The Parish is at the heart of the Church of England. Discussion on the future of the parish is being waged in the Church of England
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By Canon Dr. Chris Sugden
ANGLICAN MAINSTREAM
April 8, 2026
The parish
One point needs to be remembered. The Church of England has been rooted in its parishes, since well before the Reformation.
In the New Testament we learn that from the earliest days of the church there was a structure made up of apostles / bishops, elders and deacons and ‘those with gifts of administration’ (1 Cor 12.28). The apostles founded churches and visited them, but there was no plethora of assistants, secretaries, committees etc . Some of the newer churches today function in a way more similar to the New Testament pattern, and so do many Baptist, Independent Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Non-episcopal churches (many of which are gathered rather than parochial) now represent the largest sector (43%) of worshipping people in the UK. https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html. Anglicans make up 21% and Catholics 25%. These ‘newer’ churches have very little superstructure or central costs. Each church is an individual entity. They have trans-church leaders with oversight of other congregations and leaders, but it is mostly done by elders who are already helping lead churches themselves.
The CofE is different from ECUSA. It is not an organization. ECUSA took its ecclesiology and its orders from the Episcopal Church in Scotland. The Church of England derived its structure, and parish order from the Catholic church from before the Reformation. So the Church in England has been rooted in its parishes for 1500 years. They have been part of local organisation for a millennium and a half. They are part of our national structure.
Interestingly the dioceses were for centuries very extensive, for example the Diocese of Lincoln included parts of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. There is a stall in Lincoln Cathedral for the Archdeacon of Buckingham and the Bishop of Lincoln is still the visitor of Eton College. What is more, travel was by horseback. So the parishes functioned by and large without extensive oversight or involvement by the bishop and his staff.
The Church of England is rooted in the English culture. Its very cultural power and presence is why the gay, green and other political activists have 'gone for it'. The desire to maintain the place and role of the parish church is not a matter of wanting to hang on to assets as such, but to maintain its presence in the community. A drive through the countryside will show how embedded people in parish churches are in their local communities. In many areas, a high proportion of those who work in organisations such as Meals on Wheels, or the work of transporting disabled and sick people to surgeries and hospital, especially in rural areas happen to be church people who do this as part of the parish church’s presence in the community although they are not organized by the church. When people move into a new area, if they so wish, a parish church immediately provides a new network and community to which to relate.
Commentators are increasingly noting that many of the values that have underlain our national life such as honesty, integrity, care for the neighbour and neighbourhood have been rooted in the life of the churches and is not something that we want to lose. Melanie Phillips writes in the Times for March 31 “Precepts such as respect for every human being as having been formed in the image of God, responsibility for one’s actions, the high value placed on compassion and putting the interests of others first, the importance of justice and equality under law – these are particular to the Bible”.
Lord Glasman, a Jewish Labour Peer wrote in the Times on Christmas Eve 2025
“The English church is a glory of our nation. It gave us charity, law and government. Thomas Cromwell’s parish maps of 1538 are still how we imagine our country. The parish, the village, the town, the city, the county, the kingdom. Who cares for Medway, Merseyside and the combined authorities? They are administrative units that command no loyalty or affection. We need the strength and clarity of the Church of England more than ever now and yet its voice is strangely silent. It has become a ghost, haunting its own churches.”
The CofE is composed of a series of parishes, covering the whole country, each served by a vicar who needs wider support. In this it is similar to the pattern of the distribution of the Levites throughout the land as recorded in Joshua 21. They were distributed throughout the land and cities allotted to the other tribes in order to have a priestly and teaching presence among the whole people.
A vicar in a parish is not only the vicar of a congregation there, he/ she is also the vicar of the parish with a concern for the wellbeing of the whole community. The existence of a parish offers many opportunities for mission. Examples can be seen in the way some parishes distribute cards advertising their Christmas carol services and other Christmas activities to every house in the parish, or organize activities based at the church or elsewhere for the whole community thus building all-important relationships.
The folly of recent policy has been to regard the CofE as an organisation like BP or the NHS which needs managers and to centralise worship centres. This considerably reduces the role of the local church.
Much of resources and money of the Church of England is being used in diocesan projects and bureaucracy. More and more is the diocese interfering in the life of the local church and telling it what to do: flower arranging, heat pumps, safeguarding. The diocese is even telling one parish that one of their brilliant churchwardens must stand down because she has been churchwarden for 5 years. There is also the issue of the amount spent at the national level on social and political issues. Might it not be argued that such issues could be better left to ‘voluntary societies’ within the Church of England, drawing on the expertise of those who already specialise in these subjects, rather than by the Church of England as an institution? The calling of bishops is to be overseers/elders whose task is to be pastors of the pastors, to guard, teach, pray for and build up the church. It is those under their care who have the task of translating the faith into social and political application.
It means that there needs to be creative means of providing local lay leaders so that the church leadership can get to know the people in the parish properly. A similar challenge has taken place in GP surgeries as well, where no one now has their ‘own GP’. Continuity is with data in the NHS system rather than with a known GP. The church needs to appoint and train many more people to perform many of the functions in the local church that used to be fulfilled by the Vicar, not just admin, but preaching, leading worship, and doing the local pastoral visiting. It will take time for this sort of pattern to develop.
If we are going to have more local leaders then the issue of how they are trained has to be addressed. At the moment the training provided by local ministry courses is widely recognized to be inadequate in providing lay ministers with a strong foundation in biblical knowledge and orthodox Anglican teaching. This in turn means that the teaching they provide in the parishes is very often inadequate. If we want to see a revival of parochial Anglicanism this issue is arguably at least as important as reviewing diocesan and national administration.
The older traditional free churches (Methodists, and Congregationalists and Presbyterians – now URC) are now largely absent in rural areas apart from perhaps Cornwall and sections of northern England. But there has been a growth of local witness and pastoral care by newer free churches. However they are nearly all gathered churches so there is rarely much tangible local presence, relying on the witness of individual Christians. There are exceptions but they rarely have anything similar to parishes with local responsibility and accountability.
It is the CofE parish churches which remain and the percentage of the local population that attend is greater than in urban areas. John Keble said "The Church of England continues in my parish".
Challenges and opportunities
At the head of the high street in Bedale, North Yorkshire stands the parish church of St Gregory’s. For the parishioners of Bedale, this is where they meet the presence of God together. While the imposing structure of York Minister is a short train ride away it should not be regarded as a more significant or important place to meet with God. The same is true of the large urban churches, ‘meccas’ to which many are attracted away from the parishes in which they live.
In the gospel narratives, Jesus describes himself as the one who will replace the Jerusalem temple. David Wenham writes in ‘The Parables of Jesus’ that Jesus warns that the presence of God will no longer be in the Jerusalem temple, and worship will be in Spirit and truth (John 4 21-24). “The hints point to the new temple being in the risen Jesus himself as the Messiah and in the community of his followers”.
This is not an appeal for a 19th century version of the parish and parish clergy.
Country parishes are caught up in a variety of social changes that make the old structure more difficult to maintain. Villages used to have their own school, shop(s), pub, etc, most of which have become centralised in the nearby town to which everyone goes for almost everything. Even the surviving pubs are now gastro restaurants. Going to the nearby town church is therefore only what you do for everything else - by car!
In addition to these changes in village life, many properties in the villages are now second homes or AirB&B lets, particularly in areas like the Cotswolds. So fewer residents live there to support any village activities.
There is not an easy answer to these social changes and so many village churches are on the closure list as places of regular worship.
There is of course a considerable pressure on the resource to fill every parish with an incumbent. In some areas already the incumbent has to ‘service’ as many as ten ‘worship centres’ in churches. This calls for a proper understanding of ‘team ministry’ where an important role of the vicar is to train, pastor and lead senior lay people to lead worship, preach and provide pastoral care in the manner of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (4:11-13) “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” That is to be a team player who recognizes and encourages the gifts which God has given to other members of the fellowship and congregation and allows them space to exercise them and make their contribution. All too often I have sadly come across cases of ‘one man band’ vicars who misinterpret their role as holders of the freehold to be an autocratic managing director whose voice is the only one heard and before whom everyone else is a class of possibly unruly schoolchildren. The days of the ’one-man band’ are over – even though they remain in some places regrettably.
A further challenge and opportunity presents itself to the larger ‘gathered’ churches in urban areas. Because they can have well-resourced teams leading the church community they are very attractive to people living further ‘out-of-town’ who are actually based in the under-staffed parishes. So people travel in from these areas to the urban ‘meccas’. Might some follow the example of John Stott at All Souls Langham Place and the leaders of Holy Trinity Brompton and encourage such folk, once ‘firm in their faith’, having been built up in these gathered churches to play their part in their local parish?
There is also a challenge to the dioceses and central church authorities. They have seen (been responsible for?) a major increase in the number of ‘diocesan officers’ for various activities. It is true that the impact of compliance issues on clergy - safeguarding, finance, governance, HR, GDPR etc. very significantly impact on the size of the central teams in dioceses and accounts for their growth. Without them parishes would have even greater responsibilities in these areas. However, while such activities may be important, might not the salaries and costs involved be better expended on providing clergy for parishes, and attaching some of these ‘diocesan activities’ to those appointments?
To take the Oxford Diocese, for instance. Current figures from their reports and the Diocesan Office are as follows.
No of regular worshippers, about 32,000. This figure comes from statistics gathered from average weekly attendance.
No of clergy: 1287. Stipendiary clergy 435, those with PtO 519, self-supporting Ministers 110, and licensed lay ministers 223. There are also 160 chaplains. That is 1287 clergy in 808 churches.
Number of Diocesan staff.
82.4 number of full time equivalent employees employed by the Diocesan Board of Finance. The website notes 133 staff in all who include post-holders ( not employed by the DBF) The breakdown is as follows: Oxford team 13, Bucks team 12, Dorchester team 8+1 duplicate, Reading team 11. Total 44
Communications 7, Property 15, Finance 10, HR&Safeguarding 13, Mission/Ministry 23, Secretaries, 16, Reg 5, Total 89
Therefore the number of central (overhead) staff 133 (including vacancies but excluding everyone concerned with education)
So the ratio of central team to parish teams: 1:10
Ratio of ministers to people: 1:25
Ratio of churches to people: 1:40
Ratio of central team to people: 1:240
Overall ratios Central team: ministers: people is 1:10:250 approx, which is shocking in terms of overhead/superstructure.
Those reflecting on the development of businesses notice that they tend to increase the number of administrators and ‘bureaucrats’ out of proportion to those actually engaged in the ‘work’ of the company. Unless they significantly reduce these central overheads this usually leads to the collapse of the company.
A plan put forward in Chelmsford Diocese a few years ago was to make each deanery and archdeanery of up to 20 parishes with the leadership and oversight exercised at that level. Such a unit would be the focus of funding.
The Church Commissioners
Then there is the role of the Church Commissioners. Arguably one of the key problems facing the Church of England is the unwillingness of the Commissioners to release a greater amount of funds to the dioceses and specifically to give a greater amount of money to support clergy pensions. If more money was released to support clergy pensions that would be a very important step in enabling the dioceses to appoint more parochial clergy. At the moment, the existing pensions bill and the need to put away money to cover potential future liabilities is a major factor in making the appointment of more stipendiary clergy prohibitively expensive. The Commissioners argument is the need to preserve funds for the future, but this approach is in danger of ensuring that the Church of England will have a much reduced future.
The Church Commissioners funds are to be used to support parish ministry – which is a further reason for this article now. A letter to Archbishop Mullaly when she was still Archbishop-elect read: “By law, the endowment must be used to support parish ministry, maintain church buildings, and care for the Church’s historic records. At a moment when churches across the country are struggling to keep their doors open — many even falling into disrepair — it’s wrong to try and justify diverting £100 million to a project (Project Spire) entirely separate from those core obligations.”
Orthodoxy and the Church of England
Most people in parish churches will be orthodox, or at least, due to the impact of societal and often family realities, quietly understanding of liberal views on sexuality while not being flag-waving PRIDE advocates or part of the elite class pushing for same-sex marriage. There are some 'enthusiasts' for it, but people in those churches will not have a vote to leave and join the Anglican Mission in Europe; they will not want division but a reasonably quiet life nor will they want to lose the embeddedness of their church in local life. This is their church at the heart of their community. They are not about to go anywhere else. We cannot leave the sheep to the wolves.
A challenge in many parishes is that, in addition to members of an elite class pushing for same-sex marriage, many men and women in the pews are also supportive in practice, due to the prevailing liberal messages of the media rarely bring countered from the pulpit, with support being particularly strong where there are family or friends in same-sex relationships.
So, with an uncertain future a vision is needed. That vision should not neglect the lessons of the past when every part of the country was covered by a parish with a Christian minister responsible for teaching biblical truth and equipping a Christian community to witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God until the Lord returns.
Chris Sugden is honorary associate minister in the parish of St Michael’s Cumnor in Oxford Diocese. He has previously served in parochial ministry in Leeds, Bangalore, and Eynsham. He is a canon of Jos, Nigeria and Sunyani, Ghana. He is chair of the Anglican Mainstream trustees