C O N T E X T 1 0 5 : J U LY 2 0 0 8 35 BECKY PAYNE Inside a broad church Post offices, doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries, health centres, gyms, community shops, police stations, cafés and farmers’ markets are all taking place inside churches. When I joined the Church of England’s Cathedral and Church Buildings Division in 2003, I suspected that I would have to come to grips with the faculty jurisdiction system. I did not foresee that I would have to become familiar with LSPs, LAAs, and RDAs, or to get my head around concepts such as social capital, community cohesion and partnership working. Nor did I envisage the need to get up to speed on increasing numbers of government initiatives such as Education Outside the Classroom and Community Empowerment, or learning what it takes to set up an outreach post office in a church, and the ins and outs of the tourism sector. All of this illustrates the wide range of activities and initiatives happening in and around church buildings. Mywork beganwith the task of helping to produce the 2004 report Building Faith in our Future, which aimed to tell the secular world about what was happening in church buildings and the many varied ways in which they contribute to our local communities. Supported by increasing numbers of case studies and facts and figures, we are now more able to show government and other bodies at all levels how we can help them meet their objectives and illustrate how these buildings can remain as places of worship, while at the same time becoming a real resource for their communities. My role has evolved into putting my energies into whatever might best enable the wider use of church buildings, or at least those elements which can be best done in a national role. This includes talking to government departments and national organisation such as VisitBritain, the Village Retail Services Association, the Post Office and the Big Lottery, and responding to consultations and attending conferences. Initially, being given a name badge which appeared to designate me as the representative for the whole of the Church of England – ‘no mean brief’, as a fellow conference member once said to me – was somewhat disconcerting. In all these arenas my mantra has become ‘there is a parish church in every parish in the land, a building with volunteers who wish to be of service to their community’. In the past, until the building of community and village halls, churches were the only buildings large enough to host community events. The chancel would be the place for worship while the nave (sometimes not even consecrated) became the community hall. Historical records show that churches hosted meetings, debates, elections and legal proceedings as well as festivities, including plays. They could also house the library and the local school. Churches could store fire-fighting equipment, act as St Paul with St Mark, Old Ford, Bow, London: the ark, clad in American tulipwood, houses a community art gallery.There is a gym in the church’s attic.
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