SAVE THE PARISH ⛪

From the earliest days of Christianity, the English parish evolved from a geographical area containing a church, a resident priest and a sufficient number of people to support the priest who provided a ministry in return. At the Reformation, the parish became a unit of local government and thus it remained through to Victorian times, a visible expression of the C-of-E with the parish priest at its helm. Towards the end of the 19th century, the lay and ecclesiastical responsibilities of the parish were divided between newly established Parish Councils and Parochial Church Councils, which endure to this day.

The parish of Stoke Gabriel was established in the 13th century at the time that its church was built. Throughout its history, a priest has resided in the parish. With falling numbers of church members and clergy, many other parishes have not been so fortunate and the Victorian model of parishes having their own priest has been superseded by today’s mission communities in which multiple parishes have come together as a community to share a priest1. Since January 2014, Stoke Gabriel has been a member of the Totnes Mission Community, which comprises nine churches and seven parishes located on both sides of the river. It has a headcount of 2.3 clergy for the seven parishes. The two full time priests, Rev’d Jim Barlow, the Incumbent and Team Rector, and Rev’d Deborah Parsons, the Team Vicar, both reside in Totnes while Stoke Gabriel is blessed in having Rev’d Gill Still, a part-time Associate Priest, resident in the village and leading the parish ministry.

A parish’s financial sustainability depends primarily on two key items of expenditure. One is the common fund, which is paid to the Diocese to cover the cost of the clergy, and the other is the cost of repair and maintenance of the church building:

1. The common fund, which is paid by all parishes, represents the largest source (62%) of income for the Diocese of Exeter, its total income in 2020 being £13.2m. For many years, Stoke Gabriel has paid its common fund in full and on time, with the single exception of 2020, for which Covid and the lockdowns resulted in a shortfall of £8000. The assessment for 2021 is £46,308 and the parish is fully up to date with its payment. It is the highest assessment within the Deanery of Totnes save the parish of Dartmouth. It provides a surplus to the Diocese of about £28,000 over the cost of the 0.3 clergy headcount allocated to Stoke Gabriel2. This is entirely acceptable if it is used to support less fortunate parishes and not the Diocesan bureaucracy3.

In contrast to the decline in church members and priests, the number of diocesan bishops and archdeacons has doubled since the Victorian era, an increase that is reflected in the Diocese of Exeter4. Over the same period, the associated bureaucracy has ballooned with the creation of new posts of questionable justification. It is a remarkable fact that, of the total spend of £13.7m by the Diocese of Exeter in 2020, only about 70% was allocated to clergy (and presumably even less to parochial clergy).

2. According to the last architectural survey in 2017, the Grade 1 listed church building “is well maintained and clearly well loved”. All the essential and advisory repairs identified by the architect have been made5.

The parish of Stoke Gabriel is demonstrably able to meet these two key items of expenditure and is financially sustainable.

We are now at a watershed. Within a few years, the Rev'd Gill Still, is due to retire and the Diocesan plan does not provide for a replacement6. The Mission Community clergy headcount will be reduced to 2 and the parish will become dependent upon the priestly resource at Totnes, 4 miles away. The Team Rector and Team Vicar are already overstretched providing a ministry to the other six parishes and it is unrealistic to expect them to devote significant time to Stoke Gabriel. Moreover, there will not be a compensatory reduction in the parish’s common fund assessment! The parish is clearly able to pay its way, but the deprivation of headcount will put its sustainability at risk to the detriment of all. Sadly, this is not a unique situation7.

Meanwhile, in early 2020 the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, was tasked to lead a review into the future of the C-of-E and how it can best serve its people over the next decade. Accelerated by the Covid pandemic, a vision was published earlier this year with three strategic priorities, one of which is to exploit options for worship in different settings, such as at home, at work and in education, in social and on-line, and in a revitalised parish system (a so-called “mixed ecology”). It contemplates the establishment of thousands of lay-led churches in venues other than a church building.

With the focus on lay leadership and the use of unconventional venues for worship, many believe that traditional parish church worship is being side-lined, a worry that was exacerbated by a report that the costs associated with clergy and church buildings are limiting the growth of the church! What is clear is that the different options for worship will compete for funds from the same pot, necessitating some “hard decisions” consistent with the new priorities. The parishes are the largest contributor to the Diocesan pot and it is inevitable that they will bear the brunt of the cost. The vision has its supporters but it also has many opponents including George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester.

This new vision for the C-of-E does not bode well for parochial church worship and aggravates the parish’s own position. But with growing dissension over church’s direction, a grass roots campaign was established by clergy and lay members in August 2021. The campaign seeks firmly to put the parish back at the forefront of the church’s mission and ministry, to reverse the drain on parish resources, and to prevent further centralisation of power and authority. Short term objectives include the election of members to General Synod and the sending of a letter to the Church Commissioners to establish a Royal Commission for lay-led reform of the church’s structure and finances. The campaign is entitled “Save the Parish”, the web site for which is: http://savetheparish.com.

Briefly, the objectives of the campaign are to ensure that:

• all national and diocesan strategic change strengthens, rather than undermines, the parish system;

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• locally-generated resources remain with the parish, even returning money to re-resource clergy in financially;

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• the national and diocesan functions are cut to reduce duplication and waste, minimizing the common fund;

• the parish’s right to contest a decision of the Diocese to appropriate a closed church is preserved8;

• a commission is established to explore the long-term funding of the repair and maintenance of our historic9; and

• a greater priority is given to investing in good theological education.

With Stoke Gabriel and many other parishes facing an uncertain future without a priest, the campaign strikes a chord. If you want weekly services of worship in our parish church to continue and if you want a resident priest to lead them and provide an effective parish ministry - in short if you want to save the parish - then please support the campaign.

As a first step, please join via the website https://savetheparish.com/, select JOIN and complete the form.

Stoke Gabriel PCC, September 2021

1 The number of people attending church has fallen from 5.2m in the Victorian era to 1m today. Over the same time frame the number of clergy has fallen from 25000 to 7000.

2 According to the Diocese of Exeter, the cost of a full-time stipendiary priest is £61,000, which includes an allowance for training, housing and pension. The cost of 0.3 clergy headcount is about £18,300 although the lack of accounting transparency creates some uncertainty.

3 The cost of the three bishops is funded directly by the Church Commissioners but the archdeacons and other diocesan staff are funded from diocesan income which includes the common fund.

4 The number of dioceses has increased from 26 in the Victorian era to 42 today. Before 1876, the Diocese of Exeter covered both Devon and Cornwall with one bishop (the Bishop of Exeter). It was then divided into two with the Diocese of Exeter having one bishop and three archdeacons (one each for Exeter, Totnes and Barnstaple). Over the next half-century, the diocese created three new senior posts, two for bishops (Crediton (1897) and Plymouth (1923)) and one for an archdeacon (Plymouth (1918)).

5 Over the same period, the parish paid for the re-development of the south porch to equip it with a kitchen galley and WC at a cost of £162,000, and has also recently committed to the restoration of the tower clock at a cost of about £25,000, having raised the sum earlier this year.

6 A replacement can however be obtained if the parish pays for the full housing cost of about £15k per annum in addition to its common fund contribution of about £46k, a total of £61k, which is a completely unfair proposition!

7 The deprivation of a priest in a financially sustainable parish has also been reported in the Dioceses of Bath and Wells, Oxford, Guildford and Winchester.

8 The proceeds from the sale of closed church buildings are shared between the Diocese (2/3) and the Church Commissioners (1/3) with some Dioceses (Exeter?) providing a discretionary payment to the parish. The sale of church buildings may have implications for related assets of the parish, such as halls etc.

9 The church building is an influential asset for mission but its care should not become a full-time burden for churchwardens and the PCC. One suggestion is to transfer responsibility to Historic England.

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