THE journey towards its designation as a minster is not the only significant change shaping the ecclesiastical landscape in St Helens. The St Helens deanery, in Liverpool diocese, along with West Derby, was the first to embark on the diocese’s six-year programme Fit for Mission, which seeks to tackle decades of church decline by restructuring parishes into larger single parishes (LSPs).
The new larger parish of Church St Helens came into being on 1 May 2024, bringing together 11 of the 19 churches in the deanery (News, 10 May 2024) after votes at every PCC in 2022, and the approval of a draft scheme by the Church Commissioners.
In 2025, ten out of 13 parishes in West Derby deanery formed Christ our Hope, Liverpool, and, in March this year, all 12 churches in Warrington deanery opted in to the model.
Fit for Mission’s aim was that 80 per cent of the 250 parishes in Liverpool join LSPs by 2028. Diocesan documentation referred to a “working assumption” that each of the new and larger parishes would bring together at least eight existing parishes, up to a maximum of 15.
This month, a diocesan spokesman said that the original ambition was to have about 55 parishes by the end of the process, but that such figures were “never targets to be imposed”. All but one of the diocese’s 14 deaneries had now invited PCCs to discern whether or not they wished to join an LSP, and, in some, not enough had chosen to do so. In Ormskirk, where there are 13 parishes, it was decided that the four who voted in favour did not form a viable LSP.
“We may reach under 100 parishes overall in the diocese by around 2029,” the spokesman said. “This reflects local decision-making rather than a retreat from the vision. Fit for Mission was designed to enable sustainable change, and sustainability depends on commitment, trust, and shared purpose.”
FIT for Mission was launched against a backdrop of sustained decline in the Church’s poorest diocese: a 65-per-cent fall in church attendance in the past 30 years, and a 38-per-cent reduction in clergy, alongside maintenance of 94 per cent of the diocese’s buildings.
The plan seeks to foster collaboration, so that churches benefit from “streamlined governance, increased administration capabilities, a clergy team approach that increases collegiality . . . and increased skill-sharing, providing more time and resources for mission and ministry”.
This month, the Team Vicar in Church St Helens, the Revd Rachel Shuttleworth, agreed that the LSP had produced a “sense of collaboration and being able to play to your strengths” among clergy. “There isn’t that sense of competing.”
The shift towards congregations’ seeing themselves as part of the larger parish had been “slower”, she said. “And in some ways it’s good . . . because, for me, it means that you’ve got a strong sense of identity and belonging in the place that you are.” But it had been an important source of mutual support for those in parish officer positions, including parish safeguarding officers, while a new “support services team” had lifted the burden of administration and compliance.
The model also made vacancies easier to handle, she said, with a Team Rector able to step in. The Right Buildings Review, which resulted in the closure of one church in the deanery, had been “really thorough”, addressing challenges that clergy had struggled to tackle alone.
But St Helens had “suffered by being first”, she said. “There were so many questions for which we just didn’t have the answers.” The process had been “heated”, she said: “serious concerns” had been voiced and “unpleasantness” felt on both sides. A “huge distrust” had surfaced: “a sense that there was something that wasn’t being said”.
AMONG the parishes that did not join the LSP in St Helens was St Mark’s, Haydock. Last week, the Vicar, the Revd Dan Leathers, said that Fit for Mission was “the right step for some churches”, but that his PCC had voted unanimously against it.
“At the heart of this was the scale and nature of what was being asked,” he said. “Fit for Mission involves a significant transfer of responsibility and control, including finances, buildings, governance, and leadership, into a larger single-parish structure. For us, that represented a very real cost, effectively handing over the stewardship of what God has entrusted to us locally and risking a loss of depth in the specific mission field we believe we are called to serve in Haydock.”
A growing concern was “matters of theological conviction”, he said. “We were very aware that entering into a single-parish structure would require a level of shared spiritual leadership and oversight across churches holding differing theological convictions, particularly in light of Living in Love and Faith and the Prayers of Love and Faith.”
The journey towards Fit for Mission in St Helens had been “painful and bruising”, he said. “Relationships have been strained, and a number of clergy have since left the deanery and diocese. That needs to be acknowledged honestly, even while recognising that God continues to work through imperfect processes.”
LEARNING from the first cohorts was shaping the Fit for Mission process, the diocesan spokesman said, giving as an example the additional time spent working with parish officers. “Misunderstandings” included the idea that finances would be merged or redistributed, “when in reality each church continues to have its own budget and financial accountability”.
LSPs had “a noticeably higher level of governance and building compliance, with officers better equipped and well supported by their local support services”, he said.
“There is also strong anecdotal evidence that clergy well-being has improved. . . Encouragingly, many curates have chosen to remain within their Larger Single Parish, suggesting that the model is helping to create healthier and more sustainable ministry.
“Crucially,churches have not lost their identity,” he continued. “Each congregation has retained its own DNA, traditions, and sense of call, while being better supported within a wider parish framework. . .
“Fit for Mission is not about moving everyone at the same speed, but about creating a framework where churches can choose change when the time feels right, supported by trust, relationship, and lived experience, rather than compulsion.”