Should the Church of England in Lincoln or Leeds sell off some of its listed parish churches that now draw fewer than 20 worshippers on a Sunday, and if so, what should replace them for the local community?

Hello, I'm Wilson, and this one is yours alone today. The hardest question to answer is the one you don't ask! So let me put yours plainly. In places like Lincoln and Leeds, the Church of England has old, listed parish churches where fewer than twenty people turn up on a Sunday morning. Should it sell some of them, and if it does, what should take their place for the people who live around them? That sounds like a question about religion, or perhaps about money. I think it is really a question about who a building belongs to, and that is where most people go wrong. The common picture is simple. The church is the congregation's building, the congregation has shrunk, so the building has outlived its purpose. Count the heads in the pews, look at the repair bill, and the sum seems to do itself. But a parish church in England was never meant to be only the home of the people who come on Sunday. The whole idea of the parish is that it serves everyone who lives within its boundary, believer or not, churchgoer or not. That is why people who never attend a service still feel a …