The Church of England announced this week plans for a significant increase in funding for the next three years to support God’s mission and ministry across the country, supporting local parishes and growing many more new worshipping communities to serve the whole nation. £3.6 billion over nine years, where did they suddenly get such a large sum of money whilst continually appealing to the public for funds? Down the back of a very large sofa perhaps?
The mission of the church is to grow new worshipping communities and they need extra funds to do that and yes that can be perceived as a good thing. Admirable in fact.
So why do the church leaders of St Peters Church in Bredhurst insist on pushing their community away and not open their arms to those who don’t agree with their graveyard rules?
Where other churches within the Diocese of Rochester are showing a level of tolerance and understanding the needs of their communities, St Peters shows that they are good and those who do not agree with them are bad and that their perceived opinion is correct.
To not follow the rules is perceived by some as a bad thing, but these same people support those who demonstrate against other rules and perceive this as good.
The church will criticise the democratically elected government as not helping deprived communities enough whilst selecting who they wish to help.
Is it because they have such a large congregation that they do not wish to grow new worshiping communities? or is it that those who are questioning the outdated rules are not the type of people that they wish to acknowledge or serve or perceive as being part of the whole nation?
There are lessons to be learnt from this situation and that is that the church knows it needs to help the community in it’s time of need but doesn’t see that they must change a lot more than just throwing money at the parishes.
They need to grow worshipping communities by acting within their communities and helping everyone, not just those that they perceive as being in need.
St Peter’s Church, Bredhurst since 2016:“Wrecking community, inhibiting faith, and turning people off the Church”
The full press release from the Church of England can be found https://www.churchofengland.org/media-and-news/press-releases/church-england-national-funding-increase-30-support-and-develop
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