THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND TODAY

The Church Commissioners Report for 2001-2002

The Church of England lives out its ministry and mission to the nation in every parish and diocese in England and across the Diocese in Europe.

 The Church of England has 44 dioceses. More than 13,000 parishes make up the 43 dioceses covering all of England, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Isles of Scilly and a small part of Wales; a further 270 congregations make up the Diocese in Europe. The Church of England is the mother church of the 38 self-governing churches of the Anglican Communion in a total of 164 countries.

 Every Sunday, an average of one million people worship in the Church of England's 16,000 churches. The first results of the department of Research and Statistics' new data collection showed that, in any week, between 0.86 million and 1.86 million people worship in the Church of England. There are thousands of Church of England societies, trusts, networks and fellowships in parishes, dioceses, schools, colleges and in the community - from the smallest prayer groups to the major overseas mission agencies such as USPG and CMS, voluntary societies such as the Mothers' Union or the Church of England Children's Society and sponsored agencies such as Christian Aid.

 The Church of England has more than 25,000 licensed ministers. About 9,500 are stipendiary clergy, including 114 bishops. Just over 2,000 are non-stipendiary ministers or ordained local ministers and more than 10,300 are Readers. There are nearly 300 Church Army Evangelists and 100 stipendiary Lay Workers. Some 1,250 are Chaplains in industry, hospitals, the Forces, schools, colleges and prisons and around 100 are ordained members of religious communities.

 More than 4,800 retired clergy have a continuing role in parish ministry and there are some 32,000 churchwardens and scores of hundreds of parish administrators and lay ministry teams.

 In 2002, there are more than 1,400 ordinands in theological colleges and regional courses and schemes and more than 1,300 in Reader training.

Extracted from 'A Year in Review', published by The Communications Unit, Church House, on behalf of the Archbishops' Council, the Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board. For copies of the full report go to www.cofe.anglican.org or telephone 020 7898 1621.