WHEN the diocese of Liverpool put its independent evaluation of the Transforming Wigan (TW) project in the public domain, it bucked a trend (News, 29 September 2023). Few evaluations of projects backed by the Archbishops’ Council’s Strategic Development Fund (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 “considerable upset and dissatisfaction”.
The report recorded a fall in average weekly attendance 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.
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 in the diocese: an average of £5.40 per member per week (compared with a diocesan average of £8.57). Only one per cent of the population attended a C of E service on a Sunday. The fall in clergy numbers — from 24 to 18 in 2013 — was a catalyst for, not the outcome of, the project. But the authors also referred to successes, most notably new worshipping communities and social-justice activities, in which parishioners had “worked together beyond the confines of an individual, established church”.
Two years on, the critical reaction to the report — which served as something of a lightning rod for concern about the future of the parish — has clearly had an effect.
“We’ve carried that burden around with us, and the reputation has caused us harm,” the Team Rector since 2020, Canon Neil Cook, says. “When you’ve got people around the country who have never been to Wigan saying ‘Wigan has failed,’ you say ‘How come there is more growth in this deanery than almost any other deanery in the county ten years later?’ But it takes time.”
There is now a different story to be told, he says, and the diocese is keen to have it heard. “The seeds that were sown ten years ago have taken this long to start growing. Now you see the fruit.”
WE ARE sitting in the library at Marsh Green, a housing estate with high levels of deprivation. St Barnabas’s, just across the way, a large brick church built in 1961, has been closed on health and safety grounds. An album from the Wigan World website shows a “walking day” in 1962: two men carry aloft one of four banners, proclaiming “We are ambassadors for Christ. God is making his appeal to you through us.” There are other images of a vibrant parish community: a football club, Brownies, a choir, children from the estates attending a holiday club.
There are plans to turn the building into supported-living flats and a new faith and community hub. Under the ministry of the previous Vicar of Kitt Green and Marsh Green, the Revd Denise Hayes, a number of support services were established. Today, the library is home to a pop-up food pantry on Wednesday mornings, and a monthly communion service. A craft group has also been piloted, and a weekly pop-up café.
The Revd Catherine Cosslett, Team Vicar in the Wigan Team Ministry, frequently exchanges greetings with people who come into the library as we talk. Most of them are regulars at the gatherings that the church holds at the library, she says. “Some of those people are people who would never, ever, have come to church had it not been that we started that something here on a Wednesday morning. And that all developed from St Barnabas’s not being able to be open, us saying ‘How can we do church differently?’ . . . We’ve created a worshipping community in this place.”
There are currently seven lay chaplains who regularly walk around the estate in pairs. “It’s really about making sure that people in Marsh Green know that, although the church has closed, Jesus hasn’t left,” she says. “They are still loved and valued and wanted.”
AMONG the independent evaluation’s conclusions was that “missional and social justice activities have been the strongest element that has been nurtured through Transforming Wigan.” In 2021, “Lifted” was established to co-ordinate “social justice ministries” across the benefice, which now include seven food pantries. A 2021 study by the University of Sheffield estimated that more than one in ten people in Wigan are worried about not having enough food. Ms Cosslett leads the network.
Over at St Stephen’s, Whelley, volunteers are helping to set up the weekly JEDS food pantry (an acronym taken from the four churches in the North East parish). Members of the pantry pay a £5 annual membership fee for access to a weekly food shop that costs £3 for 15 items. A café run on a “pay as you feel” basis is also run. Around 90 people come every Tuesday.
Dean Kearsley, the Reader who co-ordinates the pantry, is full of enthusiasm for the work — something he’s taken on since retiring as a schoolteacher. “My belief was that the church was no longer the centre of the community, and we needed to do something about that,” he says. “The community now see Tuesday as their church.”
Once a month, he leads a 15-minute “Espresso service”: “All I do is a Bible reading, and then a reflection on that reading, and then we have prayers. It’s just enough for people . . . another opportunity to come and worship God.
“It’s all right having the pantry — you’re feeding the physical — but people have a mental side, a spiritual side, as well,” he says. “For the first year, it was amazing to see people coming over the threshold of the church, because they’d never been inside a church for years, and they were so amazed.” Some have started to come to church services, he says. Relationships with other mainstays of the community’s life have also grown. Last year, when the church’s boiler broke, it was local people who funded the replacement, through the pub and bingo nights.
While the 2023 evaluation praised the “thriving” new worshipping communities and social-justice activities, it also identified “a tension that established churches have been neglected and traditional activities are less valued”.
Mr Kearsley believes that, in the early days, “some of the leaders weren’t listening enough from the ground level, from the roots, in terms of what they wanted.” But, he suggests, “we are now on the right line. We now listen, and we are being guided by the Spirit.” Since TW, “people have got responsibilities, they’ve got ownership now of something they want to see happen in Wigan. And they understand that there is a shortage of vicars, that there is a shortage of money, that we’ve got big buildings here that people can’t afford to use any more.”
There’s a need to “face honest facts”, he says. “But, at the same time, God knows people are still clinging to buildings. I’m thinking, ‘It’s not the building you should be clinging to, it’s God, it’s Jesus, the Spirit of God.’”
AT THE outset, Transforming Wigan envisaged the closure of 20 per cent of the benefice’s 33 churches, but only two were closed, and one was repurposed. The delay in grappling with the question was one cause of anxiety.
The Right Buildings Review (RBR), commissioned by the Joint Council and PCCs that make up the governance of Church Wigan, began in January 2023 (News, 4 October 2023). Its report, published nine months later, warned that, with £1 million a year spent on the benefice’s buildings, reserves were “under pressure or exhausted”, and some parishes were “no longer financially viable”. The 31 buildings could seat 8500 people for worship, but, on Sundays, normally hosted fewer than 1500.
Six church buildings have been proposed for closure, four of which require consideration by the Church Commissioners for consultation and determination. Implementation may take another two to three years.
MADELEINE DAVIESSt Stephen’s, Whelley
Jimmy McCarrick, churchwarden for the North West parish, has been worshipping in the area for more than 20 years, mainly at St Francis of Assisi, Kitt Green, part of the same parish as St Barnabas’s, Marsh Green. As we sit round the table at the library, he recalls attending all of the Transforming Wigan meetings.
“To be honest, I wasn’t happy with the way it was presented,” he says. “I do think it’s probably the only workable model we’ve got, and I think good will come out of it, if people put their hearts to it instead of pushing away. . . Things have to change, and we have to be part of that change. Throughout the country, there are not enough clergy, and they can’t do everything, can’t be everywhere every day.”
There remains “frustration that we don’t have the clergy we used to have before”, he says. Some who went to St Barnabas’s “don’t go to church now”, although some have relocated to St John’s, Pemberton. For people who have been going to church for 40, 50, or 60 years, “it’s their church: that’s how they see it.”
But “some people are coming on board and changing their views,” he says. The chaplaincy group has been “church on the streets. . . Most are from down here, and they really get on with the local community. They reach more people than they did just having the services.” One positive outcome of TW is that “I know a lot more Christians in Wigan now,” including other churchwardens. “If everybody does get on board, I think it’s massive. You’ve got so many Christians in Wigan who don’t know each other.”
Would he rewind the clock ten years and undo everything? “To be honest, if you’d asked me five years ago, I’d have rather gone back. Now, I think moving forward, yes, we don’t have the clergy we had, but they do a great job. And I think the future is working together as Church Wigan.”
ALSO round the table in Marsh Green are Brenda Seddon, Jean Kinsey, and Margaret Brookes, three laywomen who have worshipped at St Catharine’s, Scholes, for decades. A Commissioners’ church, built in 1841, it is of four churches in the Wigan Central parish, and one of two recommended for closure.
In The First 150 years of St Catharine’s Church, Wigan, Bill Bithell records that, in 1860, it was discovered that the church had been built on a geological fault, which extensive coalmining in the area had moved, taking with it the west end of the church, including the spire. Instead of demolition, a process of “continuous repair and maintenance” was agreed, and local colliers were approached for help. In 2012, lottery funding of £600,000 was secured, enabling the spire to be taken down and rebuilt.
Ms Kinsey, a Reader, reports that this left the church’s finances in a “fragile” state. Despite the expense, the building, which can seat 600, has continued to deteriorate, while the congregation has fallen to about 20.
There has been “very little dissent” about the closure from the congregation, says Brenda Seddon, the lay chair of Transforming Wigan and vice-chair of the PCC at St Catharine’s. The building has required spending a “heck of a lot”, she says. “And that’s not what we should be doing. It’s beautiful, it still looks fabulous from inside, but it ain’t safe. It’s a no-brainer.”
“It’s been a very upsetting experience to say that your church is closing, because I have been to that church, as has Brenda, since we were little girls, and suddenly to let it go, or have to let it go, is in a way heartbreaking,” Ms Kinsey says. “But, on the other side of it, it’s become more and more of a burden to us, and we spend more and more time talking about the building, and not about other things which are more important, in a way.
“But people always hold to that building, wherever they’ve moved to. It’s always ‘my parish: that’s where I was born.’” The congregation is “very loyal and very supportive”, she says. They are currently meeting in the hall, which has the advantage of being warmer. Relations with the local primary school remain strong.
Ms Seddon agrees with Mr McCarrick that TW has reduced isolation: “You feel part of a church, as opposed to a building, the whole of Church Wigan.” Both women agree that this has entailed a “huge” cultural shift. “We went to the church school, we went to Sunday school, our social life was there,” Ms Seddon says. “We were just stuck in St Catharine’s. Now the world’s your oyster.”
LIKE others, Ms Seddon highlights the early communication of the project as flawed, including the title itself: “You’re going to transform it? No, Wigan’s been here since the Romans.” The pace was also a challenge. “The pressure to achieve things was unrealistic,” she says. “ Such a project “should be allowed to move, not be forced to move. It was being pushed.”
Canon Cook is ambivalent on the point. “Decline, particularly in Wigan, wasn’t like a plane in a nosedive: it was losing a few hundred feet every couple of miles,” he says. “We never once paid our parish share as a deanery since the first records I could find in 2006, and it was going down. And a lot that was being paid out of reserves. . . There was a necessity to help people confront the issue, which they weren’t maybe being forced to confront, which was painful, and I reckon we could have done it with better language.”
There was a need for “more relational building, building more consensus”, he says. “But the reality is, I do think you can’t get round that shock to the system, ‘You must understand’, ‘Wake up and smell the coffee.’ . . .That’s always going to be painful for people to hear.” The vital work of building relationships is also difficult when there are few clergy, he says. “It’s really difficult to do change when you don’t have a lot of resource.”
Nevertheless, he is confident that the fruits of TW’s work are beginning to emerge, including the transformation of some of the “biggest protesters” into partners. A procedural approach that allows for a five- or seven-year timeframe doesn’t work in this context, he suggests. “What we’ve always understood is that transformation, culture change, is a generational shift. You have to stick at it. I think, sometimes, we are being judged on the results of the first five years, whereas actually, ten years later, we are still only embryonic in many ways; but now you can see more of what has happened.”
THE diocese of Liverpool is keen to highlight these results. In December, it published Moving on From the Transforming Wigan Evaluation. This states that the original evaluation included “some undercounting”: 12 churches did not return attendance data in 2022. The updated estimate is that average adult weekly attendance in traditional churches declined from 2265 in 2015 to 1807 in 2023 (2.5 per cent, compared with 3.5 per cent between 2015 and 2019 in the diocese as a whole). In 2023, these churches had an additional 271 under-16s attending, exclusive of school services.
MADELEINE DAVIESSusan Gaskell and Diane Harris-Bolton, at Annie’s Pantry, St Anne’s, Beech Hill
Church Wigan also has 21 “Fresh Worship Communities” (of which only one existed in 2015) that meet at least monthly, with attendance of more than 500 recorded in autumn 2023. Overall, including Fresh Worshipping Communities, the diocese estimates that 2023 attendance stood at between 2000 and 2150 adults, and 450 under-16s. Not included are 32 “mission activities”, defined as “meeting at least monthly, but do not display all the marks of the church”, such as the food pantries. These gather a further 900 people every month.
On the financial side, it calculated that Wigan would pay parish share in 2024 of £47,000 per priest (similar to previous years, but 35 per cent less than the parish share ask). There is now a plan — “Target Twelve” — to “move Church Wigan towards ‘joyful sustainability’ where resources match ministry needs”. By 2028, it is hoped, a ratio of two buildings per stipendiary priest will be achieved (24:12 once the six buildings are closed). This would be a fall from the 18 incumbents in place at the start of Transforming Wigan, and the 15 set out in the original plan.
Canon Cook observes in the document that “the danger is overstretch for clergy in the interim period — more energy is needed to lead into growth while still overseeing the huge existing infrastructure. There continues to be a massive need to seriously think through clergy well-being — and lay leaders just as much.”
WHILE highlighting examples of “bounce-back” in traditional churches, the Right Buildings Review acting as a catalyst for the creation of “realistic and owned parish mission plans”, the Moving On document reports that “most of the growth potential is from new worshipping communities and new mission initiatives.” It mentions the pantry network of about 2500 members, and Wigan Next Generation (WiNG), whose work among 11- to 30-year-olds includes new worship communities meeting at churches during the week, and a team of youth mission enablers at work in three high schools.
“We’re talking about a thousand people who don’t come to church, and they’re getting involved in that movement to explore faith,” says Canon Cook, who has served in parishes in Wigan since XX. “It’s not quite church, but it is definitely moving towards church. But I’m not sure the end goal is that they all decide to turn up at St Stephen’s, Whelley, at a nine-o’clock. It might be they continue to meet on a Tuesday.”
The focus is on “How do we make disciples?” he says. “That is not any different to what most people are saying, I guess, but, in ten years, I think the experience we’ve got is that you have to be a little bit elastic in where you think you are growing those disciples. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit you start seeing grow up in certain areas, and, if we are trying to force them into a certain traditional view of stuff, I think it’s not going to work.”
One of the findings of the Chote review of the SDF programme as a whole was that the definition of new disciples “varies considerably between projects and the numbers of reported new disciples do not always reflect the reality on the ground” (News, 11 March 2022). Both the number of new disciples and “fresh social action” were “very hard to measure accurately and consistently”, the review said; “people’s journeys to faith can be lengthy and complicated.”
Differences of measurement are evident across the 2023 and 2024 evaluations. The former listed 63 worship communities (including existing ones) “engaging over 12,656 people in missional activities”.
Canon Cook says that he is talking about “people who are actually engaging in faith. . . It’s an ordinary person who is growing in their knowledge of Jesus, growing in their character like Jesus, and growing in deed like Jesus.” A worshipping community entails fellowship, leadership, discipleship, mission, and worship. Yesterday, he attended the eucharist at Lifelines, a school-based community in the benefice, where young people were servers, read the Bible, and said prayers.
“It’s really important that we are really clear on not dumbing down what church is,” he says. “It’s so important that we don’t say we are making disciples when actually all we are doing is gathering people to activities.”
WHILE praising the energy poured into social justice and mission, the 2023 evaluation noted that the addition of the new missional communities did not lead to an increase in giving. This remains a challenge across the Church, in which the national strategy for a financial turnaround is predicated on mission and growth.
The journey from exploring a church or “new thing” to becoming a regular giver can take years. while the diocesan secretary in Gloucester has warned that “the current model of ministry funded principally through giving may be unsustainable in many places” (News, 31 January). Of the 10,000 new worshipping communities proposed by 2030, it is hoped that 2000 will be in income-deprived communities.
In Wigan, the funding for the Lifted network and youth work is not covered by giving; so it relies on other sources, including grants.
MADELEINE DAVIESCanon Neil Cook, Team Rector of Church Wigan, outside The Deanery C of E High School
In future, more action is likely to be expected from lay people, many of whom are already critical to the delivery of social-justice ministries, in addition to serving as Readers, church officers, worship leaders, and more. The 2023 evaluation noted that TW was “seen as a permission-giving environment”, encouraging lay people to set things up and lead them.
At St Anne’s, Beech Hill, another church in the Wigan Central parish set to close, Diane Harris-Bolton and Susan Gaskell, are running the weekly food pantry in the church hall. Launched in the wake of the cost-of-living crisis in 2023, it now has 201 people on the books, some of whom are sitting at tables set out like a café beneath the rafters and bunting, including a young mother with a baby and toddler. The women describe it as “like an extended family. . . We’ve laughed with them and cried with them.”
Both have been attending St Anne’s for more than 50 years. It was “thrown up” as a single-skin building in 1953, to replace the wooden mission church as the population expanded. Much of the money was raised by the people of Beech Hill, who were encouraged to “buy a brick”.
The closure is “heartbreaking”, Ms Gaskell says. But there are hopes that the vicarage could become a church and community centre. The pantry is “badly needed”, the women point out.
A MILE away, in the centre of Wigan town, is Deanery C of E High School, the diocese’s largest school, taking pupils from every postcode in Wigan. Its partnership with Church Wigan is one of the successes reported in the 2023 evaluation.
Martin Wood, who arrived as head teacher in 2019, has been a teacher for 28 years. He is also a parent and worshipper in one of the parishes, and is full of praise for Church Wigan. “I certainly haven’t seen any relationship as unique, as dynamic, as powerful, as impactful, as what we have with Church Wigan,” he says. “It’s transformational.
It is a “deep relationship” evident in everything from governance to prayer support. The Revd Helen Deegan, who joined as school chaplain last year, describes how all Year 7 pupils (aged 11 to 12) do the Youth Alpha course on entry to the school, delivered by volunteers from local churches. This year, 250 of them attended an away-day at Way Church, the large free church that occupies impressive buildings near the train station and has become a key partner for Church Wigan. Alpha “helps our students understand what is underpinning our school values”, Ms Deegan says.
The chapel is open every break and lunchtime, and serves as a “safe haven” for some pupils, she says. Opportunities to engage with faith include the “Encounter” after-school club, and an outdoor chapel. “It is very difficult to get young people into school on a Sunday, but the young people are here, and it’s for us to go to them,” she says. “I think that’s what this partnership does.”
The Church currently funds a counsellor at the school, Stella Hannam, who receives more than 200 referrals a year. She describes being able to talk about faith as a welcome liberation, in comparison with other professional settings: “There’s that freedom to explore that with young people as part of their holistic well-being.”
Mr Wood says: “Young people are very open and receptive. It’s us that are over-thinking it. They want to talk about stuff like this. They are much more open-minded than people give them credit for.”
The cost of Ms Hannam’s job is currently being met by Wigan Deanery Trust, established in 2019 as a charitable trust and company limited by guarantee to undertake “core services” on behalf of the Church Wigan parishes, including finance, buildings management, safeguarding, and funerals co-ordination. One component of its work is fund-raising for the social action undertaken, including a Christians Against Poverty debt centre. The 2023 evaluation concluded that it had “provided efficiencies through developing and running a centralised funerals service; saved around £58,000 on building insurance; and increased churches’ health and safety compliance from 25 per cent to 75 per cent (now 94 per cent)”.
Lesley Hughes, who chairs the trust, is another example of the strength of CW’s volunteer base: she was previously a head teacher and head of Ofsted inspections for the north of England. “You will get a lot of flak, and that’s hard, and it’s easy to be defensive, but you’ve got to put your big-girl or -boy pants on, really,” she says. She describes being in tears after someone who had been hard to convince praised the support of Support Services, recently. Leaving Wigan station, I notice that among the “Wiganese” murals painted in swirling lettering in the tunnel is “Gerrumonside” (”Get them on side”).
TRANSFORMING Wigan was the very first SDF project in the Church of England. Those involved are acutely aware that they were breaking new ground, serving as “guinea pigs” in pioneering one approach to a set of challenges evident across the Church: falling congregations, financial deficits, buildings in need of repair, clergy and lay leaders under strain.
In the diocese of Liverpool, the challenges are acute: it has the lowest historic assets of any diocese — estimated to amount to an overall difference in income of £5 million when compared with the average diocese. TW was just the start. As part of the Fit for Mission strategy, it is hoped that, by 2028, 80 per cent of parishes will have joined new and larger parishes (News, 10 May 2024), as the total number of parishes potentially falls from 250 to 25, or fewer. On 20 March, the new parish of Christ Our Hope, Liverpool, bringing together seven former parishes, was launched.
Drawing on the data from the Moving on Evaluation, the diocese regards Church Wigan as a successful model that is “clearly showing that through building a fringe we have people who we can engage with and deepen the discipleship of”. While attendance figures in the diocese are lower than 2019 (all-age average Sunday attendance fell by 18 per cent), the growth in the diocese’s “worshipping community is, it says, “evidence that the plans we put in place to invest in parish ministry through Church Wigan and Fit for Mission are bearing fruit”.
In Wigan, Canon Cook’s perspective is that “we are definitely in a different phase now. . . There’s a sense of hopefulness, not despair.” Our tour includes a visit to St James and St Thomas, Poolstock, in the Wigan West parish, where the Lifelines Choir, which includes people with dementia, is in fine voice, led by the music director, David Goulden. They are singing one of his own compositions, “Come, Holy Spirit”.
The Revd Alison Brown, a distinctive deacon, has been attending the church since she was a little girl, in 1962. She first became a local missional leader, in response to TW, with a vision “that St James’s would be open a lot more than on a Sunday morning and that a lot of other people could come and engage with us”.
One of her favourite quotations was from a young woman who visited on a Tuesday during the school holidays, when the church helps to feed local children. Ms Brown mentioned the faith café on a Saturday, and the food pantry. “She looked at me, and said, ‘I didn’t know that this was here.’ So we’ve got this huge building that looks like a little cathedral, and she didn’t know that it was here. What she really meant was, she didn’t realise what was happening inside, and I think that’s the difference.”
Those who have attended the café have asked “But what do you do on a Sunday?” she says. “My own personal analysis for all of that is, it’s the birds of the air that want to make the nest in the trees. Whatever we do is so attractive that people are in the trees. Not quite in the thick of it, but they are in the trees. . . They are thinking ‘What’s going on?’ I like that.’”
