by Michael Hampson, a published author devoting his early retirement from parish ministry to producing practical resources for busy clergy and lay-led congregations, beginning with the weekly lectionary resource Sunday Scriptures for Reading Aloud, ssra.uk
The Ten Parish benefice is coming – and it is sustainable. All it needs is people, and liturgy. We have both. All we lack is a decent liturgy book. So let’s make one.
Oh, and there’s that word ‘eucharistic’. Let’s talk about that too. Spoiler: no lay presidency involved.
Let’s start in Wales
In the middle of a piece in Church Times nine days ago, surrounded by all the obvious and noisy things that people want to say about the new Archbishop of Wales, the three paragraphs that really matter are sitting quietly, waiting for their moment. “Between 2020 and 2023, Monmouth diocese underwent the pastoral reorganisation of 121 parishes into 16 ministry areas.” That’s an average of 7.5 parishes per Ministry Area. It’s page 2 in the print edition, or at this link online (where the three paragraphs are split into five).
The Ten Parish Benefice – with a single priest – is coming. Wales has been honest about it, and made it explicit. But it’s coming in England too, in cities, towns and villages alike. Most people just haven’t admitted it yet.
To quote very roughly – twice – from the gospel reading (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2012.49-56&version=NRSVA) that followed two days later, this is where we really should be reading the signs of the times. And it might be divisive, rather than peaceful, to say so. But if we take a deep breath and actually prepare for it – rather than turning a blind eye, or running around in ever-decreasing circles – we really can stop being so afraid.
The Ten Parish Benefice has existed in corners of England already for well over a decade. Almost everyone’s trying to deny it. Save the Parish (www.savetheparish.com) can see it coming, but think that empowering parishes with information about legal rights, and trying to wrestle money from the powerful to the weak, will stop it happening. We can wish, but sadly, while justice may be on their side, I don’t think justice is going to prevail over the vested interests of the powerful. The Five-Ten-Fifteen-Twenty Parish Benefice is coming regardless. But Christ is Risen and the Holy Spirit is amongst the people, and that’s on top of God the Father being God the Father, and from time to time there’s even a priest in the benefice, so what exactly is supposed to be the problem?
It was easier when we had some resources. When there was a Book of Common Prayer (BCP) in every parish church in every village (and a King James Bible and a bell, wasn’t that the official minimum list?) the churchwardens could keep the show on the road perfectly well in the absence of a priest; indeed that was both their right and their duty, and we trust was also their joy. Problem solved – even in a ten-parish benefice. Until the end of 1999, the Alternative Service Book (ASB) was just as comprehensive, better laid out and in (fairly) modern language – the entire Church of England in one hand – and the same principle applied: anyone could open it and keep the show on the road. And now, just when we need it the most, we have nothing. Common Worship (CW) is a scattering of loose papers that have blown away in the wind. Even most clergy (and *cough* most bishops) can’t find their way around the main volume, and most of what you need isn’t in there anyway. And the Ten Parish Benefice is coming. But don’t panic. It can be done.
To the north of England
When I started in a four-parish benefice in 2012, I maintained a pattern of services in every parish every Sunday, and very soon even persuaded three of the four to ensure that the service was at the same time every Sunday. With help from retired clergy, the vast majority of services were eucharistic. I did persuade myself that four was the limit, and five would be impossible. Six years later, I was actively negotiating to combine the four-parish benefice with the neighbouring benefice of six churches, to form a combined united benefice of ten, and for this I had the agreement in principle of all four parishes, and the departing half-time incumbent of the six, in order to proactively secure the future of the benefice before any less-considered alternative was imposed upon us. So what had we learned during those years that made the impossible seem possible, not only to me, but to four contented, and indeed enthusiastic, PCCs?
Those paragraphs in the Church Times article conclude, “It wasn’t possible for every church to have their own vicar, because we don’t have enough vicars.” But all four parishes in that four-parish benefice knew they had a vicar, because they had learned how to make the model work.
A vicar in every parish
I ran PCC meetings like they were house-groups. In the smaller parishes the PCC was like a full congregation meeting anyway. After a year or two, I realised “minutes and matters arising” could bog down the meeting early on, so I put “mission and ministry” as a standing agenda item before “minutes and matters arising”. I now realise the agenda was similar to those parishes that have a short service before PCC, except that we were having a short house-group meeting first, to discuss where we were up to as a parish, that month. They knew they had a parish priest. They knew they were cared for. And they knew it would continue the same, even if they were one of ten. I prioritised this as the heart of my ministry. It was the way I kept in touch with all the key lay folks. I held the larger churches’ PCCs monthly (so they would only take an hour, which delighted everyone); the others every six or eight weeks. The people are the resource: a PCC run like this is where you meet the people, and help keep the church joyful, focussed, and full of life.
A weekly Sunday service in every parish
BCP provided a straightforward model that made a weekly Sunday service sustainable in every parish even in the absence of the vicar: it mandated that the layfolk (specifically the churchwardens) would lead the service; and within its covers, it provided everything they would need to do so; ASB was just as comprehensive. Mandating, encouraging, and supporting the layfolk to lead the service should be just as straightforward in 2025 as it was in 1662; the only tragedy is that we haven’t had a decent practical liturgy book for the last 25 years.
Making the liturgy sustainable across four parishes began with the Sunday morning readings. BCP gave us collect, epistle and gospel for every Sunday, clearly set out, easy to find, but in archaic language and in solid blocks of text. ASB gave us the same, with improvements to layout, and readings in a mixture of RSV and three paraphrases: the Jerusalem Bible, the New English Bible, and the Good News Bible (under its earlier name Today’s English Version, TEV). Common Worship gives us nothing. Every lay person in the church is dependent on the vicar, and every vicar is dependent on a paid subscription, and even then has to choose week by week from a bewildering list of unexplained (and to most, incomprehensible) options, and then choose a translation, and then source the readings, and then print them out, and then distribute them to the lay folks, and then… what on earth have we done?
I have spoken to two of the people involved in compiling the programme: one about the multiple errors I had spotted (which Synod later had to correct – it turned out that they knew about them but angrily blamed others in the group on a partisan basis); and one who was blissfully unaware that CW deviates at all from Revised Common Lectionary, when CW actually deviates from RCL more than any other implementation of the three-year cycle anywhere in Christendom.
When I started, the four parishes were subscribing to the independently-produced Redemptorist Anglican Mass Sheets, but those didn’t have our patronal festivals or harvests, and more and more often I was producing sheets locally to replace the ones that arrived from Redemptorist, and ssra.uk began to evolve: ultimately an all-new implementation of the three-year lectionary, in an all-new translation; first just for us, now for the whole church.
I added to this a locally-produced service book, and placed one in every church, with just the parts you need, but all the parts you need, including a good selection of triple-kyrie confessions, all the collects, introductions to the Peace, seasonal prefaces, eucharistic and post-communion prayers, seasonal blessings; 55 pages in all, including all our local patronals and harvests, in a user-friendly format and a top-quality binding. Other clergy look at it jealously. I would like to offer something similar to the wider church. I wrote a week ago by email to the relevant copyright holders; I await acknowledgements and replies.
Power to the people…
This service book made my job easier from week to week, but the question hanging in the air is how it became empowering for the laity. And here lies the final element in making the Ten Parish Benefice sustainable. We can make the resources. We also have to let the people use them.
There are two realistic options for a meaningful weekly liturgical Sunday service in every parish in the absence of a priest: antecommunion, and Holy Communion by Extension. People often don’t want to gather at a different time or on a different day. So the lay-folks can read antecommunion – that’s the communion service as far as the Peace. It qualifies as “a service of the word”. It maintains continuity with the liturgy of the benefice, and the worldwide church both catholic and ecumenical. It’s a substantial biblical and prayerful liturgy, sustaining for regulars, and welcoming for newcomers. Every parish can do this. All they need is a decent lectionary (ssra.uk) and a decent liturgy book (watch this space).
…for the Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice
Cherry Vann, the new Archbishop of Wales, says, “at least with [the Monmouth] model every church gets a eucharist at least once a month, some of them get twice a month, some of them get four times a month.”
If they can have a priest that often, that’s great; and they should. But there’s absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t have communion every Sunday in between as well.
That’s the point of Holy Communion by Extension.
If you read the official 2001 House of Bishops statement on Communion by Extension, it is clear that it took a lot to get anything at all past a group encompassing bishops with eucharistic theology doggedly protestant – almost anti-eucharistic – as well as sky-high catholic. But churches throughout the land keep the reserved sacrament. Using the reserved sacrament to give communion to the people when the parish priest is away is normal practice in the Roman Catholic church, and quite probably therefore in many Roman-rite parishes in the Church of England as well, courtesy of the infinite elasticity of Canon B5, under which every Roman-rite parish, and every totally non-liturgical charismatic-evangelical parish, survives.
The model envisaged in 2001 – that some poor soul has to go to early communion somewhere and rush fresh sacrament to the Communion-by-Extension parish (as if nobody else owns a car or an alarm clock) is bizarre and surely undignified in comparison to giving the people communion from the reserved sacrament. In the four-parish benefice, the two parishes that had never reserved before immediately understood the etiquette to be kept around reserving the sacrament and worked out an appropriately dignified regime.
Most liturgies of Communion by Extension go to great lengths to ensure that no part of the service looks like what might clumsily be called ‘the consecration’, lest the laity become ‘confused’. The House of Bishops 2001 text allows a version of the institution narrative to be read at the beginning of the service only, and one other vaguely-eucharistic bible passage to be chosen, to be read later, in place of the eucharist prayer. This is like replacing a joyful hymn of praise, and centuries of carefully-crafted expression of all that surrounds the eucharistic mystery, with some sparse early draft jottings on the subject, ‘lest the laity become confused’ by what they see and hear. I say, don’t be so utterly patronising. The laity will most certainly not be ‘confused’ by a simple explanation such as this, at the offertory: “In the absence of our vicar (who is leading a service elsewhere this morning), we bring gifts of bread and wine which have already been present on the altar at an earlier service of holy communion led by our vicar. We remind ourselves now of the words which will have been used at that earlier service.” Our Anglican theology rightly acknowledges the eucharist to be a mystery, and best expresses that mystery in the words that we have agreed to use together, from the Book of Common Prayer to Common Worship. What better than to remind ourselves of those words as we participate in the very particular mystery that is Communion by Extension, a service that expresses our unity with our benefice and our parish priest, as well as each other and the worldwide and eternal church; not ‘saying’ those words in the particular way that the president said them, just – um – reminding ourselves of what was said. The eucharist is a mystery anyway; the laity understand that Holy Communion by Extension is somehow different, but somehow also participating in one and the same. Feel free to go sit in an ivory tower and tie yourself in a knot over this, while one ten-parish benefice crumbles, and this one thrives. Our laity are not confused; they are prayerful, grateful, and fully understand that they are in the presence of the profound mystery of the eucharist.
Whether any part of our vast, powerful, and wealthy church hierarchy will capture any part of this vision, I simply cannot know. Our bishops, our General Synod, our liturgical commission, and our diocesan offices, have brought us to where we are. A challenge lies ahead, and it isn’t clear that the needs of ordinary parishes are high on the agenda; they just get combined into ever-larger benefices, and left to sink or swim. So lobby where you can; and in the meantime, maybe take Canon B5, and the fact that nobody’s looking, and step out and do what needs to be done. SSRA.uk is there to help – promote it where you can. Perhaps a liturgy book will follow soon; and in the meantime, for collects at least – handy tip – it’s page 268 onwards in Canada.
The Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice is possible. As far as I can tell, so far, it’s either this, or it’s nine (or ten) empty churches. Which will it be?
