) 2 weeks. We do have access to a retired priest who can run a Holy Communion service roughly every month.(3) The size of the congregation is now usually 2-4 people. This is really too low to keep the church open.(4) The required 5 year inspection of the building has identified faults that we cannot afford to repair. There are no sources of funding for a church that is used so little. It is commonly believed that the Church of England is well funded but as has already been pointed out, our Diocese (Lincoln) has had to introduce a whole raft of measures to deal with the financial situation it is in.If you wish to talk to someone about this matter, please email jeremy.jolley@live.com who would be happy to meet with anyone to discuss this further.
