A Case for Multiplying the Type and Number of Churches

Abstract

This article revisits statistical work from the mid-1970s by Revd David Wasdell. He found, then, powerful constraints within the parish system to both numerical growth and penetration of those parishes. Ones over 2000 souls hit a ceiling. Wasdell argued that the way forward was not increasing clergy numbers, nor combining parishes, but multiplying further lay-led churches. His work was never applied and has been forgotten. This article suggests that repeating his method for the 2011 statistics shows the same problems remain more acutely as the resources to deal with them have halved. Wasdell's list of objections to such an approach are similar to those today about fresh expressions of Church. If one answer is to ‘think outside the box’, the article identifies the sides of the Church of England box, and how they are re-enforced and defended. The author then charts what is emerging beyond the box and argues for its sides to become porous. He encourages reconsideration of Wasdell's approach and whether the Church of England can embrace the call to the multiplication of smaller, lay-led churches as a significant way to address its history of numerical decline.