The Examined Faith
Should We Abandon the Parish Model?
The Church of England is closing churches, merging parishes and running out of money. What if the answer is not bigger churches but far more of them, led by people who will never wear a dog collar? In this episode of The Examined Faith, Tuppy Morrissey talks to the Reverend John Lisle, planting curate at St Luke's, Blackburn, whose dissertation asks whether Anglicanism has fused two different callings into one very expensive office. If priesthood and leadership are not the same thing, why do we train, house and pay for them as though they were? What we cover: Why merging parishes can look less like renewal and more like managing decline John McGinley's case for micro churches, and the Laodicea charge he levels at the Church of England Why a thriving city church of a thousand people is still a drop in the ocean The sacramental problem: if only priests can preside, can a house church be a church at all? Splitting priesthood from leadership, with separate training and separate licences What happens to accountability when anyone can gather twenty people around a Bible Whether apostolic succession is being rightly guarded or quietly overcomplicated Why the best ministers of the gospel are mostly in workplaces and schools, not church buildings Books discussed: John McGinley, The Church of Tomorrow. Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank, For the Parish. Alison Milbank, The Once and Future Parish. Discover more at: https://www.faithwave.app/ #churchofengland #parishchurch #churchplanting #anglicanism #LayMinistry
