{"id":136195,"date":"2025-04-04T17:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=136195"},"modified":"2025-04-04T17:34:46","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T21:34:46","slug":"church-times-the-road-to-church-growth-is-not-short-liverpools-wigan-transforming-project-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=136195","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) The Road to church growth is not short, Liverpool’s Wigan Transforming Project finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When the diocese of Liverpool<\/a> put its independent evaluation of the Transforming Wigan (TW) project in the public domain, it bucked a trend (News, 29 September 2023<\/a>). Few evaluations of projects backed by the Archbishops\u2019 Council<\/a>\u2019s Strategic Development Fund<\/a> (SDF) have been published. The report laid bare the challenges that the project had encountered. The reconfiguration in 2020, which entailed the grouping of 33 churches in a single benefice of seven parishes, Church Wigan, had caused \u201cconsiderable upset and dissatisfaction\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report recorded a fall in average weekly attendance<\/a> from 1718, in 2015, to 1567, in 2019, and 1150. in 2022. A goal to turn around the financial strength of the deanery proved ambitious: overall giving was 88.6 per cent of the 2014 total in 2019, and, in 2020, only one parish paid its share in full. Without diocesan support, the report noted, the number of stipendiary clergy, already down to 13, would have fallen to eight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A crucial aspect of the report was its careful delineation of the context in which the project took place. Wigan deanery had the lowest levels of giving<\/a> in the diocese: an average of \u00a35.40 per member per week (compared with a diocesan average of \u00a38.57). Only one per cent of the population attended a C of E service on a Sunday. The fall in clergy numbers \u2014 from 24 to 18 in 2013 \u2014 was a catalyst for, not the outcome of, the project. But the authors also referred to successes, most notably new worshipping communities<\/a> and social-justice activities, in which parishioners had \u201cworked together beyond the confines of an individual, established church\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>

Two years after the evaluation of Transforming Wigan I spent a day in Wigan to see what\u2019s happening now. Many thanks to everyone who spoke to me.
\u2018The seeds that were sown ten years ago have taken this long to start growing. Now you see the fruit.\u2019https:\/\/t.co\/7oD3ARG300<\/a><\/p>— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) April 4, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote>