Sentamu
warns of 
arguments

Dr John Sentamu compared wrangling within the Church to “re-arranging furniture when the house is on fire” saying people were being left “amid meaninglessness, anxiety and despair” as the church failed to evangelise, or get its Christian message across.

“Compared with evangelism, everything else is like re-arranging furniture when the house is on fire,” he said. “Tragically too often that is what we are doing. Reorganising the structures, arguing over words and phrases, while the people of England are left floundering amid meaninglessness, anxiety and despair.”

The criticism from Dr Sentamu, the second most senior cleric in the Church, was made as the General Synod backed a new task group to work on boosting congregations.

The move came after the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, told a conference in Shropshire at the weekend that more must done to attract the young with the Church “one generation away from extinction.”

“As I look at the church today the most urgent and worrying gap is in young people’s work,” he said. “So many churches have no ministry to young people and that means they have no interest in the future. As I have repeated many times in the past ‘we are one generation away from extinction’.”

The Bishop of Sodor and Man, the Rt Rev Robert Paterson, also said potential members were put off by the Church of England’s “internalising” tendency.