Large Church Leaders

There is potential for misunderstanding here, particularly in the light of recently publicised holidays for the larger person...but around 120 leaders of churches with a regular Sunday attendance of 350+ gathered together last week for the National Larger Anglican Churches Consultation. 

It is a bi-annual Consultation rather than a Conference, encouraging participants to talk together around issues and opportunities peculiar to leading larger churches. This is the 4th NLACC I’ve attended, and each time I've come away full of ideas and encouragement. 


The organisers are CPAS, and the event was ‘co-hosted’ by Chris Green (Vicar, St James, Muswell Hill) and Sheila Porter (Senior Minister, St George’s, Deal.).


No larger church seems to have escaped a large building project - I met one Vicar who is currently in the middle of a relocation and new-build costing £16M... 

Among those who addressed the assembled clergy was Dr Ian Paul, who writes the Psephizo blog that I and others on the staff team at HT follow. He has since blogged on his contribution to the event (see here: What did Large Churches ever do for us?) The 4 axes that he refers to are ones that we may use with our PCC here at HT to do some thinking about the future - very helpful stuff! 

One feature of the changing landscape of British church life is that there are an increasing number of larger churches - with a corresponding strengthening of smaller churches and decline of medium sized churches (see the Psephizo blog for more). It seems to reflect a loyalty to local parish churches on the part of some, whilst those who get in a car to find a larger church (for a variety of reasons) are increasingly more likely to settle in a larger  church than a medium-sized one. We spent time discussing how larger churches (typically in towns) can be ‘resource churches’ to smaller parish churches (typically in villages or outlying areas) - sometimes referred to as the Minster model. More food for thought for HT...

One spin-off of this growth in the number of larger churches is that the venue we have always used (High Leigh, Hoddesdon - above) is becoming too small to accommodate the growing numbers of clergy eager to attend, and 2019 will need to find a larger venue. Either that, or High Leigh will need a building project of its own...it would have no shortage of clergy to offer advice.