by Bijan Omrani, Telegraph
Parish clergy and volunteers are being neglected while central bodies fixate on bureaucracy
A message for whoever will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury: please don’t forget my parish church’s boiler.
Naturally, it expired just before last Sunday’s Harvest Festival service. The resulting chill was a harsh welcome for the 50 who attended – the largest congregation in recent months.
I hope the warmth and hospitality of our church volunteers made up for this. They decorated the church beautifully with flowers. They contributed cheese and wine for a parish gathering afterwards. The choirmaster found extra singers to perform traditional harvest carols. A local farmer offered to speak about the challenges of modern agriculture.
The congregation responded with donations to the food bank and a large collection for the Farming Community Network. I hope many of the new faces will keep returning, despite the cold.
These works of local hospitality – flowers, music, refreshments, keeping the church warm – may seem simple, but they are fundamental to the church’s mission: to draw people together in fellowship to hear the word of Christ. And whilst the works are simple, organising them isn’t. A service like our Harvest Festival needs many to help: everyone from clergy to musicians and flower-arrangers. However, ever fewer are willing to volunteer.
In recent decades, the Church of England has undergone a relentless programme of centralisation. Money and powers have been drawn upwards from parishes to dioceses and new bodies like the Archbishops’ Council.
These central bodies are fixated on grand visions and political fashions rather than the practical work of local parishes. They are reluctant to spend money on paying for ordinary clergy and churches. Instead, funds are soaked up by growing bureaucracies.