The Church of England’s volunteering crisis

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Patrick Kidd has narrated this article for you to listen to.

John Betjeman knew that a church cannot run on prayers alone. ‘Let’s praise the man who goes to light the church stove on an icy night,’ he wrote in his poem ‘Septuagesima’, going on to celebrate the ‘hard-worked’ wardens, cleaners, treasurers, the organist and, most of all, ‘the few who are seen in their accustomed pew’ come rain or shine. ‘And though they be but two or three,’ he concluded. ‘They keep the church for you and me.’

In smaller churches, filling voluntary vacancies is a headache, not helped by ever-increasing bureaucracy

Some vicars today may feel fortunate to garner two or three volunteers. A recent Church Times survey found a worrying decline in numbers taking on the lay roles of warden, secretary and treasurer. Between a quarter and 40 per cent of churches in each diocese had only one warden, not the required two, while more than a fifth were missing one or more other key officers.

In rural areas, where clergy numbers have been cut and congregations have fallen, meaning that one over-stretched vicar can be responsible for a dozen parishes, this is stark. In the diocese of Norwich, famed for its number of churches, 267 of them have fewer than a dozen worshippers; in Hereford, 250 get below 20. Reducing clergy, some have observed, does not help to swell numbers.

Even in my own parish in Blackheath, south-east London, where I am one of two wardens, we need more help. The vicar ran through a Betjemanesque encomium at the recent annual parochial church meeting, praising the cleaning team, the sides-people, the readers, those who do the flowers or serve tea et al (some appear several times), but only one of five vacancies on the parochial church council (PCC) was filled.