William Temple Foundation

Building our hope with hope in our buildings

At a recent meeting of the church council I chair, I told the trustees that are responsible for assets totalling many, many, millions of pounds. After this deliberately administered shock, I explained that the church building is one of our principal assets and is worth a fortune. 

We’re used to thinking of the high cost of running churches, with heat and light, water rates and insurance. The costs can be horrendous. But most churches only realise the true financial value of their buildings when they start looking at repairs and refurbishing … and then suddenly recognise how the costs can be genuinely astonishing. Seeking grants for refurbishment requires time and skill. It’s such hard work that many of us are tempted to think, ‘If only we convened in a shed. I don’t want a costly building. I don’t want to be rich’! 

While our church buildings are costly, they are worth more than gold to our local communities, and for many reasons: beyond the opportunities to worship, and ignoring for a moment the heritage and memories they represent, a church is often the only local space available for community activities. In my parish alone (I moved to Ashton-under-Lyne in Greater Manchester in November 2024), the churches host a food bank and food pantry; dancer groups, slimming world, and keep fit groups convene there; counselling and ESOL occur there; we hold luncheon clubs for the elderly, isolated and confused; we created groups for the mentally ill; we host knitting and parentcraft groups; and we rent the building to countless parties and celebrations of comfort and relief—all in addition to the traditional activities associated with a church such as services and Bible studies. 

This list represents a snapshot; the exact detail will differ next week, next month, next year. But what remains constant is the value to the community these buildings represent. For many local people the church is the only social space remaining. 

This context explains why I noticed the debate on 13 May in Westminster Hall debate at which MPs from different political parties urged the Government to re-fund church buildings if they want to continue to see vulnerable people helped and heritage saved. The meeting itself was a response to the 2021 report published by the National Churches Trust, The House of Good: Health which documents the support that local churches give to their host communities: in terms of finance, the report estimates that this help amounts to interventions that save the NHS about £8.4 billion, which is equivalent to employing 230,000 full-time nurses.

The meeting heard that investing in church buildings makes good economic sense: £16 of social value is created for every £1 that’s invested in a church building (The House of Good: 2021). The meeting was sponsored by the National Churches Trust as a way of lobbying the Government about state aid and tax breaks including the Listed Places of Worship Scheme. 

It’s worth thinking wider. The debate I’ve referred to, about the expense of running a church, prompts some church councils to panic or give up. It’s so hard! In fact, one of my first introductions to this debate centred on a near-derelict church in Levenshulme in central Manchester. I heard the story over twenty years ago, so the details are older still. I forget the fuller story, but the church allowed a local GP to meet in its damp vestry for a peppercorn rent. The small congregation was demoralised and could no longer either afford or even recognise their church for what it was: a community asset. Ashamed of their building’s state of repair, they hung blankets over the flaking plaster and gave hot drinks to cover their embarrassment at the lack of heat. But, relatively soon, the congregation began to grow as the people who’d seen the GP started to attend divine worship. They appreciated the fragile offer of friendship offered and wanted more. 

Fast forward a decade and the church was thriving. By accident, these few elderly members had discovered the obvious truth that nowhere else befriended the lonely or fed the hungry. By accident, they were living out Jesus’s ‘manifesto statement’ in Luke 4, and discovered it was devastatingly attractive. People were using their church for more than loving God (worship) and instead used it for loving their neighbour as well. Repairing the divorce between the two halves of the Great Commandment also repaired the disconnect between the church and its host community. 

This isolated story greatly inspired me. It therefore seemed natural when I took up my first position as Vicar (in Oldham) to adopt the same model. My smaller church in Clarksfield, Oldham, was damp and failing, elderly, struggling, and entirely without hope. Fifteen years later, its building is one of the best maintained in the area and hosts the largest community centre in East Oldham. Last month it received the King’s Award for Voluntary Service (KAVS). Local people regardless of ethnicity or religion describe it as ‘my church’. And it is. 

All of us are in the business of sponsoring the Kingdom of God. When the idea of a church building offering love has percolated through to its host community, that idea has generally acquired a flavour of hope. It looks and sounds and feels good. I’m suggesting that we consciously move away from the idea of a church building as a place reserved for worship, and open it to the community as an expression of hope. 

Many churches are afraid of opening their church building to non-churchgoers. Perhaps they are afraid the sacred space will be polluted. In fact, the movement of spiritual power usually flows in the opposite direction, with visitors and their activities feeling a profound blessing. Perhaps offering our churches as a space of hope is one modern response to the story in Mark’s Gospel of Jesus telling the ‘rich young ruler’ to give everything to the poor. 

Food, hope and love: the local church in a time of crisis?

Jesus tell us to love our neighbour which, in practice, often means through a local church. That love needs to be customised and directed. Oldham in Greater Manchester is a post-industrial town so, after Austerity and Brexit, the impact of Covid was perhaps greater than in other places. Some churches took Jesus’ command to mean serving through food banks and pantries. 

The church is strongest when it reflects its host society. This strength might inspire local people to call its church ‘relevant’, ‘useful’ or simply ‘MY church’, but only if it has earned that ownership. 

The church needs to serve its whole parish. It will probably serve successive circles of acquaintances: most start with those it knows in their congregations; then the ‘para church’ of occasional visitors, service users, or frequenting the building; then finally the wider community. That ‘wider community’ may not know its church or feels antagonistic saying, ‘It does nothing for people like me!’; and that statement may be true. But all within these circles need hope.

To give hope, churches must know their context: to that end, they must explore then change. Jesus himself tells us to explore context by commanding us to love our neighbour. He then asked, ‘who is my neighbour?’ We cannot pick and choose.

Churches obedient to Jesus will customise their activities to address contextual need. That context is local and changes with time. A century ago, churches worked with the Workhouse, Poor Laws, and maybe oversaw elementary education. Everything has changed: the Education Act means churches rarely run schools; the Welfare State took over health and pastoral care, and did it better. Many local churches today are introverted and closing; the Established Church can seem better represented in the House of Lords than ‘on the ground’. 

And then came Austerity, Brexit, Covid, and their conjoined legacy, the ‘cost-of-living crisis’. In response, people might turn to a church for food and hope for there is no one else. These requests occur at a time when many churches have learned to avoid suggestions of ‘being political’. In consequence, churches are asked to do more but with fewer resources; help more but with additional constraints. 

The changes in Oldham, Greater Manchester, are dramatic. In 1900, it was one of the richest towns in the Empire: more millionaires (per capita) lived in nearby Shaw Village than anywhere else on the planet; by 2016, Oldham was the most deprived borough in England; the 2021 Census showed 77.7% of Oldham households live with some form of deprivation (51.7% is the average for England). 

Covid has aggravated everything: the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggests those worst affected by Covid were women, younger workers, and low-paid workers. Before the pandemic, these groups were over-represented in the east Oldham economy. By 2022, the unemployment rate across all age groups in the ‘Oldham East and Saddleworth’ constituency had risen by 43% since the first lockdown; elsewhere it had fallen. And Oldham was in lockdown for longer than almost anywhere else in the UK, meaning the need was larger, longer-lasting and, because Oldham comprises many small villages, experienced locally.

Covid affected children. In 2014–2020, Oldham had the highest relative child poverty rate in England. In 2024, it had reached to 44%; it has England’s third-highest absolute rate of child poverty. Many are ineligible for free school meals. We see epidemic levels of metal ill-health.

For years, Christian organisations in Oldham have overseen emergency food provision. St Margaret’s Church in Hollinwood created Oldham Food Bank. At the start of the lockdown, Oldham Council helped it relocate to the large, new Oldham Sport Leisure in the Town Centre where its provision multiplied many-fold. The Council led the project but a large proportion of its workers and volunteers came from Oldham’s churches.

I oversee one of the most deprived parishes in England, St Barnabas (Clarksfield) in East Oldham. It already ran a food project so, when lockdown started, the National Lottery enhanced it, installing a walk-in fridge and two huge freezers. To accommodate them, we quickly re-imagined a major capital project in our Parish Centre. Client numbers climbed scarily fast as we fed ever more people. 

These local churches were demonstrating relevance by ‘loving neighbours’: all these projects served local people, were led by local people, and responded to local people, giving both food and hope. 

Covid closed several churches but all the churches running food projects during the pandemic remain open. All have changed. For example, their membership is often larger and younger; some changed style to accommodate those newer members. And other churches are starting social-justice work. 

The need for food projects is growing. Local churches lead the projects operating using the ‘food pantry’ model; churches lead a slight majority of the ‘food banks’; the Department for Education funds ‘holiday hunger’ clubs through its ‘Holiday Activity Fund’ (HAF), many of which convene in churches and parish centres. 

This blog details church responses but many Mosques and secular organisations also addressed local need. 

Social action offers more than food. Some church-led projects also offer pet food, toiletries, eVouchers; others run cafés, or clothes and school-uniform banks; most refer clients toward debt care; during Covid, many became ‘pop-up’ vaccinate centres … the list is large and continues to grow in number and scope. And these projects represent explicit responses to Jesus’ Commandment to love our neighbour. Love may be ‘the greatest of these three’ (cf. 1 Cor 13) but faith should also led to hope.