Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane: Strategic Review

February 2007


Members of the Diocesan Review Group:
Veronica Burbridge, David Campbell, David Chillingworth, Michael Davies, Richard Evans, Marion Keston, Madeline Kingston, Randal MacAlister, Anne Mazur, Kate Middleton, David Miller, Kenny Rathband

Consultant: Gordon Morrison

A letter from the Bishop

I am very grateful to the members of the Diocesan Review Group and to our Consultant, Gordon Morrison, for the immense amount of hard work which has gone into the development of our Diocesan Review. There has been widespread consultation among the clergy and people of the diocese so this is already ‘our document.’ We have some suggestions about how we shall consult about the Strategic Review and the way in which we hope to move to the next stage.

The purpose of the Diocesan Review is not to provide a ‘quick fix’ or a ‘one size fits all’ answer to the problems of diocesan and congregational life. The church isn’t like that and it shouldn’t be. We respect and celebrate what we have received from the past. We work together as we develop new patterns and initiatives for the future – moving us steadily from decline to growth.

Most of all, we explore together what God is calling us to be and to do in these challenging times.

+David St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane

1

Faith and Planning

We have worked hard to research the state of our congregations and the diocese. This Strategy Document is full of ideas about how we can move from decline to growth. It is important that we should put every aspect of our life ‘under the microscope’ and we should plan for the future with vision and courage.

But we know that the renewal and growth of the Church of God cannot literally be organised, planned or managed.

So where are the meeting points between the planning and managing way of thinking and our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ and members of his church? Here are some suggestions.

It is impossible to examine any aspect of our life without asking whether it brings us closer to God or farther away. If we think about our worship – about its form, its culture, about how welcoming it is for new members – we must also ask whether it is an effective means through which people may have an encounter with the living God.

Structures and plans are important. But what really helps the church to grow is clergy and people who are passionate about their faith and who can communicate that passion to others.

We are often concerned about conflict and relationships which are difficult. There too is a challenge to us as disciples. We are not cogs in an organisational machine. We are disciples called to love God and one another, working together for the building up of the Kingdom.

Prayer is fundamental. Not only does prayer allow God to speak to us. It prepares us to work with and to love one another. It reduces our self-centredness. It enlarges our vision beyond just the concerns of ‘my life and my congregation’

And of course we look to the Spirit as the source of all renewal and growth. But we must not just pay ‘lip service’ to that idea. To look at the church and say, ‘It will do my time’ is to slam the door on the Spirit. To say, ‘Don’t talk about growth – survival is all we can cope with’ does the same.

Much of what you will find in this document is designed to enable us to reflect on our life. We need to become more aware of how we are and, if necessary, to acknowledge our share of responsibility for how we got to where we are. That awareness – it comes close to repentance – is what opens the door to the possibility of growth and the working of the Spirit..

2

Introduction to the Review

* This document presents analysis and recommendations from a group of people who were asked by Bishop David in early 2006 to review the strategic situation of the Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane and its congregations and to develop the framework of a new strategic plan.

* The Review Group was drawn from people across the diocese, together with the Bishop and an external advisor. It examined trends in the membership and activities of the churches in the diocese over the past nearly 20 years. It also considered information about the environment in which our churches live and the growing body of research into church decline and growth.

* With the help of others, the Group has also worked to understand the views of members and clergy through questionnaires from 25 clergy and 331 individual church members. There have been 28 meetings with groups of congregation members.

* This Strategic Review Document is not a detailed action plan. There are some immediately actionable proposals but it will require more work to apply some of the recommendations to practical aspects of what we do. That will be the task of a small number of Working Groups in the next stage of the process.

* The document is a call to action for everyone in our congregations and diocese. It asks us all to face up to a difficult challenge.
* Decline threatens the future of our church.
* Ignoring decline will not reverse it. We are called to mission – not to survival.
* Much of the decline happens because we live in a secular society. But some of it happens because we fail to respond to changing times and some is rooted in current church practice.
* We are not helpless in this situation. Moving from decline to growth may be difficult but is possible.
* Our church can work faithfully, effectively and creatively in what is becoming a post-Christian age. But some of what we do will have to be different from what was done in the past.

* The Review’s approach is rooted in the belief that God calls us to move forward. We do not know what the shape of the church of the future will be. We believe that we must become a flexible, responsive and obedient community. We must both pray and plan.

* So our strategic thinking must also be shaped by shared purpose and values and, crucially, by a vision of what we want our Church in our Diocese to become as an organisation over the next 5 to 10 years.

* The review used the following expressions of Purpose and Values.

Purpose
The Scottish Episcopal Church in our Diocese exists to enrich the lives of people as they grow in faith, in understanding and in service.

* The Diocese itself as an organisational entity, led by the Bishop, exists for two main reasons.

* First, it exists to provide its constituent local congregations, individually and jointly, with leadership, common direction and support, both spiritual and administrative, to help them to be more effective in Christian ministry and mission and to foster co-operation and best practice.

* Secondly, it exists to link the local churches to the wider family of the church, nationally and internationally and to represent the Scottish Episcopal Church in the wider community.


Values
Our values are rooted in our faith, in the teaching of scripture and in our common life of worship, prayer and service. They include

• * Giving and service
• * Learning and spiritual growth
• * Integrity and openness
• * Inclusiveness
• * Pursuit of justice

* This is the Vision towards which we are working …

“Our Diocese comprises a thriving group of hopeful, caring and committed congregations whose shared life, worship and effective engagement with people and issues in their communities attracts growing numbers of people from diverse backgrounds to share the values and work of our Church.”

Central to this future vision for the diocese is a move from decline to growth.

To achieve the vision, across the Diocese our Church will need to be well organised and motivated to sustain growth in the long term through clear priorities and processes, effective clergy, empowered congregations and strong partnerships with other organisations.

3

Challenge and Change

The Vision poses the question: “What are the gaps between current reality and the future state described in the vision?”

Answering that question starts to identify challenges and areas for change that strategy will need to address. Can we say, for example, that at present

• * our congregations are thriving, hopeful, caring and committed?
• * they are effectively engaging with people and issues in their communities?
• * we are attracting growing numbers of people from diverse backgrounds to share the values and work of our Church?
• * our Church is well organised and motivated to sustain long term growth?
• * we have clear priorities, effective processes, capable clergy, empowered congregations and strong partnerships with other organisations?

In considering those questions, and in developing a strong strategy that will help us make the desired changes, we need also to examine both the environment in which our diocese and congregations exist and the current state, resources and performance of our own organisation.



The next sections of this document present the evidence, analysis and reflection from which strategy will flow.

4

The External Environment

* The dominant external trend is that churchgoing in Scotland is in decline – from 1994 to 2002 all churchgoing fell by 17% and Episcopal churchgoing by 7%.

* There is also a resurgence of interest in spirituality – but that does not translate into church membership. Indeed it makes it more likely that some people will leave traditional churches. However, the SEC’s liberal values and ethos, and the flexibility its small size allows, may be useful strengths which can enable us to respond to change.

* There is growing research-based understanding of factors which contribute to decline in churchgoing and factors which may help in developing effective strategies for growth. This is reviewed in Section 6 of this document, but evidence suggests for example that:

• o There are patterns of decision-making into which the church has slipped which have had the unintended effect of facilitating decline.
• o Decline and growth are not uniform in their effect. As congregations decline, they age, but as a congregation begins to grow, it will become disproportionately younger.
• o Churches that do not change will probably decay and churches that attempt to address the challenge of change are more likely to grow.
• o The effort of engaging in mission – however tentative and limited in its scope – in itself reshapes the church in such a way that decline is reduced and growth encouraged. There are already signs of ‘fresh expressions’ of church life emerging in the diocese.
• o Qualitative growth in congregations is likely also to bring numerical growth.

* The attitude of Government towards the SEC and other churches is at best neutral; churches are more likely to have influence or attract support when they co-operate on an ecumenical or inter-faith basis.

* Economic trends likely to be significant for the diocese are

• o employment and housing growth in Fife, generated by Edinburgh
• o growth of high-tech industries in Dundee and Stirling areas
• o public-funded regeneration of post-industrial areas of Fife
• o traditional rural life changing as the decline of farming continues

* The population of the diocese is ageing similarly to the national profile, but population growth from 2004 to 2024 is forecast by GROS for Fife, Stirling and Perth & Kinross. Census data suggests that a significant element of net population gain will be incomers from England or Wales. As we have already seen, these new arrivals are more likely to have Anglican affiliations than the existing population.

* In a mobile population, traditional denominational and other ties tend to be loosened and there is opportunity for new connections of many kinds. Nonetheless, mobile styles of life and work mean also that many people feel part of communities based not on geography but on non-geographic networks of relationships.

* New technologies, particularly the Internet, are making enhanced communication – in terms of quality, breadth and impact – increasingly possible at low cost for organisations and individuals. Churches can take full advantage of this.

* However the deluge of communication from those same new technologies also makes it increasingly difficult to reach people effectively. Even the very largest organisations know that to succeed

o they must actively direct attention and effort towards those whose needs they are distinctively well-placed to meet and who are therefore most likely to listen and respond positively to messages and contacts..
o they must ensure that the experience delivered matches what was promised.

For small organisations with limited resources those imperatives are even greater.

* The major focus of our efforts in the Mission 21 Programme was to ‘Make your Church more inviting’. Our congregations worked hard to develop ways in which they could become welcoming, caring and involving communities. We now need to go a step further. Out of the diversity of today’s society, we must attempt to identify people and groups whom we feel we most want to reach and who are most likely to respond. And we must work out how best to make those contacts.

5

Our Congregations and Churches

* The SEC is a small church in this diocese as it is nationally.
* Factors of history, tradition and culture may conspire together to make it difficult for the SEC to draw into membership people from the wider Scottish society who are not already part of the Anglican tradition.
* The diocese is declining in size – between 1988 and 2005 it lost 15% of its total membership. Communicants, communions and baptisms are also in decline.
* Circumstances in individual congregations vary but most have seen falls in the levels of membership and/or attendance.
* The membership is ageing, with few young people.
* Development programmes – such as Mission 21 – may have slowed decline but they have not been able to reverse it.
* We do have some congregations which are growing. The factors which may make this possible are population growth, focus by clergy on growth, high ratio of clergy to congregation, and the quality of leadership by individual clergy

* Research with congregations and clergy revealed
o optimism and hope for the future
o concern about decline but little coherent focus on addressing it
o a near universal desire for growth, but ambivalence about change
o unclear aims, inconsistent or sometimes little leadership
o only limited engagement with the community beyond the congregation
o little recognition, awareness or spread of good-practice
o few connections between congregations and the Diocese and little knowledge of the work of the Diocese or how it was organised

* Research with clergy revealed a desire for
o more support and communication from and across the diocese to help build understanding, relevance, cohesion and visibility
o simpler and clearer diocese committee structure and processes
o a cross-diocese approach to clergy deployment and use of other skills
o leadership from the diocese in working with children and young people in a more co-ordinated way across the diocese
o buildings better suited to the needs of modern congregations & communities
o more help from members but based on clearer mutual understanding between clergy, lay ministry and vestry of respective roles and responsibilities

* Clergy indicate a willingness to innovate, balanced with a desire that worship, prayer and pastoral care should remain the heart of the life of the church

* There are relative financial weaknesses
o weekly giving in the diocese in 2002 was £4.15 vs the SEC average of £5.51
o quota “taxes” growing congregations and augmentation supports failing ones

* The organisation and processes of the diocese are not geared to supporting or managing growth
o There is no long term plan or strategy, nor an effective decision-making group that can ensure that the organisation defines and then works consistently and coherently towards agreed aims.
o In practice, Diocesan Synod and Standing Committee cannot and do not actively manage the organisation.
o Structure is fragmented, over-complex and leads to a lack of accountability.
o The diocese constitution is inappropriate.

6

Understanding Decline and Growth

Much work and research continues to be done to understand the factors behind the decline of churchgoing and to look for effective strategies for growth.

What follows is a digest of evidence-based ideas drawn from several sources:

1. 1. Bob Jackson, “The Road to Growth – towards a thriving Church”
2. 2. Bob Jackson, “Hope for the Church – contemporary strategies for growth”
3. 3. Sally Gaze “Mission-Shaped and Rural – growing churches in the countryside”

All are published by Church House Publishing.

For the sake of brevity, this material is not presented in a rigorously academic way, but the sources of quotes or ideas are identified by source number and page number.

On decline

A significant portion of the decline in institutional church life can be attributed to the way in which the church is organised and makes decisions.

Evidence suggests for example that:
- Team ministries typically achieve worse attendance trends than single-clergy parishes (1, p17)
- As a pattern of ministry, lay ministry without stipendiary clergy tends to lead to a decline in attendance. (1, p143)
- Younger clergy tend to have younger congregations and it is younger congregations that tend to grow (1, p23)
- Vacancies over 6 months lead to very significantly greater loss of attendance than shorter ones. What has been lost is, for the most part, not regained under the new Incumbent (1, p28)
- Failure to support, train and hold clergy accountable fosters decline (1, p125)
- It is unrealistic and unhelpful to expect that all churches can grow to any size and live virtually forever. Some decline, therefore, is part of a natural cycle. (2, pp 8,33)
- Decline is fostered by expecting all churches to fit within the limits and the shape set by existing forms of church. A “mixed economy” that is shaped the needs of communities, both geographic and relational, will be a more productive approach (1, p81)

On growth

Evidence suggests that
- The potential appeal of the Christian message is strong - “usually it is Jesus who attracts people and the Church that puts them off” (1, p40)
- Churches that do not change decay and churches that do change grow. (1, p58)
- Changes that lead to growth are:
o Planting new congregations
o Worship less formal, more relaxed; better music
o Better provision for children and young people
o Better small groups and pastoral care
o Better use of evangelism courses as part of an evangelism and incorporation strategy
o More lay involvement in leadership
o Improvements to buildings (1, p 59)

- Trying to increase numbers of worshippers as an end in itself can seriously distort the good news of Jesus Christ. But failure to pay attention to the issue is an even more serious threat to the well-being, even the very existence, of the Church. How do we find our way out of this impasse? The key is to pay attention to numbers within a larger and more holistic framework. (3, p24)

- Churches with an unbalanced age structure are far less likely to be growing than those with a broad and healthy mix. (3, p147)

- The right question to ask is ‘How can this church … win back the younger half of the population? And the older members of the congregation, far from being part of the problem, should be made to feel that they are part of the solution. (3, p148)

- Small churches can and do grow, not just because it is easier to add 10% to a congregation of 20 than to one of 200. Churches do not need sophisticated resources in order to grow. They need high quality relationships. Smaller fellowships are better able to provide these in a natural way. (3, p54)

- Fresh expressions of church are typically small, fragile and based on network of relationships rather than geographic location (2, p33)

- For growth, the main role of clergy in churches is not to do the ministry of the Church but to prepare and support the lay members in their spiritual and practical ministries. The main spiritual ministry is prayer.(1, p220)

- Clergy in post for 5-12 years are more likely to be associated with growth than either clergy recently arrived or clergy who have been there a long time (1, p42)


7

So Where Do We Stand?

The strategic position of our congregations and our diocese can be summarised in this way:

Strengths

• * Existing congregations - faith, willingness, optimism, diversity of experience, dedicated core
• * Liberal values
• * Approachable clergy
• * Flexibility - from size and governance
• * Distinctive type of spirituality
• * Liturgy (for some)
• * (some) involvement in community
• * Factual Scottish provenance

Weaknesses

• * No plan or direction for the future
• * Declining, ageing membership
• * Seen as “English” church
• * Lack of internal communication
• * Past growth initiatives faded / ineffective
• * Structures and processes not geared to growth
• * Weak on financial resources & management of money
• * Buildings not well-suited to purpose
• * Liturgy (off-putting for some)
• * Passivity, lack of evangelical drive
• * Past lack of leadership

Opportunities

• * Enhanced effectiveness from having a plan, focussed on growth
• * Use of available external insight into how churches can move from decline to growth
• * Population movement (esp incoming Anglicans)
• * Increasingly liberal mainstream public attitudes
• * Growth of interest in personal spirituality
• * Other denominations becoming more open to ecumenism
• * Enhanced communication through new technology
• * Denominational mobility
• * Demand for local venues and events
• * Growth in tourism
• * Interest in Celtic culture

Threats

• * Further and/or faster secularisation of society
• * Erosion of size of SEC in diocese -> extinction
• * Apathy and boredom among membership
• * Financial failure of individual charges
• * Incompetence in operation of diocese & churches
• * Ineffective strategic review and renewal process
• * Effective “competition” from other churches
• * Damaging impact from developments in Church or religion elsewhere

8

What Matters Most

From evidence, analysis and reflection we can distil a number of issues that are key to the future of our congregations and diocese.

* The Church has not adapted to change in society and now faces a significant challenge to find a future role that it both wishes and is able to take.
* Continuing decline in overall membership erodes the viability and threatens the long term existence of individual congregations and of the diocese as a whole.
* Decline is still in effect being ignored or denied by many. Outreach work is not given priority. Where efforts to address decline are being made, they may be undermined by ambivalence or resistance to change or by the feeling that decline is inevitable.
* Increasingly it is understood that some or even much decline in churchgoing is rooted in current church practice. So there is much that lies within our own power to change. Moving from decline to growth may be difficult but is possible, if we acknowledge the issue and are prepared to address it.
* To halt and reverse decline, our diocese and congregations will need both spiritual renewal and a coherent and widely-supported strategy.
* This diocese is not currently well organised to implement a strategy for growth.
* Resources of many kinds across the diocese are not being fully exploited and are not focussed on growth opportunities.

9

The Way Forward

We can’t “organise” spiritual renewal, but we can organise and do things which bring the church to the point where renewal is possible and which give our congregations and diocese the best prospects of thriving.

To address the key issues and work to make the vision a reality, we need to

* Develop a strong, shared sense of direction towards the vision
* Focus on activities most likely to halt decline and bring growth
* Organise effectively for growth
* Acquire and manage appropriate resources for the task


The point and the value of setting out a simple statement of vision and strategy like this is to give us some shared ideas to which we can all commit and which will help guide us all to make consistent and coherent decisions about what we do and how we spend our time, energy and whatever other resources we have.

Growth, mission and change are inextricably linked. For many, the biggest and perhaps most difficult aspect of all of this will be to make a shift in perspective from inward-looking to outward-looking, from the familiar to the less well-known. To succeed, we really do need all to be “singing from the same hymn sheet”!

Acting on this strategy means looking critically at our church life and using the elements of strategy to help identify what we jointly and individually should

* Stop doing
* Start doing
* Do more of
* Do differently

In short, we need to commit to the fact that adopting and pursuing this strategy will mean applying new priorities that put growth first. It will change our experience of church life.

10

Priorities for action

By applying the four elements of strategy to the work of our church, and by drawing on the available body of analysis, insight and good practice, a programme of development and change for growth starts to emerge.

This will potentially touch every aspect of the life of our church, and pursuing it will challenge us all to find renewed passion about our faith and the work of sharing it.

Six important tasks have been identified as priorities. These are to:

1. Identify the strongest potential sources of congregational growth and develop practical approaches to engaging with them at local level
* Opportunities for growth will vary between different congregations, but for every congregation there will be some groups or types of people who are not currently members but who are the best prospect for growth because their needs “fit” well with what the congregation could offer.
* Because it is so important to change the age balance of our membership, almost all congregations will find that children and their parents are distinctively the most important potential source of growth, both short and long term.
* Other routes to engagement may include, for example,
* in rural settings, through rural issues and the decline of farming
* in urban settings, through sharing in community development programmes
* where there is new-build housing and growing population, through incoming people from an Anglican background
* working with fringe contacts or occasional visitors to church.
* In this task, the challenge is to help individual congregations to take a clear-eyed look at their community, make realistic choices about where they will selectively focus their efforts to achieve growth and take practical steps to do whatever is needed to remove barriers and actively engage locally with people whom they hope to attract.
* At the same time it will be necessary to examine how the priorities of local congregations can be supported by policies and initiatives at diocesan or provincial level.

2. Redefine the role, responsibilities, support and training of clergy for a missionary church seeking congregational growth in a post-Christian society
* Individual clergy are enormously influential on the growth or decline of congregations, particularly through leadership. We must ensure that our support and in-service training of our clergy keeps pace with the demands of ministry today.
* The challenges in this task are, again drawing on the evidence available, to
* examine the role, functions and leadership of clergy today
* act upon insights into the relationship between age of clergy and age profile of congregation
* explore how clergy can be supported with appropriate training, patterns of Ministerial Review, pastoral support and mutual encouragement
* work with clergy and congregations together to ensure the highest possible level of understanding of roles and functions

3. Review the organisation of our charges and the deployment of clergy so that opportunities for growth are enhanced.
* There is no consistent or coherent policy that underpins how decisions about the organisation of charges and the deployment of clergy are taken.
* In this task, the challenge is to develop and implement such a policy with the clear aim of aligning clergy resource allocation with growth opportunity and with need. The work will include
* reviewing models of ministry currently operating in the diocese, the SEC and the wider Anglican world – clergy/lay ministry teams etc – to determine relevance for our diocese.
* identifying areas in the diocese where population growth or other growth opportunities are present
identifying areas of particular challenge which population movement or social change presents challenges to our congregations,

4. Redefine roles, responsibilities, training and education for lay ministry and vestry, to enhance their effectiveness in working with clergy for growth
* We can only make the most of our resources if clergy, lay ministry and vestry share a clear understanding of their mutual roles and responsibilities. Feedback from research makes it obvious that this is currently not always the case, and indicates also that the effectiveness of people in lay ministry and vestry roles can often be undermined by the absence of suitable support and training.
* In this task, the challenge is to foster the distinctive leadership of clergy in a collaborative setting, by
* developing further our understanding of ministry as the shared calling of clergy and laity. This will involve clergy, vestries and congregation members in exploration of their potential contribution to growth.
* reformulating the way we prepare, educate and train people in lay ministry roles

5. Develop a curriculum for congregational life with indicators of a healthy church
* We need to develop a holistic picture of congregational life. Our desire to grow may lead to distortion unless it is rooted in such a holistic view which explores what a healthy, growth-orientated church should do and be.

* In this task, the challenges are
* to develop a curriculum for congregational life covering Worship and spirituality, Education, Youth and children’s work, Stewardship, Community engagement, Inter-church activity, Peace and justice issues, Pastoral care and the identification of resources required to implement it
* to develop a strategic process that congregations can use to plan, act and monitor progress
* to provide appropriate accompanying support


6. Reshape diocesan organisational structure and processes, to promote growth
* There are evident weaknesses, reflected also in the feedback from our research, in how the diocese as an organisational unit is structured, how it makes decisions and how it communicates.

* The challenge in this task is to reshape the diocese and how it operates, to make it more effective and more growth-orientated. The work will include
* defining and establishing an interim structure for initial implementation of new strategy
* reviewing diocesan structures – Area Councils, committee structure – to reshape them to ensure that an actively managed growth strategy is possible
* reviewing facilities/machinery for communication
* assessing the need for office accommodation/meeting space
* assessing the need for administrative support
* assessing financial challenges facing the diocese [cost of ministry v stewardship potential]
* reviewing the Diocesan Constitution

11

Next steps

11.1 Consultation
The strategic review and its recommendations will go through a process of wide consultation from February 2007 onwards. That process is expected to include:

* Circulation of this document to clergy and lay leadership in February 2007, accompanied by working sessions to discuss the contents
* Open meetings in each Area Council area at which the strategic review and recommendations will be presented to and discussed with all interested parties.
* Wide circulation to congregation members of a leaflet that presents the core points of the review and recommendations in concise form
* An invitation to all members and clergy to volunteer to work on the priority tasks for which they have relevant skills and knowledge.
Feedback on the strategic review and recommendations will help to refine the thinking but the aim is to have by the end of June 2007 a strategy for which there is strong support across the diocese.

However, for any actionable recommendations in the current document on which in practical terms further consultation is not required, work can proceed immediately.

11.2 Implementation Group
A small number of people will be asked by the Bishop to serve with him on an Implementation Group. This will start work by March 2007.

* Their remit will be to
o initiate and monitor implementation of the immediately actionable aspects of the strategic plan
o define and establish an interim implementation structure
o agree briefs for Work Groups who will tackle the 6 priority tasks
o discuss and clarify tasks with Work Groups
o identify and allocate the resources needed by each Work Group
o receive their progress reports
o review their action proposals
o support and monitor the implementation of approved proposals as they are put into action
o ensure that the overall process of strategy development and implementation remains coherent

The Implementation Group will also be asked to ensure high levels of communication across the diocese to share the new vision and allow the change process to be purposeful but also flexible and responsive.

11.3 Work Groups
Suitably skilled people will be asked to form and/or lead groups to work on the 6 priority tasks. They will be asked to put forward action plans, based on best available practice and evidence, by the end of 2007. Where these action plans can be recommended, approved and implemented sooner than this, they will be.

12

Appendices

12.1 Data on churchgoing and demographic change


Scotland Census 2002
 
1984
1994
2002
All Churchgoers 000
 
853.7
691.1
570.1
Episcopal 000
 
20
20.35
18.87
SEC share %
 
2.3
2.9
3.3

Churchgoing in Scotland – total and Episcopal - is declining and is projected to continue to do so. Episcopal churchgoing is also declining, albeit more slowly.


Population of the diocese is forecast by GROS to age significantly by 2024. For example, by 2024 there will be 41,300 more people aged 75+, over 80,000 more people 50+, and 63,000 fewer people under 50.


GROS also forecast that after short term growth in population to 2010 for all parts except Dundee City, in the longer term to 2024 Fife, Perth & Kinross and Stirling will gain population, while the other parts of the diocese will lose.

12.2
Data for the diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane

Overall long term decline is visible in total numbers of members, communicants and communions in the diocese.




Development programmes

Trends in membership before and after MYCMI show no consistently positive impact.

A significant majority of charges in the diocese have experienced decline in either or both of membership and communions.

But localised growth is visible both short and longer term in a number of charges.

Clergy deployment – no obviously discernible consistency in deployment of clergy resources or in ministry pattern relative to population, growth or nos. of members.

Financial aspects – income and giving have been rising ahead of inflation

Respondents to individual questionnaire confirmed assumed congregational profile.