IT WAS the third anniversary last weekend of the launch of Save the Parish, the campaigning movement that resists the reorganisation, merger, and closure of parishes, with the resulting loss of front-line clergy and pastoral care for communities (News, 6 August 2021).

I have been part of Save the Parish from the beginning, and have spoken on its behalf at public events. I have also recommended it to clergy and lay people worried about the future of their parishes, because one of the really helpful things that it has done has been to assure parishes of their rights, and of how they might not only resist unhelpful diocesan schemes but provide alternatives.

What drew me to get involved was the growth of church bureaucracy, which I observed in my diocesan post in Oxford. It seemed that there was a constant influx of new positions, which included media professionals and assistant archdeacons, all boosting the image of the diocese as the fundamental unit of church life, at the expense of the parishes. And, while the ministry of the bishops was welcomed in most parishes, the constant demands of the diocese for funds and compliance with top-down mission strategies were often resented.

Certain parishes got the impression that they were “hated” by their diocese because they refused to comply with plans worked out on paper from offices remote from the reality on the ground.

Dioceses have also been vulnerable to the attraction of central funds, which have seemed all too readily available for any form of ministry which can describe itself as new or more “mission-focused” than what parishes can offer. I have seen viable congregations thrown out of their churches, while a younger congregation are bused in to take their place. There has been the decline of pastoral ministry, and, in some cases, the ending of funerals. The Church has become less visible and less available, even where “holy huddles” appear to flourish.

Save the Parish was much mocked in its early days. Attempts were made to portray it as a group of discontents fuelled by nostalgia for a Church that never was. But, in spite of criticism, the movement has grown in both numbers and influence. It is now putting pressure on the national Church to put the Church Commissioners’ £10.2- billion endowment to its proper use: the support of poor parishes — although proposals outlined in the new Governance Measure give greater control of the Commissioners’ funds to the Bishops, which could prevent parishes’ benefiting.

Carl Hughes, who chairs the Archbishops’ Council’s Finance Committee, agreed on Radio 4’s Sunday programme this week that front-line ministry was a critical part of reversing decline. Now, let’s make the argument for properly trained clergy, for the maintenance of parsonage houses, and for dioceses’ putting their own dire finances in order before swelling the number of diocesan officers at the expense of parish clergy.