Few things are more powerful than the idea whose time has come.

For years the MP Frank Field has championed a proposal for a National Trust for Churches, aimed at harnessing the immense affection for historic churches up and down the land. Recently he put a proposal to the National Trust whereby its members would be given the option to pay an extra £10, which would go to a fund to help historic churches in need. But it is an idea the trust has treated with caution. It already has colossal responsibilities and has every reason to safeguard its name.

Enter Sir Roy Strong, who sounded an impassioned warning note (which won him a mighty ovation) on the threats to English country churches in a talk he gave last summer: “To me, in heritage terms, the 20th century was about saving the country house and the 21st century will be about saving our great historic churches.

“Our problem,” he said, “lies with the thousands of churches in villages from which the village shop, post office, school and, in some cases, even the pub have gone and public transport virtually evaporated.”

Strong believes the way to provide a new spark to country churches is to bring back the community — adding provocatively that, if need be, he’s all in favour of a bonfire of kipper-coloured (Victorian) pews.

For Strong, this is unfinished business. When he arrived at the V&A as director, he commissioned three big campaigning exhibitions: The Destruction of the Country House, Change & Decay: the Future of our Churches and The Garden.

Strong has always felt that the churches exhibition dipped beside the others, outrun as it was by a simultaneous Fabergé exhibition. Yet within a month of opening the Government announced the first grants for church repairs — a programme which, through English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, has provided more than £200m for church repairs.

The churches crisis in 1977 grew partly from the very formal procedures by which churches were declared redundant, causing heartbreak in many parishes. Redundancy can be a blunt instrument and is a process as fraught as proposed closures of railway lines.

The present Bishop of London set aside plans put to his predecessor for closing up to 27 City churches in favour of finding a wider and more varied range of people to use them. His success is inspiring.

Strong believes that many people are bewildered by the number of church preservation bodies. These range from those that take on redundant or disused churches – the Churches Conservation Trust (more than 325 former parish churches) the enterprising Friends of Friendless Churches (38 churches and chapels in England and Wales) and the Historic Chapels Trust (17 Nonconformist and Catholic churches).

Then there are the County Churches Trusts, which mount the splendid annual sponsored bike rides and walks that began in Suffolk and now take place in 31 counties. The county trusts spring from the venerable Historic Churches Preservation Trust, which gives up to £10,000 in urgent cases. Even so, HCPT membership, at 1,400, is small. The Art Fund, for example, now has 80,000 members.

The question is: could a new organisation, such as Frank Field and Roy Strong are talking of, provide a more powerful banner for both the public and important donors? Roy Strong sees the aims of any new body as being first to encourage new and imaginative ways of using church buildings, with an annual prize for the most enterprising church or congregation.

It should also tell the story of churches, not just in terms of their architectural features but the way they were used. The body should also stimulate new arts and crafts in churches. To these I would add finding ways of sharing or transferring the cost of caring for churches in dire need to groups of friends or special trusts. These could operate for individual churches or for groups, like the Romney Marshes Historic Churches Trust or the Friends of the City Churches.

The big challenge is to find a name that resonates. Perhaps the best so far is “The Friends of the English Country Church”. Strong says: “You get a response to English country churches. It’s an icon in many people’s minds; the tower or steeple nestling in the heart of the village.”

Of course, it is true that some of the most endangered churches are in cities. But Strong is adamant that the movement should begin with the country church, principally the Anglican parish church but embracing the meeting house and the chapel.

You have only to look at the success of Simon Jenkins’s book, England’s 1,000 Best Churches, or the response to English Heritage’s “Inspired!” campaign to see whether, if the idea took off, the Friends could be a substantial new source of funds, potentially attracting a large membership and bringing in some impressive donations and, in due course, legacies.

Clearly it is vital that a new organisation should not trespass on the funding or work of existing bodies but rather help them. It also needs the support of leading Church figures, which Roy Strong, as High Bailiff of Westminster Abbey, is well placed to seek.

Roy Strong will give the Gresham Special Lecture on The Beauty of Holiness and its Perils(or “What is to happen to 10,000 parish churches?”) in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral at 6pm on May 30.

See www.gresham.ac.uk, click on “lectures and events”

Marcus Binney is President of SAVE Britain’s Heritage