No churchwardens and vacant PCC posts: an investigation into the church volunteering crisis

Mar 15, 2024 by Jill

by Madeleine Davies, Church Times:

Elections no longer contested, empty pews — Madeleine Davies investigates

IT WAS John Betjeman who (in “Septuagesima”, Poems in the Porch, SPCK, 1954) wrote:
Let’s praise the man who goes to light
The church stove on an icy night.
Let’s praise that hard-worked he or she

The Treasurer of the P.C.C.
Let’s praise the cleaner of the aisles,
The nave and candlesticks and tiles. . .
But such individuals — and not least those willing to take on the legal and practical responsibilities of a churchwarden — are now a rarer breed than they were in his time, and the strain is being felt.

In the General Synod last month, Robert Perry, a Truro member of the House of Laity, asked the Archbishops’ Council whether it might consider any changes to the Churchwardens Measure 2001 “which would assist those parishes unable to find two parishioners willing to undertake the duties and responsibilities of this role” (of churchwarden).

The written reply (“No”) had, he noted in a supplementary question, “the merit of brevity, and the demerit of opacity”. In Truro — a “very rural diocese, with a large number of very small, isolated parishes” — 87 of the 212 parishes had one churchwarden and 12 had none.

The situation in Truro is far from unique. In 2021, the diocese of York reported that about 40 per cent of its parishes had only one churchwarden, and half were unable to find separate volunteers for warden, secretary, and treasurer.

The recent Church Buildings Commission survey in the diocese of Norwich discovered that about 100 churches had no recorded churchwardens. In one rural benefice, there were 19 churches, placing “great pressure” on the incumbent, who had three churches with no PCC members, leaving her with sole responsibility for them.

The Church Times wrote to every diocese last month in an attempt to quantify the extent of the recruitment challenge. Those that replied reported that between one quarter and 40 per cent of parishes had only one churchwarden, while between five and 21 per cent had none. One reported that 22 per cent of its parishes were missing one or more people in key positions this January.

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