A group of churches in Southend, Essex, is getting money from a Church of England fund to help grow congregations in the area.
The Diocese of Chelmsford - the CofE's regional body covering Essex and east London - has been given £1.6 million by the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB), a national grant-making body for growth projects.
It's the first step in a bigger plan to boost church attendance in the wider Bradwell region, starting in Southend. A further £3.6 million has already been informally agreed, and the diocese plans to ask for up to £7.8 million more to fund similar work in Basildon and Thurrock, two areas the diocese says have growing populations but have historically had too little invested in their churches.
The immediate use of the money is to fund a "revitalisation" relaunching a struggling or declining church with a new leadership team and fresh approach at St Andrew's, Westcliff.
This is the fourth such relaunch in Southend in recent years, and it builds on an approach that's already shown great results.
Back in 2018, a team of church planters from the nearby evangelical church, St Michael and All Angels, took over St John's in central Southend, one of the poorest parishes in the country, with some funding from an earlier national scheme.
Since then, average weekly attendance there has grown from 41 to 190 people, a quarter of whom had never been to church before.
St John's later did the same thing at Christ Church, Southend, in 2022, and now a team led by Revd Linda Saville has planted a new congregation at St Andrew's.
Though a success story, a paper prepared for this month's General Synod warns that dioceses nationwide are likely to ask for more grant money than the Board actually has available.
A separate national review of how ministry is funded flagged a bigger underlying problem: issues like falling clergy numbers, diocesan deficits, and whether individual parishes can survive financially are too big to fix with short-term grants alone.
The report said future funding approaches need to be grounded in what's actually happening, especially in rural and low-income parishes, where the pressure is greatest.