Here is the latest Church Urban Fund data update available in their online Look Up Tool. 

Here are the challenges of Mission!

Our parish of S. Paul, Deptford ranks 1014 out of 12154 parishes, where 1 is the most deprived parish. 

We have high rates of child, pensioner and working age poverty. 

This means that our parish is among the most deprived in the country and within the Diocese of Southwark. 

There is a great deal of internal battling within the Church of England about many matters, which of course are all important in their ways, however as the deprivation statistics are updated, we call to mind Fr Charles Marson's letter written during the ritual controversies of an earlier era about the real disorders of the Church, which concludes: 

"If the Commissioners wish for any further information as to our clothes, chandelry, or as to which of our joints we crook in worship, I shall be delighted to give them every information. But I beg leave to point out that the lives of Christ's poor people are starved and stunted; that their wages are low, their houses often bad and unsanitary and their minds full of darkness and despair. These are the real disorders of the Church and not any faults in my stage management, which is, perhaps, amateur."

The letter is available to download in the attached files below.

Read more about Fr Charles Marson here