“I’ve never known such innovation in the UK, with church planting in different places in different communities,” said Gavin Calver, CEO of the Evangelical Alliance UK. Meanwhile, churches themselves are meeting in new spaces according to community needs. Other times church buildings can be repurposed for other uses. Sometimes smaller churches close and consolidate with a larger church at a central location. Grants help struggling churches make repairs, but not all are able to remain open. “The church is synonymous with the history and identity of these villages.”īack in 2019, Brierley found that churches outnumbered pubs in the UK, since they too had been steadily closing. “In many of the villages in which the church still exists, the local post office, the local bank, the local shop and the local pub have closed, and the church is often the last public building there,” he said. Spencer explains that, for some rural churches, this local connection and history might be about all that’s left in a village. Urbanization has affected churches that once had a village to sustain them. It’s the history, which could be 50 years old, could be 200 years old, could be 1,000 years old.” There are memorials to people who may have done something important or lived there. “ means something to the people who live there. “We would very much like as many churches as possible to remain open because of that local ,” Eddie Tulasiewicz of National Churches Trust explained. The history and tradition that Winkett describes are of great importance to many across the UK who want to see local church buildings preserved even if they don’t attend. At their best, they are public spaces with low barriers to entry (thresholds), that are open just because they’re open, free and easy to enter, inclusive, adaptable, beautiful, with a strong tradition of connection across time and space.” “The truth is that as people and as a society we need church buildings. “A historic and beautiful church building reminds you that you are part of a bigger story than your own life, one that spans the centuries,” wrote Lucy Winkett, rector of St. National Churches Trust and other nonprofits can help bridge this gap, eager to preserve the spaces that have played such a meaningful role in people’s lives and communities. Even churches with a fairly large worshiping body might not be able to afford repairs and restoration for churches that are hundreds of years old. “If you have churches in rural areas, and there are fewer people going into them, and indeed fewer people living in rural areas, and you don’t have the money to keep churches going, then they’re likely to close,” Spencer said.ĭeclines in attendance-and, in turn, involvement and giving-have left churches with fewer resources to maintain their aging buildings. The number of churches in the UK fell from 42,000 to 39,800 in a ten-year span, according to a 2021 report from the Brierley Research Consultancy. “If you were running a commercial organization, and you had a branch on every single High Street in the country but dwindling numbers of people visiting them, you would go bust if you didn’t close some branches,” said Theos senior fellow Nick Spencer. Communities are grappling with whether or how to save the historic buildings as new expressions emerge through church planting. The attendance decline is one reason over 2,000 churches have closed during the last decade. A survey released by evangelical organizations in the United Kingdom last month found that, while around half of the country’s population identify as Christian, only 6 percent are “practicing” and active enough in their faith to attend church at least once a month.
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