[The Church of England] More than 30 people have been trained so far as lay leaders as part of an ongoing project to support rural parishes backed by Church of England national funding.

The Growing Rural Parishes program in the Diocese of Winchester began work with three multi parish benefices – made up of up to 22 churches in total – offering them the chance to choose how they’d like to modernize and grow. The project has provided features such as improved broadband connection and portable Wi-Fi, along with updated websites and branding, contact-less giving and centralized administrative services to the churches.

Jon Whale, project officer, said that as a result, churches were freed to do more mission work and set up more church services while also experimenting with new means of evangelization and outreach. In one case a church hosted a “pop-up” pub on weekends while a village pub was temporarily closed.

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