mission,pcc | GS 2026 Candidates

General Synod Election Address
I would like to stand for election to the General Synod because I believe that the voice and experience of our smaller, rural parishes needs to be heard clearly at the heart of the Church of England.
I am a member of a small local parish church in the Diocese of Winchester, where I serve on the PCC and the Deanery Synod and have the Bishop’s Permission to Preach. I value deeply the life of a local church: worshipping together, supporting one another, serving our community, and being a visible Christian presence in the place where we live.
But I also know the pressures facing many rural parishes. Small congregations are expected to carry responsibilities and costs that are increasingly difficult to sustain. While we personally benefit from having a Focal Minister, I see how the loss of a regular priest can have a profound effect, particularly where several parishes are already sharing clergy, which imposes a significant pastoral burden and really challenging demands in terms of time and commitment on individual vicars.
I would like to see rural parishes not simply survive, but have the opportunity to flourish.
That means taking seriously the financial realities facing our smaller churches. Funding arrangements need to recognise the particular circumstances of local ministry and the value of maintaining a Christian presence in every community. We need to ask the wider Church difficult questions about how its financial and other resources are allocated currently, including the numbers employed in upper levels of the hierarchy while cuts are imposed on the numbers of local vicars.
To make our smaller churches sustainable, I believe we need to think seriously and imaginatively about the provision of local clergy. The Church needs to focus on “bottom up”: if we cannot sustain our local parishes, with enough vicars to nurture and grow congregations by strengthening the pastoral and spiritual life of individual communities, the decline in Church attendance will continue. I would like to see more support for local vicars, so that our small parishes, both rural and urban, are not left feeling that they are simply at the end of a very long list of priorities.
At General Synod, I would seek to be a practical, constructive and independent voice. I would listen carefully to the experiences of parishes across the Diocese of Winchester and seek to represent those concerns faithfully, while also engaging positively with the wider challenges and opportunities facing the Church of England.
I believe that the future of the Church is rooted in its local churches. Whatever their size, every parish matters. Rural churches may be small, but their contribution to the life and mission of the Church is not small.
I would be honoured to have the opportunity to bring the experience of a small rural parish to General Synod and to work with others to help ensure that our local parish churches have a sustainable and hopeful future.
Alison Mayne 2.9.26