Rector’s Daily Reflections
Monday 19th February 2024
The Future of our Church Buildings
This week I am continuing a series of reflections suggested by a recent report issued by the National Churches Trust: Every Church Counts. A Six Point Plan to save the UK’s Church Buildings . Last week, we considered the first three points, and it is now time to look at the fourth point in the Trust’s six point plan.
This fourth point focuses on tourism. Many people already enjoy visiting church buildings for their historical connections and for the beauty of their architecture, sculpture and stained glass. How might we encourage more people to visit our churches? How might we make more of our church buildings as historical and cultural assets?
The report suggests commissioning a national study on the issue. The study would be commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, working with the main national tourism organisations, and it would study how we can more of the heritage potential of the church buildings across the UK.
Getting more people interested in our church buildings is obviously a good thing, but I suspect that the proposed national study would tell us nothing we do not already know. There are plenty of existing examples of how churches can encourage more visitors, and engage more effectively with those who come. There a plenty of new ideas: for example, some churches provide “champing”, which is camping overnight in the church building itself. The context of each church varies enormously, and those who visit churches come with a wide range of interests.
Improving the “visitor experience”, and putting our churches more firmly on the visitor map, will undoubtedly increase the number of people who visit our church buildings and appreciate them. The more people who visit our churches, the better. However, the impact of increased visitor numbers on church finances is usually pretty minimal. Increasing the number of people who visit our churches is clearly a good thing, and it will certainly be of help to some individual churches, but it’s not going to solve the problem.