Story three: the joys and challenges of creating three multi-site churches

"I really see my role, not about managing decline, but about pruning an outdated system ready for where God’s leading us next. And hopefully that will be a place of more energy; a stronger place and a growing place."

In my previous circuit, we did some experimenting with smaller churches, encouraging them to worship together in a regular pattern. Two churches paired up to worship twice a month, and a second two did the same, and then on a fifth Sunday we put all the four churches together in one place. As far as worship was concerned, that worked well, it was a regular pattern, people knew what was happening and it was reasonably successful, but it never went further than that. So when I was in the stationing process in 2020 and looking at the various options that were available, XXX Circuit stood out as something that interested me because they had a plan in place to bring several smaller churches together under one Church Council in three parts of the circuit. I thought it sounded like an exciting place to be. It’s been quite a challenge, but a lot of excitement as well.

The churches had gone through an exploration process and had come to an agreement that they would join together in groups, and that legal process had been gone through, so the new churches actually came into existence on 1st September 2021, the day that I and my two colleagues arrived to begin our ministry. So it was a completely new staff team with a completely new system. And what a challenge that was, because none of us really knew exactly how it was going to work. The churches themselves had taken that bold step to agree to a new process, but because of covid everything had been delayed, conversations had had to be online rather than face to face, and it had been very difficult. We were just presented with this new setup of new churches to try and make it work.

The three ministers are each responsible for one of the three new churches. Each of us also had one church that hadn’t agreed to take part in the system. So we all had either four or five churches that we were going to be leading under a single Church Council. My five churches include one large church in the largest community in the area: it has over 100 members. And then four much smaller churches with buildings in various conditions, with members numbering from about 8 up to about 35, each in their own distinctive villages and each of them largely elderly, though not exclusively so. The previous team had set up a Church Council and appointed reps from each chapel, and we chose to use this language of ‘chapels’ for the actual community buildings and ‘church’ for the new church structure. So each of our churches had a treasurer, a Church Council Secretary, a Safeguarding Officer and reps from each chapel to make a Church Council. And I distinctly remember sitting in front of my new Church Council at my first meeting and looking at the people who were sitting before me and thinking to myself that the people seemed just bewildered as to what they’d just signed up for. And I realised that all of us needed to have a better handle on who we were and what we were going to do and how it was going to work.

The first task that I saw before me was to identify which things would be done at chapel level – original Local Church level – and which things would be part of the church’s responsibility. So at chapel level it was things like the practical matters of running weekly worship; the day-to-day running of the building; the finance – at least initially – as there’d been no provision put into the system to centralise our finances; the low-level maintenance of the building; safeguarding, because that related to the building; GDPR; the pastoral team needed to be that local team; and they would still be organising events, whether it’s coffee mornings or other more interesting things; and ecumenical relations would happen at that chapel level because each of our Methodist chapels had a relationship with other churches in their community. Over that, we had one Church Council who were the Trustees of the church, the decision-makers, with an overview of the finance and the property, although ultimately I hope that all the finance will end up the responsibility of the church rather than of the chapels – we’re not there yet, by any means. Then the oversight of the pastoral care would come from myself and my lay worker; oversight of safeguarding would come through the church; and together the church would bring the chapels together to try and create a vision for mission across our area. There would be some regular worship as well that would happen at church level: we agreed that every fourth Sunday we would have a joint service in one of our chapels. And that’s happening in the three churches right across the circuit: we all do it together on fourth Sundays and that side of things  is working well. And then above the churches, at circuit level, the leadership of the circuit; the administration of the circuit; the Plan; and communications are very much centralised and very crucial to make all of this work.

We’re 18 months into this. I can remember the absolute blankness of all three ministers as we stared at each other and said, “How do we make this work?” One of the things that was slightly lacking was a handover process. We had the documentation for how they got together legally, but we didn’t really have a lot of direction on where we were expected to take it. And I think in some ways that was a really good thing, because it’s meant we’ve been able to forge our own path and decide where we’re going to go.

So the joys of being one church covering five chapels. For me, I’m able to look at that Church Council that I first met, now that I know the people, and to see the way that they’ve grown into this role of envisioning a new path forwards. Some of it’s very exciting: some very positive conversations have happened. Sometimes I have to hang onto the reigns very tightly because some of them want to move much faster than others. But I recognise that unless we all work together and move at a similar pace, some won’t catch up and we may have casualties along the way. Another joy would be hearing the comments that people make when the churches meet together, of how good it is to have a full chapel building to share in worship. How nice it is to have great singing and to see people and to get to know each other and to share time together. And we’ve also done some events together. One particularly successful event last summer was for the Jubilee, where we decided that we’d hold an event that took place in all five of our chapels. We started the day with bacon sandwiches at the first chapel. Then we moved down the hill and had soup and puddings at the next. We had ice cream at the third, then on to afternoon tea at the fourth, and we finished with a barbecue at the fifth. Now all of those events were open to all of our church people but also to the communities where we’re based. The circuit financed this so that there was no charge for anything and we were able to welcome people into our buildings and we put on other activities. We did a bit of a sing-song at one church. And some people, the energetic ones, walked between our churches, and we were there to cheer them on as they arrived at each point. That involved a lot of shared conversation and was really positive. In fact, one of my chapels, the one that joins in the least with things, said to me just in the last couple of weeks that it was a highlight for them.

So there’s that sense of the chapels supporting one another, and recognising that we’re on the same team. I think it’s still a growing process, but there’s been that sense that we’re growing together, knowing each other, we’re not as separate from each other as we were at the start. Two of our chapels organised weekends away and those have both become church weekends away, rather than just for that individual chapel. One of those is happening in just a couple of weeks’ time, and there are representatives from each of the chapels going along to that event, which is really positive, because they see each other as part of one thing.

There are challenges, of course. One of my chapel buildings will close at some point this year because the actual building is falling apart, and we don’t see it as the right building to repair - it’s not good use of funds. It’s got a very small worshipping congregation. But the reality is that all of those people are willing to go somewhere else to worship and they will add a bit of energy to the other congregations without having to be weighed down by the problem of a failing building. However, we are in the process of looking at how we can still be a Christian witness in that community, hopefully working alongside other Christians, and pull together something that we can offer into the community. The fact that we know each other means that the loss of their building doesn’t mean the end of all things in that community. And I think there’s a recognition in some of the other chapels that "when my chapel reaches the end of its road," - and that will happen probably with all except the largest of the five buildings - "then we know the people who will walk alongside us and we know the people who will welcome us into their church family." There are those who will never, ever set foot in another building other than their own. Even though they’ll cross the river to shop in Aldi, they will not worship in the church that’s up the road. There's the challenge of challenging that idea that what’s in our chapel bank account is ours, the building is ours, and that lack of understanding of trusteeship and the responsibility we have to find the best way forward for the things that we have. There can be rudeness and unpleasantness, which comes from a place of feeling threatened, which we recognise. And so we’ve had to be very patient with people in those situations.

I’ve always felt that ministers spend far too much time in meetings and not enough time doing mission. However, because the chapels still need to talk within themselves about how things are going locally, and often require the minister to be there, then actually there’s quite a lot of meetings. We’re in a process of trying to offload some of the things that don’t actually need the minister’s presence so that they can get on with that. There’s also the challenge of getting information out there: we’re working on that at circuit level; we’ve got regular notice sheets, and a circuit website that’s being improved at the moment, so that there is a centralised place for getting information. There are a lot of things that people haven’t quite got. People still ask, “When my chapel closes, can I move my membership to this chapel?" And we say, well, actually it’s part of the same church, you can worship wherever you want, but membership is central to the church. There’s a dawning of understanding. We have to constantly remind people this is where we’re at.

There are lots of things that we haven’t put in place. Every time something comes up that we haven’t thought of, we have to start again and say, “what’s the best way to do this?” So there’s still lots to learn. I’m very fortunate, I’ve got a very positive staff team, both lay and ordained, we’ve got a wonderful circuit leadership team, who are very supportive and encouraging, we have those within the circuit who either know how to find the answers, or who to ask to get some answers, and we’re also part of a very encouraging and supportive district, which has been very helpful. I think because we’re a circuit that’s already taken some big decisions, when we introduce new ideas and experiment with things and offer new options, they seem to receive it reasonably well – obviously not everyone, but enough people to make it worthwhile, to try something different. I’d be lying if I said everything was positive, but I think on the whole there’s much more positive than negative. And I really see my role, not about managing decline, though that is very real, but about pruning an outdated system ready for where God’s leading us next. And hopefully that will be a place of more energy; a stronger place and a growing place, God willing. 

This story is true and is told as far as possible in the words of the person who shared it. The story has simply been anonymised by using generic names and locations.