rural multi-parish benefice in the West Midlands is clear about this: One reason some of our core parishioners do not do more training is ... because many of them are fully part of the daily mission of the church just by being so involved in their communities: meals-on-wheels; visiting the sick or housebound; local transport rota; volunteer working in the post office; reading assistant in the primary school; after school club. I think telling them to get more training will draw them away from this, and give them the message that ‘official’ church stuff is more important than what they are already doing. I would far rather reinforce these things done locally than adopt largely unnecessary external training programmes, even when these are provided by the diocese.
• Significant numbers of respondents are very clear that encouraging lay people to learn is crucial, as is the existence of a supportive learning ethos within the church.
Lack of encouragement or support for lay learning and training One Anglican churchwarden from the West Midlands reveals: Our previous parish priest was very active in passing on opportunities for us [churchwardens] to go for training, or arranging little bits of training here. Since she has gone, and we have become part of a benefice of 8, this has just stopped dead. Being charitable, it may be that time is needed to cope with the rearrangements, but many of us now feel much less supported and more cut off. A West Midlands’ Methodist minister believes: The heart of Methodism is the lay people, but in some places I believe we just pay lip service to this. There is sometimes little recognition of what a circuit minister needs in order to encourage individual congregations to start learning again and taking more responsibility for their own ministry and mission. Dependence on the minister has become more widespread, and some congregations actively [collude] with their ministers and the district team in perpetuating this. There is a real element of lay disempowerment. An Anglican training provider from the West Midlands reveals: We aren’t really a learning church and we don’t really support effective discipleship and learning for [lay people] ... Without good [central diocesan] support I believe that rural churches are likely to suffer most in terms of lay discipleship. A strategic Baptist leader from the West Midlands suggests: In some churches, ordinary church members do not expect to learn. Partly this is historical, and is a leadership issue. But now it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy and some congregations resist opportunities to learn, despite the active encouragement of their pastors and other leaders.
Some respondents believe that not all such lack of encouragement or failure to support lay learning can be laid at the door of local or regional church leaders, or training providers. One Anglican priest talks of “the active indifference to training of some [lay] gatekeepers” in his parishes.
• By far the greatest concern for the lay people involves travel and distance, i.e. where training is made available. Every focus group mentions this, and all but two of
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