Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, yesterday called for an overhaul of the traditional parish system of the Church of England to meet the needs of modern society.
The call came during the archbishop's address at a service in Westminster Abbey to mark the 300th anniversary of the original national model for funding parishes - known as Queen Anne's Bounty - which in some ways still persists today.
Unusually bluntly for such a ceremonial occasion, Dr Williams said he believed the church needed to redirect its money towards its mission in the community. An attempt to shave funding from wealthier bishops and their cathedrals to help pay for that at the church's general synod this year was thrown out.
The archbishop told the congregation of church worthies and diocesan represen tatives: "We know that our much-loved and treasured parochial system is not equipped to meet all the challenges of young, mobile populations, whose patterns of life and work are not those of their parents' and grandparents' generations.
"We need to ask what resources can be put at the service of new things - not just in the form of supplementary funding for parish ministry, but in the shape of seed money for mission initiatives."
Although he told them that the church commissioners, who handle its finances and a decade ago lost £500m in ill-advised property speculation, and church leaders would be "idiots" to leave parish ministry exposed or neglected, Dr Williams nevertheless sketched out ways churchgoing might be revived.
"It is for dioceses to think creatively about how to connect the old and the new, to encourage traditional parishes to share prayer and energy with new initiatives in church life, and above all to help break down the perennial suspicion between the historic mainstream and the risk-taking innovators.
"Ultimately we cannot pretend to be living as the body of Christ if we do not constantly scrutinise what we have that can and should be at the service of others less visibly resourced, whether this is money, personnel or skill."
The archbishop's words contrasted starkly with the pomp of an occasion during which a stately procession of bishops, clergy and the church estates commissioners, Andreas Whittam Smith and Sir Stuart Bell, the Labour MP who speaks on behalf of the church in the Commons, made their way to Queen Anne's grave in the abbey's Lady Chapel to lay flowers and say prayers.
The service commemorates the 18th-century queen's decision to return ecclesiastical finances confiscated by Henry VIII and direct them towards impoverished clergy and dilapidated parishes.