Ministers to pull pints in pub to gather ‘diminishing flock’

Darran Lingley, owner of the Saint Arnold Pub Group, claims that pubs and churches share ‘very similar’ issues, despite bringing the community together in very different ways.

Five local ministers of the diocese of Colchester and Chelmsford will be working behind the bar at Great British Pub Awards finalist the Griffin, in Halstead, Essex, to meet their parishioners.

Lingley said: “It’s a chance for the church to get involved with pubs. We’re both very similar industries suffering from very similar problems, with lots of pubs and churches being converted to houses.”

He added: “We have diminishing flocks between the both us and we both uplift people’s souls.”

The event has been approved will take place towards the end of the year.

Lingley said a similar event was organised in 2014 when the Bishop of Chelmsford Steve Cottrell and the Colne Engaine vicar Peter Allan visited the pub to meet the local community.