Friday, September 30, 2011

Vocations Crisis in Anglican Church

Edit:  Wait, I've got an idea.  Why don't we ordain women and have married priests?


Just gone up on the main CofE website. Summary is here, full 62 pages of charts etc. are here. The main new stuff (it has the attendance figures which were published earlier this year) is about giving and vocations. Parish giving has risen, bucking the general trend across the charity sector, and over 500 people were ordained in 2010. However due to lots of retirements, overall numbers of full time clergy continue to fall. This is projected to drop a further 10% in the next 5 years.

At some stage the CofE will seriously need to reckon with this: the number of churches, expectation of a weekly Sunday communion, heavy clerical dependency etc. But since the change is all incremental, it feels like a slowly boiling frog scenario, and there's a danger we don't respond until it's too late. Maybe it is too late already.

The main stats document also has lots of info on confirmations, baptisms, weddings, funerals, chaplans and cathedrals.

Link to Opinionated Vicar... 

Visit sunny Cambridgeshire, or not... 

H/t to Ruthie Gledhill, except they want you to join them for a Pound.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A major libel action is being taken against the Ignis Ardens Catholic Forum.

Tancred said...

Is this in addition to the one that was being threatened?