- The Guardian,
- Thursday September 30 1999
Three clerics have been appointed "vicars of the net" in a pilot programme organising religious communities through common interest rather than on geographical lines. Sporting, business and telecommunication links will take the place of the traditional parish.
Three towns have already got seeding groups, with a mission to use discussion meetings, five-a-side football clubs and other unorthodox ways, to introduce Christianity to potential newcomers. The first group, the Parish of the Net, in west Yorkshire, will kick off with canapes and modest razzmatazz at the McAlpine stadium in Huddersfield.
"We're recognising the plain fact that geographical communities are no longer as coherent as lots of other networks," said David Male, the first net vicar, who will trawl the Wakefield diocese of Yorkshire for disciples. "We are re-thinking what a church should look like. It no longer has to be an historical building with a graveyard and steeple."
The pilot network parishes will be in Deal, Kent, and in Nottingham as well as Wake field. They will draw on Christ's instructions to his fishermen disciples to find a catch by "casting your nets on the other side". Funding for three-year stipends in each pilot area has been found following research that showed that 53% of British people no longer have any contact with a religious institution.
"This potentially new type of church recognises that today's society is very mobile, and that for many people the idea of community is not based on a particular locality but on networks and relationships," said Mr Male, who is 37 and previously was a parish vicar in Huddersfield.
"We've started a five-a-side team, which is building up contacts, and other church members have started meeting in a local art gallery and drawing people in there."
The net vicars will also use the internet to hold online church services, using websites and chat rooms, but much of their work will be in more conventional settings. Wakefield has built up three seeding groups of 10 members each whose first task is to double their size within a year.
George Ling, director of the Church of England's Sheffield centre, a think tank which devised the net vicars plan, said: "A wider, more accessible church needs at least one network parish in every town in the country.
