THE diocese of Leeds has been awarded a further £11 million by the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB) for its strategy Barnabas: Encouraging Confidence.
The diocese reports that 60 per cent of its parishes have already responded to the programme’s “call to become more missional, as well as financially sustainable”, since its launch in 2023.
Some of the new funding — of which £4.3 million has been agreed in principle — will be used to train lay leaders to start new worshipping communities in their parishes, with a particular focus on engaging UKME leaders and leaders from areas of deprivation. This work will begin in Halifax.
Funding will also be used to deploy children’s and youth workers and extend the church-planting and revitalisation already under way in the diocese. The revitalisation work will focus on east Leeds, an area that is 40 per cent social housing, and involve “restarting worship in churches which have not held regular services for over ten years”, the diocese said.
There are also plans to develop a community house for interns from the Charismatic Catholic tradition, building on the success of the diocesan intern programme, and to develop greater diversity among leaders.
Between 2017 and 2022, the diocese was awarded a total of £13.7 million in Strategic Development Funding by the Archbishops’ Council. Much of this was invested in church-planting and revitalisation in Leeds and Bradford.
In 2019, the diocese invested £4.6 million in Fountains Church, built in a former nightspot in Bradford (News, 19 July 2019). It now counts 500 in its worshipping community. The diocese also designated six “resourcing parishes” in the Bradford Area: all Evangelical churches chosen for their extant financial and missional strength (Features, 16 August 2024).
Bradford secured another SDF grant of £4.2 million in 2022, when the diocese set out its aim of growing Fountains into “one of the largest urban populations of deprived, UKME/GMH communities in the country”.
An evaluation of the Leeds Renewal programme (funded by Strategic Development Funding from 2017 to 2024) reported 1432 new worshippers across five resource churches and six grafts or plants, exceeding the original targets. St Peter’s, Bramley, a graft from St George’s, Leeds, grew from 40 to 128 in three years, while Keighley parish’s worshipping community has grown from 185 to 474 since 2018. In Bradford, 931 “new disciples” have been reported, with 384 new lay leaders and the establishment of 23 new congregations.
Among the challenges identified in the evaluation were difficulties creating a “sustaining planting pipeline”.
The “Reaching Generation Next” project launched in 2021 with a £1.5-million SDF grant sought to reach the 99.4 per cent of “unchurched students” in Leeds and Huddersfield, developing “student churches” at St Augustine’s, Wrangthorn, and Holy Trinity, Huddersfield, alongside investment in digital engagement.
At St Augustine’s — part of the same benefice as St George’s, Leeds — “Church at Hyde Park Corner” has been established as “a space for any and all students to find community and explore life and faith together”. Last year, the St George’s annual report said that the initiative had “connected with 1000 unchurched students through regular coffee carts and special events” and that St Augustine’s had baptised their first student in the summer.
This week, the Acting Bishop of Leeds, Dr Toby Howarth, said that the Barnabas initiative reflected the belief that “relational, confidence-building work will address the root causes of our missional challenges and bring the transformation we need.”
Launched in 2023, it has aims that 70 per cent of parishes in the diocese should be “missionally strong and sustainable”, and that the number of children and young disciples should double. According to the latest Statistics for Mission, child average weekly attendance stood at 3500 in 2024. The diocese has a worshipping community of about 32,000, in a population of 2.6 million people.
Barnabas was awarded £3.9 million by SMMIB in 2023, with a particular focus on the most deprived areas of Wakefield and UKME communities. The Every Good Work Christian youth programme has been established in the area. Numbers of children and young people in one deanery have risen by more than 40 per cent.
Last June, Canon Jude Smith, the diocesan director of mission and revitalisation, told the diocesan synod that “early statistics suggest that parishes with deeper Barnabas engagement are experiencing faster growth in mission and attendance, as evidenced by diocesan statistics for mission.”