In response to Scott Wells' question, here is my analysis that I did a few years ago of the places where there is potential for Unitarian church planting in the UK and Ireland:
The largest towns without a Unitarian presence:
Fife
Sunderland
Sefton
Walsall (the church closed last year)
Rotherham
Stoke-on-Trent
Salford
Barnsley
Gateshead
Milton Keynes
Luton
St Helens
Swindon
High Wycombe
Basildon
Peterborough
Cleethorpes and Grimsby
South Tyneside
Aylesbury
Knowsley
Scunthorpe
These are all Metropolitan Borough Councils or equivalent with a population of over 150,000 people. If you assume that a population of 150,ooo people could support one Unitarian church, then each of these could support one church, Fife could support two. Manchester does support that many Unitarian churches in relation to its population.
There are subtleties, for example Stoke itself does not have a church itself, but Newcastle-under-Lyme, which is technically a different town but effectively the same urban area does have one.
Large cities that could support more Unitarian churches (1 for every 150,000 people, the density in Manchester) are:
London could support 36 more churches.
Birmingham 4 more
Leeds 3 more
Glasgow 3
Edinburgh 2
Dublin 2
And all these towns could support one more Unitarian church:
The Wirral
Wakefield
Cardiff
Dudley
Wigan
Coventry
To be blunt, I'm not aware of any Unitarian churches that were founded in the last 100 years, nevermind the last 10.
I think fellowships have come and gone. For example I think a fellowship started in Solihull, the town between Birmingham and Coventry, in the 70s and died in the 80s. I think these tend to be small social groups that don't outreach much and so die when people die or move away.
The task therefore, is to explore which of these towns has circumstances congenial to a church plant (like a sympathetic district) and find what sources of funding exist to pluge a few grand in to start a church.
Corrections are welcome.
The largest towns without a Unitarian presence:
Fife
Sunderland
Sefton
Walsall (the church closed last year)
Rotherham
Stoke-on-Trent
Salford
Barnsley
Gateshead
Milton Keynes
Luton
St Helens
Swindon
High Wycombe
Basildon
Peterborough
Cleethorpes and Grimsby
South Tyneside
Aylesbury
Knowsley
Scunthorpe
These are all Metropolitan Borough Councils or equivalent with a population of over 150,000 people. If you assume that a population of 150,ooo people could support one Unitarian church, then each of these could support one church, Fife could support two. Manchester does support that many Unitarian churches in relation to its population.
There are subtleties, for example Stoke itself does not have a church itself, but Newcastle-under-Lyme, which is technically a different town but effectively the same urban area does have one.
Large cities that could support more Unitarian churches (1 for every 150,000 people, the density in Manchester) are:
London could support 36 more churches.
Birmingham 4 more
Leeds 3 more
Glasgow 3
Edinburgh 2
Dublin 2
And all these towns could support one more Unitarian church:
The Wirral
Wakefield
Cardiff
Dudley
Wigan
Coventry
To be blunt, I'm not aware of any Unitarian churches that were founded in the last 100 years, nevermind the last 10.
I think fellowships have come and gone. For example I think a fellowship started in Solihull, the town between Birmingham and Coventry, in the 70s and died in the 80s. I think these tend to be small social groups that don't outreach much and so die when people die or move away.
The task therefore, is to explore which of these towns has circumstances congenial to a church plant (like a sympathetic district) and find what sources of funding exist to pluge a few grand in to start a church.
Corrections are welcome.
Comments
Historically this was done by wealthy individuals - e.g. the Holt shipowners on Merseyside - who then of course ran it how they wanted to. I would ask Stephen only this: how would you feel about being, in effect, some millionaire's chaplain?
Religious ultra-conservatives, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, can build churches through tithing. AFAIK this has never been part of our tradition.
I am very dubious about the superiority of churches to fellowships. Saying that the latter "come and go" isn't exactly an argument.
That describes the Unitarian Church I attend pretty well, except that we do have over 50% who are under 60 (including me, who won't be 60 for another 9 months!) Any ideas I had to try and inspire anything other than hymn sandwich have fallen, in the most part, on stony ground. But to my mind this fear of offending will be its downfall. In trying to be "all things to all men" (ouch - people) it ends up being nothing to a lot of people.
I personally do not feel my identity to be "Unitarian", even after 14 months of attending the services, yet I have no difficulty in calling myself a Buudhist, something I only realised about 2 months ago. It's good that I can still attend the Unitarian Church as a Buddhist and be accepted, but in all honesty Unitarianism does not offer me the depth of spirituality that I crave.
I’m not sure there are sufficient liberal alternatives in this country. For example, what other denomination could I be open about being queer in my interview for becoming a minister/priest/religious leader? I don’t know of any apart from the MCC, and they have, what, five churches in the country? In the States there is more strong liberal religion, such as the UCC, and liberal Jewish movements, but there is nothing comparable in this country. Most non-religious people experience religion as conservative.
Mike:
There is no need at all to buy property to begin with. A church can keep going very successfully without its own building for a long time. I’m personally not convinced that a building is required at all. Meeting in a school hall can work extremely well. You’d need a stipend plus a little more for other expensese. £20,000? Who knows.
I don’t think looking at our past is a model for church planting. I think we can look at what is effective today in other churches. I would say this is 1) denominational support 2) expecting a large commitment from all members. This is not just about finance, but it includes it. There is no reason why we cannot have a conversation about tithing. The facts are the churches that expect a lot from their members grow the most, those that expect little grow little.
Matt:
In response to your second comment it has to be primarily number 1, but that does not exclude some drawing on other religious views.
By they way, I’m really glad we’ve got a British based dialogue going, thanks ya’ll.
What's wrong with the good old house group model? I'd love to get something going from my own abode as I have a small nucleus of people I know valued a group we had going for a while, but, I feel constrained against doing so as it would be seen as competition for my local congregation. Not the case everywhere though...
Focussing on cities misses the fact that city centres do not tend to be big residential areas. Only one person at my church can walk to church very realistically (I do but it takes a long half hour) I don't think that's the right way to go somehow. Not environmentally sustainable either.
A church grows around a small nucleus of committed people prepared to give of their time and be proactive about financial resources. Maybe we should look for where we have that, rather than look at cities where we might not have any resident Unitarians?
I'm a bit late in the day to get involved in this conversation, it might already be over, my only excuse is I don't always think to look at when Stephen's written recently - what a bad woman I am!
On another of Matt's points, a lot of liberal religious groups elsewhere are liberal in certain areas but not others e.g. liberal about sexual ethics, illiberal about pluralist theology. I think the word liberal may be a red herring here, but I need to put some thought into the issue...