Save the Parish Campaign Update
The Save the Parish Campaign is still hoping to find members of the laity and clergy to stand for General Synod.
They are looking to find laity candidates for the Dioceses of Bristol, Canterbury, Carlisle, Durham, Exeter, Hereford, Liverpool, and Newcastle.
The campaign is finding it more difficult to find candidates from within the ranks of clergy. The Dioceses of Bristol, Canterbury, Carlisle, Chester, Coventry, Exeter, Gloucester, Guildford, Hereford, Lincoln, Liverpool, Newcastle, Salisbury, Worcester, and York are still in need of people to stand.
Save the Parish summarises its goals to five points.
- To support the archbishops in keeping their pledge to support the parish as the best means of evangelism.
- To put the “frontline first”, ensuring that resources that properly belong to and are generated by the parishes remain at parish level, freeing up laity and clergy for mission.
- To ensure that law and projects which initiate from the centre all support and enhance the parochial system by integrating the Strategic Development Fund into the parish and opposing the revision to the Mission & Pastoral Measure which would make it easier and quicker for the dioceses to close churches, make priests redundant, and throw priests out of their homes.
- We believe that effective mission requires the prioritisation of spending on good theological education as a crucial investment.
- We will call for a Church-State commission to agree a national plan to protect and preserve historic parish buildings.
