Sustainable Worship Programme Starting March 1st 2026

Over the last few weeks I have been looking at the current worship offering on a Sunday morning. Looking at it in detail, I have come to the conclusion that it is unsustainable for the current and future staffing of the ministry area. We currently have 8 services running on a Sunday morning; the maximum number of services a priest can do is 3 in one morning. So we can only run 6 services maximum without relying on retired clergy. This also assumes that neither priest will take time off or be sick.

This presents us with three options:

Option 1: Pledge to pay £150,000 per year in common fund and appoint 3 Priests

We currently pledge £104,000 in common fund and last year only paid around 60% of this. The common fund is calculated on the number of priests in a ministry area, where £104,000 equates to two full time priests. We could pledge £150,000 to the diocese and hope that they agree to posting 3 priests. I don’t think the diocese will agree to this and I don’t think it is possible to pay £150,000 in fairer share.

Option 2: Ask two churches to only hold worship fortnightly

We ask two churches in the MA to only have services every other week. We ask St James to only hold services at 8:30am This will drop the weekly services to 6 which would be sustainable.

Option 3: Train a new lay ministry team to take 4 services per month

We train a team of lay worship leaders to take services of the word and café church services. This will reduce the number of communion services to 5 or 6 on a Sunday which will be sustainable.

These three options were discussed at the MAC meeting on 27^th Jan. Option 1 & 2 were rejected unanimously.

Option 1: Increase common fund giving to £150,000 and ask for 3 Priests. The MAC felt that increasing payments to the common fund to £150,000 was unrealistic.

Option 2: Ask two churches to only hold worship fortnightly. It was felt that this would cause confusion as people would forget when the services were on at any given church.

Option 3: Train a new lay ministry team to take 4 services per month. This was passed with 11 in favour and one against. Below is the plan for making option 3 a reality and which services are affected. These changes will come into effect on 1^st March 2026.

Lay Worship Leaders:

In Lichfield Diocese there are many official Lay Worship Leaders who are commissioned by the Bishop to lead morning worship but not preach. No such programme exists in Llandaff diocese but in conversation with the Archdeacon she told me that this is happening in practice already. The Archdeacon has agreed that I can train lay worship leaders locally in an apprenticeship system. The lay worship leaders will be trained and begin to take services as part of this training. The course I taught in Lichfield was 8 sessions long, where we studied the theory and practice of worship. Several people have already stepped forward to take the course and the services. I believe that we could begin this system from March.

I believe this is far better than trying to keep the current system afloat as it will offer an opportunity for the faith development of the lay ministers and form a team that will be able to work across the ministry area.

The midweek services will be unaffected.

St Fagan’s, St Luke’s and St Elvan’s are unaffected by these changes.    

In addition to this I have spoken to the Sub Wardens at St John’s and given that the Thursday morning service is far better attended than the Sunday service, we agreed to drop the 9am Sunday service at St Johns.

The table below shows the proposed worship patter across the MA.  Every month the Priests would swop to do the mirror image of the rota below.

	Sunday 1	Sunday 2	Sunday 3	Sunday 4
St James 8:30		Priest 1		Priest 2
St Fagans 9:30	Priest 1	Priest 1	Priest 2	Priest 2
St Lleurwgs 9:30	Café church	Priest 2	Lay Minster	Priest 1
St Matthews 9:30	Priest 2	Lay Minister	Priest 1	Lay Minister
St Lukes 11	Reader	Priest 1	Priest 2	Retired Priest
St James 11	Lay Minister		Reader
St Winifreds 11	Priest 2	Priest 2	Café Church	Priest 1
St Elvans 11	Priest 1	Retired Priest	Priest 1	Priest 2
Contemporary Mass St Elvans 6pm			Priest 1
Shine at 6 (Youth Mass) 6pm	Priest 2

Currently we only have one Priest and Peter Godsall has agreed to do two services per Sunday until the MAL arrives. When the MAL arrives Peter w