Speeding up the Tortoise
"Church of England weighs up cull of bishops" screamed the headline in today's Sunday Times.
The article went on to say "The Church of England is to begin a rethink of its role which is expected to lead to a 'massive shrinkage' in the number of dioceses and parish churches that it runs - and could even mean that it had dozens fewer bishops."
This shouldn't come as any surprise. It has been blindingly obvious to many people for some time that the Church of England currently has far too many churches, many of them unsustainable, and that it would make sense to merge some dioceses, to slim down the administrative infra-structure and to move towards a majority of parochial clergy being self-supporting.
The famous hymn parody says "Like a mighty tortoise moves the church of God" and it is certainly true that the Church of England moves slowly on many things, especially those issues that are contentious. The economic fallout of the Covid-19 crisis for the C of E is likely to be considerable, and if the forecasts are right, this will catapult the church into grasping the nettle of 'rationalisation' around which it has nervously tiptoed for so long.
It is the incoming Archbishop of York -The Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell - who has been tasked with leading the review of the existing 42 English dioceses. He strikes me as a man who knows his own mind and is unafraid of controversy. Indeed when his former diocese of Chelsmford lost a major subsidy of £3.1million from central church funds, he insisted that individual parishes wanting a full-time (stipendiary) priest should find the neccessary funding otherwise they would have to be lay-led or rely on self-supporting ministers. I don't plan to discuss the rights or wrongs of that stance here, but I suspect he has been charged with exercising similar ruthlessness in the unenviable task with which he is now entrusted.
Of course there are many businesses and organisations that have been hit hard by the economic impact of Covid-19. Some have already gone under and many others will doubtless follow. Others will need to downsize and/or adapt to new ways of working. This will all be at significant and painful human cost in terms of redundancies, but this is an inevitable part of the huge tragedy that Covid-19 brings in its wake.
The organisations that will survive best will almost certainly be those that act quickly and with surgical precision. It is difficult to imagine the C of E being in this group, for a number of reasons.
First there is the church's tendency to tiptoe rather than to stride forward confidently. To be fair, this isn't entirely down to its innate tendency to dither. If it is to be true to its beliefs, it has to act - and be seen to act - with a caring and pastoral heart. This is a real challenge when making radical decisions about people's livelihoods or the future of places of worship that have been loved and treasured by their local community for generations.
Second, the merging of dioceses and the closure of parish churches is no simple process, especially where there is opposition (as there almost certainly will be in most cases.) There is complex legislation to negotiate and enough red tape involved to tie everyone up for years.
As it stands, the Church is in no position to take swift, surgical action. Indeed, those of us involved in parish ministry are already shaking our heads in wry amusement at some of the ideas that are allegedly being mooted to make our churches more hygienic and safe as we emerge from 'lockdown'. We're possibly going to be told that people should be washing their hands as they enter and leave church, that pews should be removed, that hymn books and service booklets shouldn't be used, thus necessitating the installation (and operation) of IT equipment. In principle this is fine, but the archaic (and some would say absurd) system of ecclesiastical permissions that currently exists would first need to be radically streamlined - or better still, scrapped - if implementing these changes is not to take months, even years or, in many cases, be totally sabotaged.
The same problem will apply with any 'pruning' of dioceses, parishes or buildings.
Unless by some miracle the economic landscape into which we emerge is less bleak than anticipated, I really don't envy those who will have the thankless task of leading the church over the coming months and years.
I'm no canon lawyer, and I've proudly spent a lifetime studiously avoiding anything bearing the name 'synod' that wasn't compulsory, but it seems to me that the church needs to legislate quickly and urgently to combat the Tortoise Syndrome that might otherwise prove fatal. Maybe disestablishment would be the first courageous and radical step on this journey. I really don't know; but I do know that the new Archbishop of York and those working with him will certainly need our prayers in the days ahead. I wish them well.
The article went on to say "The Church of England is to begin a rethink of its role which is expected to lead to a 'massive shrinkage' in the number of dioceses and parish churches that it runs - and could even mean that it had dozens fewer bishops."
This shouldn't come as any surprise. It has been blindingly obvious to many people for some time that the Church of England currently has far too many churches, many of them unsustainable, and that it would make sense to merge some dioceses, to slim down the administrative infra-structure and to move towards a majority of parochial clergy being self-supporting.
The famous hymn parody says "Like a mighty tortoise moves the church of God" and it is certainly true that the Church of England moves slowly on many things, especially those issues that are contentious. The economic fallout of the Covid-19 crisis for the C of E is likely to be considerable, and if the forecasts are right, this will catapult the church into grasping the nettle of 'rationalisation' around which it has nervously tiptoed for so long.
It is the incoming Archbishop of York -The Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell - who has been tasked with leading the review of the existing 42 English dioceses. He strikes me as a man who knows his own mind and is unafraid of controversy. Indeed when his former diocese of Chelsmford lost a major subsidy of £3.1million from central church funds, he insisted that individual parishes wanting a full-time (stipendiary) priest should find the neccessary funding otherwise they would have to be lay-led or rely on self-supporting ministers. I don't plan to discuss the rights or wrongs of that stance here, but I suspect he has been charged with exercising similar ruthlessness in the unenviable task with which he is now entrusted.
Of course there are many businesses and organisations that have been hit hard by the economic impact of Covid-19. Some have already gone under and many others will doubtless follow. Others will need to downsize and/or adapt to new ways of working. This will all be at significant and painful human cost in terms of redundancies, but this is an inevitable part of the huge tragedy that Covid-19 brings in its wake.
The organisations that will survive best will almost certainly be those that act quickly and with surgical precision. It is difficult to imagine the C of E being in this group, for a number of reasons.
First there is the church's tendency to tiptoe rather than to stride forward confidently. To be fair, this isn't entirely down to its innate tendency to dither. If it is to be true to its beliefs, it has to act - and be seen to act - with a caring and pastoral heart. This is a real challenge when making radical decisions about people's livelihoods or the future of places of worship that have been loved and treasured by their local community for generations.
Second, the merging of dioceses and the closure of parish churches is no simple process, especially where there is opposition (as there almost certainly will be in most cases.) There is complex legislation to negotiate and enough red tape involved to tie everyone up for years.
As it stands, the Church is in no position to take swift, surgical action. Indeed, those of us involved in parish ministry are already shaking our heads in wry amusement at some of the ideas that are allegedly being mooted to make our churches more hygienic and safe as we emerge from 'lockdown'. We're possibly going to be told that people should be washing their hands as they enter and leave church, that pews should be removed, that hymn books and service booklets shouldn't be used, thus necessitating the installation (and operation) of IT equipment. In principle this is fine, but the archaic (and some would say absurd) system of ecclesiastical permissions that currently exists would first need to be radically streamlined - or better still, scrapped - if implementing these changes is not to take months, even years or, in many cases, be totally sabotaged.
The same problem will apply with any 'pruning' of dioceses, parishes or buildings.
Unless by some miracle the economic landscape into which we emerge is less bleak than anticipated, I really don't envy those who will have the thankless task of leading the church over the coming months and years.
I'm no canon lawyer, and I've proudly spent a lifetime studiously avoiding anything bearing the name 'synod' that wasn't compulsory, but it seems to me that the church needs to legislate quickly and urgently to combat the Tortoise Syndrome that might otherwise prove fatal. Maybe disestablishment would be the first courageous and radical step on this journey. I really don't know; but I do know that the new Archbishop of York and those working with him will certainly need our prayers in the days ahead. I wish them well.
Very many thanks for another superlative post!
ReplyDeleteI had drafted legislation allowing for the partial disendowment of the Commissioners, with the expropriated capital being vested in an agency of DDCMS in which the bulk of the buildings would be vested, with the Church gaining a perpetual free right of use in exchange. The Commissioners would be compensated by transferring all parochial and diocesan assets to them and effectively abolishing all the dioceses save as pastoral agencies. The intention was to realise economies of scale all round and somehow maintain the Church's USP as a provider of spiritual services to the nation.
The crisis, by extinguishing the parish share, has created a zero sum game in which the stipendiaries are pitted against the buildings: a dreadful dilemma. Does the Church benefit this generation of agents (paid clergy) at the expense of future generations of principals (congregations)?
The public urgently need educating about Church finance. Misconceptions abound. My assumption is that the Commissioners' assets will have been gutted by: (i) diocesan subventions/loans which are unlikely to be redeemed; (ii) the savaging of the stock markets; and (iii) the secular decline in commercial property resulting from a long-term shift to home-working. The dioceses, needless to say, are insolvent. In effect, the crisis has effectively repealed the Pensions Measure 1997 which passed the liability for prospective accruals from the Commissioners to the dioceses.
So, I would suggest:
1. An immediate freeze on new ordinations except on an SSM basis, with the closure of residential courses and a move to continuous career-long learning using e-libraries and other forms of virtual education.
2. An immediate freeze on clergy pay/rations, possibly with a cut to the NMS.
3. All clergy below the rank of diocesan bishop to undertake parochial work.
4. The equalisation of all clergy pay and rations (bishops to get the same as curates).
5. A cut to entitlements for retirees.
6. The CEFPS to be made contributory - all clergy to contribute 10%, the scheme becoming DC rather than DB.
7. The indexation of the CEFPS to be abolished.
8. The abolition of all administrative and financial functions of the dioceses.
9. The consolidation of all parochial and diocesan assets in the Commissioners.
10. The creation of a voluntary buildings levy (since voluntary church rate was not abolished in 1868), which could be administered by HMRC and which perhaps could function to support other buildings of architectural/historic worth.
11. The partial disendowment of the Commissioners (though at a lesser level than had previously been envisaged) to fund a national agency, to which the proceeds of the voluntary levy would be transferred.
12. The clergy to depend upon what subsistence they can drive from the laity via contributions and the profits of the consolidated funds held by the Commissioners.
13. A progressive shift to SSM ministry, with readers, pastoral assistants, youth leaders and churchwardens being given greater powers and initiative to lead worship. The target should be no more than about 3,000 stipendiaries (hopefully fewer) by the end of the decade, if not before.
14. Disestablishment.
15. The Commissioners and Synod to move from central London to somewhere in the Midlands.
Apologies for the gross impertinence.