About the Project
REACH Ely – Reimagining Churches as Community Assets for the Common Good – investigated the community value of church buildings and how this relates to success in the missional life of the church. The resulting data is used to provide tools for churches to use to identify the opportunities existing in their local communities. The project has the generous support of the Benefact Trust and Historic England.
The Church of England nationally proposes that dioceses undertake strategic reviews of church buildings. This project is firmly rooted in that context, as a product of the Diocese of Ely’s own strategy for growth; but seeks to take a very outward-looking approach, both in terms of the methodologies employed to achieve the aims of the project, and its primary focus on the communities surrounding churches.
A review of current research suggests there is much more work to be done to understand how community use of church buildings, and also community values and perceptions of church buildings, might make them not only sites for worship, but truly tools for mission. There is currently little information available about the determinants of success and failure in this context. The REACH Ely project identifies new ways of measuring the success of a church’ work in its local community which go beyond financial bottom lines and weekly attendance figures.
Project Context
Cambridgeshire is home to nearly three hundred historic parish churches. Nationally, due to their age, presence in the landscape, and the long and deep association between churches and the communities that built them, nearly 45 per cent of all Grade I listed buildings in England are churches. In parts of Cambridgeshire the proportion of Grade I listed buildings that are churches is even higher: more than 75 per cent in South Cambridgeshire and 70 per cent in Fenland. Statistical research has shown that more highly listed buildings are concentrated in unpopulous rural areas across England.
Statistics for Mission shows a worrying pattern of decline, with many highly significant church buildings at increasing risk of being lost to their communities through lack of income to maintain and develop them, and decline in traditional measures of success. The 2015 Statistics for Mission report admitted:
“Over recent decades, attendance at Church of England church services has gradually fallen…Most key measures of attendance have fallen by between 10 per cent and 15 per cent over the past 10 years.”
This continues a long-term trend; between 1970 and 2010 Sunday attendance showed an average decline of 46 per cent. Decline is, on average, the same in rural and urban areas; but with six or seven times as many church buildings per capita in rural areas, the need to take action in a predominantly rural diocese like Ely, is acute.
Lack of income and decline in use ultimately lead to church closure. The two national organisations tasked with caring for closed churches (Churches Conservation Trust and Friends of Friendless Churches), have capacity for new vestings of “one or two each year.” Therefore, in most cases, a closed church is permanently converted to a new use, changing it from a tool for mission into a permanent symbol of failure for the church in that place.
What appears to be a long-term fall in support for the church, as defined by traditional measures such as attendance at services, is not reflected in what is already known about the attitudes of local communities to the churches in their midst. Here support appears to be growing. The model of friends groups continues to expand, with an estimated 22,000 non-church-going “friends” working to support hundreds of churches nationally.
The range of commercial and community of activities carried out in some churches continues to grow, along with the alterations required to accommodate them. This indicates that the local community value of church buildings is complex and deep-rooted, and urgently needs to be better understood by churches.
At a national level, limited research carried out to date reflects this local strength of feeling. A National Churches Trust opinion poll carried out in 2015 revealed that “83 per cent of British adults think that the UK’s churches and chapels and meeting houses play an important role for society”.
Aims
The project aims to help churches connect to their communities through better use of these historic buildings.
The church has been very focused on defining its product, but less good at identifying and addressing its market. The REACH Ely project seeks to find out how communities perceive and value the churches in their midst, and how understanding those perceptions and values can be used both to support the long-term sustainability of church buildings, and also help the church succeed as a Christian presence in every community.
While primarily used for religious services, church buildings are already used for other purposes such as the provision of nursery spaces and rehearsal spaces for theatre groups. There is currently, however, little information about the determinants for success and failure in making these buildings effective tools for the churches’ wider community mission.
The challenges facing church communities and their buildings have been extensively studied in the light of declining church attendance over several decades. This project aims to address the less-well-understood opportunities for churches to engage with the 97.7 per cent of their local communities who do not attend church.
It is the key aim of this project to understand the community value of church buildings and to identify how it might be used to promote both the long-term sustainability of church buildings, and the missional objectives of the church itself.
- Can a church building really be a “tool for mission”, or merely a site for worship?
- Can community use of church buildings facilitate the growth of the church as an institution, or merely prop it up in the face of long-term decline?
- Can such community uses alone sustain church buildings in the long run?
This project answers these questions, and others, in the context of existing strategies for churches and church buildings, national & local, sacred, and secular.
Strategy
The Church of England nationally proposes that dioceses undertake strategic reviews of church buildings. This project is firmly rooted in that context, as a product of the Diocese of Ely’s own strategy for growth; and seeks to take a very outward-looking approach, both in terms of the methodologies employed to achieve the aims of the project, and its primary focus on the communities surrounding churches.
A significant feature of the project will be capacity building within deaneries to enable deanery officers and other volunteers to undertake the work with only limited intervention from outside.
The scope of the project will examine church buildings in their broader demographic and economic contexts. This contextualised approach recognises that the success and sustainability of church buildings, particularly in rural areas, is dependent on their wider communities, how they value them, and how they perceive the church as contributing to the common good.
A review of current research suggests there is much more work to be done to understand how community use of church buildings, and also community values and perceptions of church buildings, might make them not only sites for worship, but truly tools for mission. There is currently little information available about the determinants of success and failure in this context. New research will also identify new ways of measuring the success of a church’s work in its local community which go beyond financial bottom lines and weekly attendance figures.
The project supports the aims of a December 2017 report for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. The Taylor Review: Sustainability of English Churches and Cathedrals sought to “lay the foundations for sustainability and consequently secure the future of these important buildings for so long as communities value these wonderful assets”.
One of the cornerstones of the Diocese of Ely’s Ely2025 Growth Strategy is to “Re-imagine our buildings”, so this project aims to provide every parish and every deanery in the Diocese with the tools to be able to understand the opportunities open to them in the context of their own communities. This will help them to provide a church that meets their community’s needs and gains its support, giving a sustainable future to these important historic buildings.
Methods
Stage 1 - Literature review
- Literature review will commence with systematic literature reviews of information about the church buildings, their use, maintenance, previous projects working in this and related areas, community asset management, and tools and techniques for calibrating the value of the common good and of assets with no market price.
Stage 2 - Scoping case studies
- Scoping case studies will consist of in-depth interviews about church buildings and community characteristics with informants from a subset of deaneries and parishes in the Diocese of Ely, supplemented with secondary information about the communities they represent.
- The findings will be used to develop case studies of church building use, clusters of church buildings uses, and the data categories in the survey.
Stage 3 - Survey
- Survey of church buildings and community characteristics in the Diocese of Ely drawn from the created database. The survey will be administered by parish and deanery representatives after attending training sessions. The survey will provide a unique dataset about church buildings and community assets.
Stage 4 - Data analysis and reporting
- Data analysis and reporting and the dissemination of findings to key stakeholder audiences.