The following is cribbed shamelessly from Steve Tilleys blog, and I agree with it:
I'm not a one to go signing petitions willy-nilly but this one was forwarded to me from a couple of different directions and I agree with it.
Costs of repairs to ancient and heritage-rich church buildings are largely born by the congregation who happen to meet there by an accident of geography. Often funds which could be better spent on mission are then used on maintenance. Congregations which could leave their church building to fall into disrepair whilst meeting somewhere else usually choose not to. Which is good of them.
It is unlikely that the government will agree to take responsibility off us for such costs but there is an on-line petition saying:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to arrange for the cost of repairs to C of E church buildings to be reimbursed to help preserve our archeological & historic heritage for the future."
at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Preservation which I'd encourage you to explore and consider signing.
As they say, 'Churches are a valuable part of our heritage and a major tourist attraction, yet the funding of repairs is left to the parish in which the building is situated. Thus the cost of maintaining a national asset is left to the minority. This is grossly unfair and should be rectified.'
if you have trouble getting straight to the petition, go to petitions.pm.gov.uk and do a search for 'church'.
update: this petition had 89 signatures on Thursday, as at 8.15pm Sunday 14th it had reached 824.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit undecided on this petition, on one hand I think we need to preserve our heritage, thats why Im a member of the national trust, and I think Churches should be preserved.
ReplyDeleteBut when we are looking at different ways of being church and looking at being church where people are, the idea of maintaining an old church is a hard one to justify when we look at the amount of money involved, particularly if the church building isn't very practical. Would it be better if the government paid? I don't know. I guess the government would never give money to the church for say, mission but it might for buildings, so then we could spend our own money on mission.....Or we could sell the church building, build a purpose built centre and not have to worry about maintanance for a while and have a church we could use as we want.......definately still undecided.
I think the whole idea of the petition is to get more money out of the government, freeing up church funds for mission.
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