Rector’s Reflections
Thursday 15th Febraury 2024
The Future of our Church Buildings
Yesterday, we looked at the first of the suggestions in the recent report by the National Churches Trust, Every Church Counts. A Six Point Plan to Save the UK’s Church Buildings. This involves the setting up of a network of professional support officers covering the whole of the UK. The second suggestion looks at the problem from a different perspective: the perspective of church usage.
The suggestion here is that more should be done to promote the use of our church and church buildings for community activities. In recent years large numbers of church buildings have closed. In the words of the report, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the “Government [asked] all local authorities and public bodies such as the NHS to engage with faith groups and make more use of churches and church halls to host public and community services, helping to upgrade facilities where needed”. The report acknowledges that “not every church or chapel can become a community hub”, but notes that “there are many church buildings with spare capacity that could be used to benefit local communities”.
What might one say about this? The idea of using church buildings for the benefit of the wider community is hardly rocket science. It would be rare to find any church community which is not already looking to see how their building might be used more widely by the community as a whole. And what of those church buildings located in small villages and hamlets? Or of those communities where there is a perfectly adequate village hall? In both instances, there will not be the demand to justify significant investment in adapting the church for wider community use.
And then, of course, there’s the need for a wider financial reality check. The use of church buildings by public bodies could well be extended, but this will often involve improvements to the building, for example the installation of a toilet and kitchen facilities, and who will pay for these improvements? Furthermore, I suspect the challenge for most public bodies is n’t so much the availability of buildings - it’s more the problem of finding the money to pay staffing costs.
So think that while the idea of supporting wider community use of church buildings is a good one, it is already being done on a substantial scale. Furthermore, the harsh financial realities mean that increased community use is unlikely to make any significant contribution to the sustainability of church buildings in villages and hamlets- although it might be potentially transformational in a suburban or urban setting.