Growth at Any Cost? When the Church Chooses Numbers Over People
An opening note from the author…
This piece was written in response to an article that left me genuinely stunned. Published in Church Times on 22 January 2026, and titled “St Albans diocese plans to put faith and funding in Soul Survivor,” it is one of those moments where disbelief quickly gives way to a grim sense of recognition.
I was part of Soul Survivor back in 1997, first as a visitor and then as an employee, which makes what I’m reading both deeply personal and painfully familiar. When growth, numbers, and institutional survival are prioritised over people, the past is quietly parked, harm is minimised, and deeply flawed models are recycled under the comforting language of “learning lessons” and “moving forward.”
A WTF Moment
Let’s be absolutely clear: choosing Soul Survivor, Watford as a “missional engine” for church planting and growth is not bold, visionary leadership. It is staggering. And it should shock us far more than it seems to.
This is an organisation whose founder’s abuse was found to be ‘real, systemic, and enabled by a wholesale failure of culture. Generations of young people were not just harmed by one man, but by an organisation that protected power, prioritised growth, and ignored warning signs for years. That is not ancient history. This is not a distant chapter. It is NOW!
And yet, here we are again. Sigh!
Millions of pounds of funding. Expansion plans. Church plants. Revitalisations. Targets. Numbers. Projections. Growth curves. Algorithms predicting souls like a sales funnel.
All while survivors watch the institution that failed them get rewarded for being “successful”.
Why This, Why Now?
Why, of all the churches in the Diocese of St Albans, is Soul Survivor Watfor being positioned as a model to replicate?
Why is an organisation that has shattered trust, damaged lives, and exhausted its victims, still being treated as an asset rather than a warning?
And why does an ‘official corporate apology’ appear to be considered sufficient closure. Let’s pause on that phrase: “a corporate apology sent to survivors.”
These are not customers whose dishwasher broke.
These are not stakeholders mildly inconvenienced by poor service.
These are people whose lives were altered by abuse, coercion, and institutional failure.
An apology without direct, ongoing, material support is not repentance. It is administration.
Where is the long-term, survivor-led financial support? Where is the practical care? Where is the independent, ringfenced funding for therapy, advocacy, and rebuilding lives?
Where is the willingness to step back from power, influence, and growth while trust is rebuilt?
Words are cheap. Growth is expensive. And somehow, the money always seems to flow toward expansion rather than repair.
Business as Usual - Again
What this decision reveals is not renewal, but continuity. Once again, the Church of England looks to its most numerically successful branch, the young, evangelical, charismatic wing, and decides that the solution to decline is more of the same, just with better governance paperwork.
The logic is painfully familiar:
This bit grows.
Growth equals health.
Health equals blessing.
Therefore, replicate it.
And everyone else? The people who fell through the cracks? The young people who were hurt, manipulated, or abused? The exhausted survivors who no longer have the energy to shout into the void?
They become collateral damage in the Church’s obsession with numbers. Because here is the truth that no strategy document wants to name:
Many survivors are too tired to keep fighting.
Too hurt to speak again.
Too disillusioned to believe change is real.
And this decision reinforces exactly why.
Governance Is Not Healing
We are told that lessons have been learned, that governance has been strengthened, that accountability structures are now embedded, that a new Bishop’s Mission Order is in place.
But governance does not equal transformation. Structures do not equal humility. And safeguarding paperwork does not equal justice.
Fiona Scolding KC warned explicitly about the risks of growth, power, and unchecked influence, especially in church plants and new worshipping communities. Her report did not say “carry on, but with better forms”. It called for cultural change.
Yet what message does it send when the response to institutional abuse is:
“Let’s accelerate the model… under new leadership”?
Numbers Over Neighbours
Meanwhile, parishes that are young, diverse, economically deprived, and overstretched - places like parts of Luton, are told, implicitly or explicitly, that they lack “missional energy” or “capacity”.
Clergy and lay leaders working themselves into the ground with minimal resources are lectured by spreadsheets. Attendance declines are blamed on complacency. Complex social realities are reduced to metrics.
People are reduced to targets.
And the Church once again risks confusing counting people with caring for them.
The Question That Will Not Go Away
So I ask again, and trust me, I will keep asking:
Why is an organisation with this history being trusted to lead growth?
Why are survivors not being centred, funded, and supported as a priority?
Why does the Church keep choosing expansion over repair?
And why, after everything, does this still feel like business as usual?
If the Church truly believes in repentance, justice, and truth, then it must understand this:
You do not rebuild trust by scaling the very culture that broke it.
Until survivors see real, costly, sacrificial change, not just apologies and policies, every new church plant built on this foundation will carry the same unresolved question at its core:
Who is this growth really for?
And how many more people will fall through the net before the Church finally stops calling that “success”?
A closing note from the author…
Every day I’m reminded that I want to believe in a God of love and justice not a God of spin, strategy documents, or growth targets. A God who actually gives a damn about people.
Because prayer and worship and good works mean absolutely f*ck all if you refuse to stop, sit with people, listen to them, and face what’s been done in God’s name. If you won’t look properly at the harm caused, the lives damaged, the trust obliterated, then all of it is just noise. Pious, self-protective noise.
Soul Survivor and the Church of England’s response to Soul Survivor, continue to leave me furious and exhausted in equal measure. The lack of humility, the lack of understanding, the lack of real engagement with what they allowed to happen over decades is honestly breathtaking.
It’s an absolute and utter shambles and that still feels far too polite.
Most days it feels like banging my head against a brick wall. But you know what? If there’s even a chance that survivors might finally be heard, I’ll keep banging my head against that wall for as long as it takes. I’ll keep going until the wall cracks, until it collapses and until Soul Survivor and the Church of England finally grasp the gravity of what they enabled and allowed to happen.
Because silence is what got us here.
And I refuse to be part of that again.