Building a New Church
A Diocesan Conference on Mission Opportunities
in New Housing and Other Development Areas
and now there is……
The challenge… a development site (north of England)
thi
New church/community building for St Clements,
Thames Gateway development (Chelmsford diocese)
Church House Westminster, 17 October 2007
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Introduction
It is a pleasure to welcome delegates to the 17th October
conference on ‘Building a New Church’.
The genesis of the conference has been conversations over the
last year or so with diocesan secretaries and others about the
growing challenges of new housing and business development
areas. A seminar involving a small number of dioceses was held
on these issues earlier this year, at which one diocesan
secretary commented that, ‘Increasing population is a nice
problem to have. It means greater potential for congregations
in the long term. On the other hand, it does require investment
in advance of the population arriving.’
Those present appreciated an opportunity to share experiences
between dioceses. This prompted the question of whether a
larger scale event would be of value. Although the major
housing and business developments planned over the next 20
years are concentrated in relatively few dioceses, no diocese is
without the need to engage with new communities. Greenfield
developments, urban regeneration, suburban infilling, new
transport hubs: all create new communities and new mission
opportunities for the church. Practical issues include timing and
priorities – whether to build first, or to resource people in
these areas? And how to work most effectively with partners in
the worlds of planning and development and with non-Anglican
churches.
As plans for this conference have developed there have, in
parallel, been discussions on the possible use of some of the
Church Commissioners’ funds in 2008-10 (£6.5 million in total)
to invest in the church’s mission in new housing and other
development areas. A separate consultation exercise on that
possibility is in train. The 17th October conference is not the
forum for deciding the use of this money; but the agenda will
include wider discussion of resourcing issues.
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The conference starts with the mission context – a session on
the planning issues with an opportunity to hear from and put
questions to experts in that field. After that session, the
delegates will split into groups to share their experience about
the mission and resourcing strategies required to engage with
new communities. A plenary session will seek to draw together
some threads of the conversations and discuss what role the
‘centre’ may play, if at all, in helping dioceses address the issues
they face.
Before you arrive, there’s the chance to look through a few
brief stories from various dioceses at the end of this booklet.
Other helpful resources on new housing areas can be found on
a Churches Together in England site http://www.cinha.net/.
We hope that the notes of the conversations on the 17th
October will provide a further learning resource to delegates
and others unable to attend.
Philip James
Head of Church Commissioners’
Policy Unit
8 October 2007
‘The Ark’: ecumenical
church and community
centre, Camborne (Ely
diocese)
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Agenda
From 10.00
Coffee
10.30–11.30 Planning and project management. What
sort of buildings are being built?
Opening session: presentation by Kathleen
Dunmore, Lead Consultant of Three Dragons.
Opportunity for contributions from diocesan
representatives and questions to a panel.
Topics to include:
 Planning / regulatory environment (section
106 etc).
 working effectively with local authority
requirements.
 identifying/meeting local needs, providing
social amenity.
 physical ‘plant’ – location and design.
 project management.
11.30 – 12.45 Mission (I): What sort of church do we want
to build?
Group discussion. Topics to include:
 clarifying the mission strategy
 community or building (which comes first)?
 use of church schools
 working ecumenically
12.45 – 13.45 Lunch
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Afternoon session
13.45 – 15.00 Mission (II): What resources do we need to
build the church?
Group discussion. Topics to include:
 clergy numbers
 rationalisation of existing resources
 investment in buildings
15.00 – 16.00 Moving forward
Plenary session: Drawing conclusions and
discussing what value can be added at ‘the
centre’: financial, other practical, advisory?
Panel members for opening session

Kathleen Dunmore of Three Dragons consultancy,
planning consultants specialising in new housing
provision. Economist by background.

Paul Lewis head of the Church Commissioners’
Pastoral and Redundant Churches department, formerly
chief planning officer for Hastings Borough Council.

Steve Melligan Church Commissioners’ Property
Investment Department, planning and development
manager overseeing the Commissioners' strategic
development sites around England.
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Stories from around the dioceses
Timing and priorities Ely diocese’s work in the new housing
area of Camborne, south Cambridgeshire, shows a project’s
stepwise evolution around local needs. Anglican, Baptist,
Methodist, Catholic and United Reformed churches drew
together a worshipping congregation whose initial bases were
the primary school and waiting room of the doctor’s surgery. In
2001 the church bought ‘The Ark’, a portakabin which became
its home and that of some 28 community groups. It will soon be
replaced by a new ecumenical church centre with worship area,
quiet chapel, preschool facility and café with, alongside it, ‘the
Hub’, a newly-built permanent community centre.
Responding to the local communities’ needs Some
dioceses are looking at 100,000 – 200,000 new homes being
planned in their locality over the next 20 years. They are likely
to include a higher-than-average proportion of children and
young people/parents; two thirds of people in a new housing
area may be connected with a local school. The ecumenical
Lighthouse project at Bristol’s Hartcliffe housing estate enables
people, many with little or no previous contact with church, to
share about their lives and concerns over a meal in a relaxed
setting. At the other end of the age spectrum. a community of
108 warden-assisted flats for elderly people at Sunningdale
(Oxford diocese) has church services with residents involved in
ways that suit them. Some lead prayers; others just join for a
cup of tea at the end of worship.
The Lighthouse estate church
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Sunningdale home
Build local authorities’ confidence that the church can be
an effective and swift-moving partner to agreements to provide
community facilities in new builds and adaptations. Press for
well-sited facilities including schools and worship venues, plus
infrstracture, to be planned alongside housing. St Clements, a
Thames Gateway regeneration project, illustrates this. A new
ecumenical church and social centre have developed from the
former church: a joint effort between the church who provided
the land, the primary care trust who funded the health centre,
the Thames Gateway who provided funds for the overall
project, a nursery school who have funded their part, and the
local authority who have supported the project.
New business areas / communication hubs Experience with
Canary Wharf shows the church
has to invest from the outset in
people and property for mission
and ministry in major strategic
business
and
communication
development sites. London diocese
believes the Kings Cross / St
Pancras site offers ‘the opportunity to
communicate with an interconnected world the same message that
Augustine brought to England 1400 years ago.’ The development’s
‘vital statistics’ tell their own story:
 Transport interchange; 135 million trips per year
 Some 6,500 new residents, including students, with
1,700 residential units.
 There is an expected flow within the centre, university
and surrounding area of 15,000 people per hour.
 Commercial/business space: 25,000 people working on
the development; 3,000m2 for the development.
 Expected investment in the site of around £2 billion.
 Expecting first occupations between 2010 and 2011,
(dependent on planning). Whole development will
probably take between 15 and 20 years.
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Alternative models for mission in new communities
Oxford diocese, looking particularly at experiences around
Milton Keynes, has explored the following ways of being church:
 A local cell group based in someone’s home meeting for
a weekly meal and prayer, and with monthly meetings
between cell groups.
 Café / coffee shops.
 Christian community based in part around the internet.
 Work with schools and after school clubs.
 Hire a community hall for worship and local mission.
 A worshipping community in a retirement home.
 Harvest festival in supermarkets.
 Church as alternative economy: local exchange
networks, credit unions.
 Estate-based stipendiary priest or Christian worker.
Thinking strategically The diocese of Peterborough,
looking at the Milton Keynes / south Midlands development,
expects that in 25 years the diocese will be 1/3 larger than at
present in terms of ‘new souls’ and infrastructure and business
creation and migration to the area. It aims to build distinctive
Christian communities, working with partners from other
churches. Responding fast to the proposals’ scale has had a big
impact on denominations, planners and developers. The church
is often ‘the only organisation which has got its act together and
is speaking with one clear voice into the discussions.‘
Exeter diocese adds that in the case of the planned 5,000 6,000-dwelling greenfield site development of Cranbrook it was
on the churches’ initiative that news of the development
proposal was picked up and pro-actively responded to so as to
‘gain access to the inside track of the planning process.’ As a
result of its close involvement, the church has earmarked within
the development both a voluntary-aided primary school and an
adjacent fully-serviced site whose ultimate use, writes the
churches’ project officer, ‘will be for the church community to
decide once it has identified its own needs and those of the
whole community.’
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