The churches that don’t have to open on Sunday
VICARS of rural churches are no longer required to open their doors to worshippers every Sunday.
The ‘relaxation of requirements’ was agreed at a meeting of the Church of England’s ruling Synod yesterday.
The change formally enshrines practices that have become common in recent years as countryside clergy face severely dwindling congregations. In many parishes, vicars have been forced to hold Sunday services at different locations on a rolling ‘rota’ system.
It comes as the latest count of Sunday congregations shows just 722,000 people are taking their place in the pews, a drop of 15 per cent over the past decade.
An average church now attracts fewer than 50 Sunday worshippers – and in more isolated churches, it is even fewer than that.
Bishops have suggested a series of schemes to cope with the drop in numbers, including a plan to close some historic rural churches, except at Christmas and Easter.
The Synod vote to change the rules follows a plan drawn up by the Bishop of Willesden, the Right Reverend Pete Broadbent, and a committee answering to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
Current rules require that morning and evening prayer is celebrated in every parish church ‘on all Sundays and other principal feast days’. Holy Communion should also be celebrated weekly.
The rules that have been altered were drawn up in the 1970s and 1990s to replace church laws dating from the early 1600s.
Bishop Broadbent said: ‘Vicars in rural areas can have 12 or 20 churches to look after. They can’t hold services in all of them.’ In many country parishes, lay readers and part-time clergy keep churches running at a time when the CofE can no longer afford to staff them will full-time priests.
Recent figures say that a typical church saw just five funerals and a wedding in 2017, and that only one in ten babies are now baptised into the CofE. In 2016, Bishop Broadbent said: ‘For 20-30 years the Church of England has basically operated on a kind of rota basis. For years people have been breaking the law because you have to make those arrangements but actually the law hasn’t caught up with what’s actually happening.’
He said the change will not alter what is happening, but ‘clears the way for people to be honest’.
A spokesman for the CofE said: ‘Sunday worship continues to be central to the Church of England’s ministry. The recent adaptation is designed to make it easier for multi- church parishes who rotate services between a group of churches.’
He added that many churches also offer midweek services, which are ‘increasing in popularity’.
‘Allows people to be honest’