Parish

[1] By extension the term parish refers not only to the territorial entity but to the people of its community or congregation as well as to church property within it.

First attested in English in the late 13th century, the word parish comes from the Old French paroisse, in turn from Latin: paroecia,[2] the Romanisation of the Ancient Greek: παροικία, romanized: paroikia, "sojourning in a foreign land",[3] itself from πάροικος (paroikos), "dwelling beside, stranger, sojourner",[4] which is a compound of παρά (pará), "beside, by, near"[5] and οἶκος (oîkos), "house".

The eighth Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore of Tarsus (c. 602–690) appended the parish structure to the Anglo-Saxon township unit, where it existed, and where minsters catered to the surrounding district.

An outstation is a newly created congregation, a term usually used where the church is evangelical, or a mission and particularly in African countries,[8][9] but also historically in Australia.

[8][9][11][12][13][14] The Anglican Diocese of Cameroon describes their outstations as the result of outreach work "initiated, sponsored and supervised by the mother parishes".

[19] An example is that of personal parishes established in accordance with the 7 July 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum for those attached to the pre-Vatican II liturgy.

[20] In the Lutheran Churches, parishes (Swedish: socken or församling) are territorial, meaning that they include the people living within its boundaries.

Church of England parishes nowadays all lie within one of 42 dioceses divided between the provinces of Canterbury, 30 and York, 12.

A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England, and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century.

[23] It had a similar status to a township but was so named as it had a chapel which acted as a subsidiary place of worship to the main parish church.

The group published its report ("Church in Wales Review") in July 2012 and proposed that parishes should be reorganised into larger Ministry Areas (Ardaloedd Gweinidogaeth).

In New Zealand, a local grouping of Methodist churches that share one or more ministers (which in the United Kingdom would be called a circuit) is referred to as a parish.