LOCAL ecumenical partnerships — single-congregation, structured partnerships in which people from different denominations worship, serve, and minister together as one — appear to be demonstrating resilience rather than decline.
LEPs, as they are known — which often include churches in the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church (URC), and the Baptist Church — can take various forms. Some are chaplaincies, others involve the sharing of resources, but a significant number are single-congregation.
There are more than 400 single-congregation LEPs in England alone, the Church of England’s national officer for local ecumenism, the Revd Tim Norwood, says. “If this was a denomination, we would all have heard about it. Four hundred churches across the country is quite a lot. Much has been said about LEPs over the years. People have questioned whether they’re good or bad for mission — often without any real data.”
Doral Hayes is the principal officer for ecumenical development and relations at Churches Together in England (CTE). “There was a big push towards LEPs in the 1980s and ’90s; so some go back 40 or nearly 50 years. They’re often thought of as something from that period of time,” she says. Many are still going strong, and new LEPs are currently being set up in urban and rural areas. A lot of this goes back to the Lund Principle of ecumenical working: why do things separately when we can do them together?”
Doral Hayes, principal officer for ecumenical development and relations at Churches Together in England
“You see this particularly in new towns and housing estates. Instead of each denomination doing its own thing, the partners decided to create a church community together, in the hope of improving Christian unity and enriching worship, enabling churches to all have a presence in different places.”
Clear evidence of the resilience of LEPs emerged in 2022, when the URC commissioned research into ecumenical partnerships to mark the 50th anniversary of its formation (from the Congregational and Presybterian Churches). That research showed that LEPs tended to remain more stable, with larger congregations, says Lindsey Brown, Head of Ecumenical Relations and Evangelism at the URC.
“The number of people involved in our LEPs stayed pretty much constant over the ten years we looked at, whereas membership of URC churches did not,” Ms Brown says. “In fact, there was a noticeable drop (in membership) in that same period.”
THE URC research prompted the Church of England to examine its own list of LEPs. “It is very early days, but our initial findings seem to suggest something positive in terms of resilience — or even growth,” Mr Norwood says. With the URC data, “I think there’s something really significant here. The question that we are now having to ask is why this might be the case.
“One of the themes I’ve begun to discover is that the level of welcome and hospitality can be important. If you welcome people from other denominations and other traditions, you might also become more open to people from other parts of the world, people who might believe in things different to you. It’s as if, having made the commitment to ecumenical unity, other forms of unity, other forms of hospitality, become easier or more natural. It becomes part of your culture.”
Ms Brown agrees: “A certain kind of welcome has already happened, which makes other forms of welcome much easier.”
Many historic LEPs were created because of a need to either plant a church or provide a building in a new housing area. There are also situations in which the main driver might be a shortage of ministers, or small or declining congregations. The Revd Chris Jackson is superintendent minister of the West Devon Circuit of the Methodist Church, and arrived in the rural village of Petrockstowe in 2021, just after the end of Covid restrictions.
The village had just 200 residents, and both a Church of England and Methodist church. “Both churches were struggling, in terms of numbers, but also in their ability to do what they wanted to do in terms of mission and ministry,” Mr Jackson says. “The Anglican church building had deteriorated significantly over the years, and a very large sum had been quoted just to make it workable again. The Methodist church, by contrast, was a very good, sound building.”
When he arrived, “they were still operating as two independent churches, but they had agreed to a sort of trial period to see how working together might actually work. Would they get on? Would they be able to do things together?”
They discovered that they got on very well, Mr Jackson says, and the process of becoming formally an LEP was launched with the congregation’s move into the Methodist building. “I work very closely with the Anglican minister, the Revd Martin Warren. I look after a lot of churches in quite a large area, and so does he.”
They share ministry together rather than operate separately. He believes that “the congregation has learned a lot simply from seeing us working together to a single aim. Methodism does have its own liturgical tradition, and Anglican worship is also becoming more informal in many places. So, we really are learning from one another and taking on elements of that varied tapestry of worship that exists.”
He believes that their approach offers variety for everyone. Some weeks, he says, “feel more Anglican in style, others more Methodist, though it’s not a rigid pattern. It allows that variety of worship to be experienced by the whole congregation. We mix and match in a positive way.”
Carols and Lessons at Petrockstowe Community Church
Starting an LEP is “very strange”, he says, “because no one quite knows what you are; but one thing I often say is that we are still fully Anglican and fully Methodist at the same time. We are both/and at the same time, and not leaving our rich traditions behind. We follow the Anglican year with particular types of service, and Methodist traditions like the Covenant Service, Wesley Day, and Aldersgate Sunday are all part of who we are. Differences are resolved in the same way they are in any church, carefully and by talking and listening.”
Not everyone likes every change, he says: “There are difficulties, problems, and things that happen sometimes are liked by some and not liked by others. . . But we work together with a shared agenda — being the church in the community — and that’s really big for us. Worship styles can become a distraction if we’re not careful. What matters is that we are doing this together: it’s about showing a united front for the community in which we live.”
And the community benefits: “We run holiday clubs, a toddler group, LightQuest at Hallowe’en, and lots of village events — often in the village hall as well as the church building, and it’s completely inclusive for everyone involved. That joint witness is the reason we have come together.”
FROM a ministry point of view, Mrs Hayes, of CTE, says, if you are a priest who is in charge of an LEP, there are aspects of each denomination’s governance which you have to pay attention to, with a many additional things to be aware of: for example, “as well as going to a deanery synod, you might also have to attend a Methodist circuit meeting. That can be a challenge, simply because of time.”
But the flip side of this, she says, is that there is also an extra layer of support from ecumenical partner denominations in terms of people, ideas, and creativity. Both Mr Jackson and the Revd Dr Beth Cope emphasise this aspect of their work as a significant benefit.
The Revd Dr Beth Cope
“Where it works best”, Mrs Hayes says, “is when the ecumenical partners are working well together at a regional level. It can be a very fulfilling place to be in ministry, because there’s often support from other ministers working in the area and wider networks such as synods and circuits.”
Ms Brown, of the URC, says that another important factor in the success of many LEPs is that people are often unaware of the denominations involved, their histories, or what the institutions represent. This is borne out by Dr Cope’s experience as she met people in Northstowe, a newly formed Cambridgeshire town. Most “have very little idea as to what a denomination is. It’s not the first thing that they care about,” she says.
“What we find is that, as people come to faith, and we think about how that faith can be lived out in a new town, then it is really helpful to help them explore which of the different denominations particularly resonates with them. We can have conversations like, ‘Here’s something from your tradition,’ or ‘I think it sounds like you might fit in this tradition,’ and it helps them put down roots into a tradition as well as putting down roots in a new town.”
That does not mean, Ms Hayes says, that individual identities are unimportant, or not honoured, but many members, particularly in newer LEPs, would not necessarily identify with a single denomination. “They simply see it as their church,” she says, “a church that welcomes everyone. There is something significant in that. We are less caught up in our individual identities, and more focused on being together as the people of God.”
“The best driver for unity is always mission,” Mr Norwood says. “If you’ve got resources and people and a plan, you can do something really exciting.
“This is a long-term journey. The history of united and uniting churches goes back decades before we used the term ‘LEP’. This is not a kind of flash-in-the-pan idea that someone came up with in the 1970s or ’80s. This is a core part of our journey as churches in this country. And I don’t think it’s going away. I think this is about the future.”
CANON JON SALMON is the Vicar of Trinity Church, Lower Earley, in Berkshire, which is believed to be the fastest-growing LEP in England. With the arrival of a community of worshippers from Hong Kong, what was a traditional LEP has grown from a 150-strong congregation with three traditions to more than 650 people representing more than 15 denominations.
Trinity Church began in 1983 as a joint endeavour between the Methodist and United Reformed Churches — initially in the front room of a couple who still attend today. By 1987, it had been joined by the Church of England and moved into a building on the growing housing estate, alongside an ASDA supermarket and a local-authority leisure centre. A formal sharing agreement was adopted, and Trinity became the local church for all three denominations, including a formal Church of England parish, not always the case for LEPs.
Canon Jon Salmon
“The pattern of ordained worship has evolved and changed over time,” says Canon Salmon, who trained as an anthropologist and lived and worked in sub-Saharan Africa before ordination. “Until 2007, when I came, two of the three denominations had ordained leadership in place on a shared rotating basis. It did vary, but I was the first person to take it on in sole pastoral charge.”
After lockdown, Canon Salmon sensed that, instead of “building back”, God was urging the community to reimagine itself.
“Just before Christmas 2021, I was approached by the pastor of Reading Chinese Christian Church [RCCC] through a mutual friend. The church was unable to use its regular venue for a carol service, so was looking for an alternative.”
“We have a massive car park,” Canon Salmon says, “because it’s the ASDA car park, and, because the congregation was large, that mattered. So, Siew Yin Chan approached me, and I said ‘Yes, absolutely, come — no charge, you’re very welcome.’ We put banners up in the church to welcome them and put our mission statement in Cantonese. Immediately, they seemed to feel spiritually at home.
“Between Christmas 2021 and Easter 2022, discussions took place about a large group of the congregation moving out of Reading Chinese Christian Church and starting worshipping weekly at Trinity. A strong relationship and trust began developing, and the vision was very much one integrated church. It wasn’t about them hiring the space.
“I also felt I was hearing God say it was about what he wanted to do, in his way, and in his timing — very much the beginning of Acts; so we gave it a whirl.
“When the Hong Kongers arrived, there were probably 250 to 300 people [in our congregation]. Now, it’s around 500, including children and youth; so, with the vision of one integrated church, we’ll have overall approximately 650 people.
“And in the mix are about 15 to 20 different Hong Kong denominations, including Methodists and Baptists. They were not one united congregation, which has increased the complexities of a three-way LEP.
“Because we’re not aiming for this to be a hiring arrangement, but an integrated, unified church, we’ve created something called the One Church Project. It’s looking methodically at different areas of church life and business, and exploring integration.”
The realities of different denominations mean that the different congregations will learn from and teach each other, but it is still very early days, Canon Salmon says. “It’s a gradual process of getting to know each other — not as congregations, but informally, through different activities such as Lunar New Year and a jointly planned carol event. We’re jointly planning a Passover meal on Maundy Thursday this year and some joint mid-autumn festival and Harvest activities.
“This is a journey. Nothing is fixed. We’re learning that the process is about building relationships and trust, which seems fundamental. It doesn’t really matter what it looks like in five years’ time. What’s important now is that we’re learning to love one another, and get on with each other, and understand one another, extending grace generously.”
THE Revd Dr Beth Cope is the Anglican Pioneer Minister for Northstowe Church Network, a full “local ecumenical partnership” of the diocese of Ely, the Eastern Synod of the URC, and the Eastern Baptist Association.
The Revd Tim Norwood (second from right) at an LEP service in Milton Keynes
“We also have an additional ecumenical ring around us,” she says, “The East Anglia Methodist District, and the Cambridgeshire Area Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends [Quakers], which means I can tell people we’re friends with the friends, which is always lovely.”
Dr Cope is fully licensed to conduct services using the forms and practices of the three partners, but has what she describes as “a shared ecumenical commitment and growing relationship” with the Methodists and Quakers. Quaker worship is planned at a service before Easter.
Northstowe is a brand new town; its first homes were completed in 2017, with 10,000 houses and about 25,000 residents planned by mid-century. In 2018, when Dr Cope moved into the community, there were only 150 houses: “The plan was to join with what God was already up to. As we met other new residents, we started to meet in the Church of England primary school with some families from the school.”
Three “strands” emerged: the intergenerational Sunday gathering, and a baby-and-toddler community, also at the school on a Thursday morning. Dr Cope says: “We also met people for whom worship in school wasn’t a place where they feel comfortable, for various reasons.” This resulted in a new Thursday-night group, “currently called the Compline Community, although ‘Compline’ means nothing to most people outside church.
“That group alternates between praying the traditional night prayer, with lots of silence, and having a spacious discussion group on the other week, as well as communion meals around the table. That’s the more liturgical and contemplative strand of worship happening in people’s homes.”
In terms of numbers, “Eighty-six adults and children are connected to our three worshipping communities, for whom we are their main ‘church’,” she says, “as well as others who might, for example, bring a grandchild to Little Explorers on Thursday while attending their local parish church on a Sunday. We enjoy having a really good mix of people who have experience of church/faith communities, and those who don’t.
“It wasn’t a given that we would become an LEP. We could easily have been an Anglican pioneering project with good ecumenical friendship. But we deliberately decided to seek to work in deeper partnership. In a new town, we’re all a bit rootless, and plugging into these denominational structures can be quite helpful.
“I’ve seen people grow in understanding of their own tradition, and also grow in respect for other people’s traditions, when we talk about the breadth of practices around communion or baptism. By holding these things as a creative tension rather than a line to disagree over, it’s not threatening at all, but actually creative and inspiring.”
Another strength has been the support and connection provided through the different denominations. Dr Cope refers to the support of the newly formed mid-Cambridgeshire area mission partnership of the United Reformed Church, which brings together four LEPs alongside three single URC congregations.
“We decided that, rather than setting up a local advisory group, which often ends up being quite time-consuming for senior representatives in the church, and could become a risk of micromanagement, we would set up a group we call the ‘ecumenical support cabinet’.
“I can ring them up and say, ‘How do I navigate this well to make sure I get the balance between URC and Baptist and Anglican really well in this particular tricky area?’ And they’ll advise me, but they’ll also make sure we’re connected into the Synod, association, or diocese. So, for us, this body has become a conduit rather than a bottleneck.
“When we first started out, several people said it would be a lot of effort to become an LEP, and it could even hinder how we responded to the opportunities for mission in our evolving new town. But I feel it has absolutely been worth it.”
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