A MOVE that could change the face of the church in Cumbria has come a step closer.

The Church of England, United Reformed Church and Methodists have been considering plans to work more closely together for the last year.

Ninety of around 100 of the Diocese of Carlisle's Synod voted to support the plans, which would see the 270 parishes in the diocese gradually group together with the other two denominations to form about 40 “Mission Communities”.

The Rt Rev James Newcome, Bishop of Carlisle, said the move was intended to create “communities of churches, getting on with serving and reaching out to their communities”.

Diocesan spokesman the Venerable Richard Pratt, Archdeacon of West Cumberland, said exactly how the Mission Communities would be divided and how the churches would collaborate was yet to be decided.

“One thing we want is for the mission communities to pray together and be much more outward looking and innovative,” he said.

“We want them to be thinking about different ways of offering the church to people near them and how to attract new members.”

This could include shared worship, collaboration on providing community services or shared use of buildings.

It may result in the change of use or even the sale of some religious buildings as the churches began working more closely together, said Mr Pratt.

“We have got to take it very gently and I think the key thing is to trial things and see what people like and what they don’t,” he said.

Rev Carole Marsden, of the Kendal United Reformed Church, said she was “very pleased” to hear the news and hoped it would mean the various churches could work together to serve the community.

“We have done research and what comes out very strongly is that people would rather have someone working in their community from a different tradition, rather than having someone who travels miles who is from a certain denomination,” she said.

Clergy in the Kendal area had met and had “informal chats” about the plans, but more formal meetings were being planned.

Revd Canon Angela Whittaker, rural dean for Kendal, said the strategy put the emphasis on working together “as Christians” rather than within individual church traditions.

Christians from all the denominations would also be “looking out and reaching out, breaking new ground and refocusing our efforts in some areas”.

“It's not just the Anglicans being encouraged to work together and to support each other but us working ecumenically too, ie. working with other Christians from other churches,” she said.

Methodist Minister the Rev Wendy Thornton, who is part of the Kendal circuit, and based in Sandylands, said there was already a lot of collaborative work happening among churches in the area.

This included schemes like the King's Food Bank founded by members of the King's Church but supported by churches from a variety of traditions.

It would ultimately be up to local churches what form the Mission Community in the area took, she said.

"There will be a period of growing together and working out what that means for them in practice and it could look quite different in every locality," she said.