Buildings for Mission – Changing our Logic

June 13th 2018 in Worcester

Background and Context – a brief overview provided by the PoWSO working in Worcester Diocese - Andrew Mottram ‘Heritage Buildings and Community Development Officer’

  • Place of Worship Support Officers (PoWSO) have been in existence for nine yearspartly funded by grants from Historic England which, under its former identity of English Heritage, had recognised that those responsible for looking after historic church buildings needed help and support.
  • The West Midlands area has had the benefit of PoWSOs in post since September 2009 working in Coventry, Hereford, Lichfield and Worcester dioceses. More recently PoWSOs have been appointed in Birmingham diocese and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham.
  • An outcome of collaborative working by the West Midlands PoWSOs was the publication in June 2014 of the report ‘I wouldn’t start from here’ which set out the need to change the way church buildings are understood, used and managed.
  • This document was subsequently revised and re-issued in early 2015 as ‘Church Buildings: Burden, Blessing and an Asset for Mission’.
  • Both this report and its earlier version fed into the work of the Archbishops’ Council Church Buildings Review Group, chaired by the Bishop of Worcester, which published its report in September 2015.
  • Subsequently the recent ‘Taylor Sustainability Review of Church Buildings’ published in December 2017 confirmed the need for change and called for greater community use of churches to help share the costs of their upkeep, raise income and empower congregations to involve more local people in the care of buildings. The report recommended that a network of PoWSO type advisors (a Community Support Advisor and a Fabric Support Advisor) be established to achieve these objectives.
  • At Easter 2018, Heritage Minister Michael Ellis announced the launch of a two year pilot scheme of Support Advisors located in Manchester and Suffolk.

The swift response to the recommendation of the Taylor Review is encouraging. There is a great deal of work to be done to identify the most effective routes to success. For a number of years, across the church buildings sector in an effort to respond to the growing difficulties and challenges faced by those entrusted with the care of church buildings, various initiatives and schemes have been used to build the capacity of volunteers, raise awareness, increase understanding and provide training in practical skills. In addition to the PoWSOs, for example the Council for Care of Churches/Church Buildings Council, Churches Conservation Trust, Caring for God’s Acre, Gutter Clear, National Churches Trust, Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, local Historic Churches Trusts have, over the years, produced large amounts literature, advice and guidance together with running a range of training courses such as Faith in Maintenance and Maintenance Co-operatives organised by SPAB. The recently launched NCT Maintenance Booker is a much needed means by which to make preventative maintenance easier to access and deliver.

Even so, clergy and churchwardens report that the situation feels as if it is slipping out of control. A recent self-assessment of church buildings undertaken by PCCs across Worcester diocese identified that that nearly two thirds of the church buildings in the diocese were considered by their respective PCCs to be difficult to sustain with more than half of the buildings presenting difficult financial challenges if they are to be made suitable for the needs of congregations and the wider communities in the 21st Century. While there are marvellous examples of buildings turned around and communities re-enlivened by the regeneration of church buildings, there are many parts of the country facing significant challenges and a growing number of church buildings being placed on the Heritage At Risk register.

Money is a fundamental issue. Direct government grants for the repair of listed church buildings, begun under the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, ended with the ‘joint scheme’ run by English Heritage and HLF. Forty years or so of government funded repair grants have been hugely beneficial to the buildings, but they have had their downsides in that, at times, they created a sense of dependency, failed to address the need for and considerable benefits of regular preventative maintenance, ‘rewarded neglect’ and allowed everyone involved with church buildings to escape facing the hard reality that many Church communities cannot sustain what they have. More recent direct Government funding has been via the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme for the recovery of VAT and the two very oversubscribed Roof Repair Fund schemes.

More recently, the National Lottery, which cannot be described as government funding, funded repairs through the HLF Grants for Places of Worship (GPOW) programme. This required churches to deliver some people and community outcomes in line with the HLF objectives for Heritage, People and Communities. However, when compared with all the other HLF funding programmes, many of the GPOW applications across the country had poor or minimal people & community outcomes as many congregations were focussed on the repair needs. The ending of HLF GPOW in 2017 has put Places of Worship on the same, and hopefully, level playing field of competition for HLF grants as the rest of the nation’s heritage. It is quite apparent that in future finding the money to repair, improve and sustain church buildings will require a different approach.

Some parts of the conservation sector are using ‘Theory of Change’ and ‘Logic Models’ in order to discern and evaluate the outcomes prior to, during and subsequent to the input of time, energy and money. Funders in particular are looking beyond ‘best value’ to the broader outcomes of the benefits to communities and peoples’ sense of place.

Currently ‘Building Resilience’ is the fashionable tool to enable individuals and all manner of organisations, including the voluntary sector to ‘adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress’. Diminishing funds and the lack of able volunteers are significant stressors for the church buildings sector. Being honest about the situation is the first step in doing something about it. Going on as before will not work. We have to change the way we do things.

Church buildings need to do more than just serve as places of worship if they are to survive the changing society in which they are located. Simply saving historic buildings because they are old is not enough; their roles both now and in the future, need to be considered from the very outset.

The definition of conservation as the ‘management of change’ requires all stakeholders to embrace what change requires of them.