The Carnmarth North deanery synod to approve its On The Way cost-cutting plan has failed to meet Episcopal College approval - for reasons that remain unclear. Last month a shambolic synod approved the plan - despite an admitted lack of consultation with congregations previously. Click here to read the original plan.
Rural Dean Caspar Bush circulated an email yesterday saying the original plan had been rejected by the Episcopal College over the MMF (Mission and Ministry Fund) budget deficit it envisaged. This despite the fact that the Bishop of St Germans, the Rt Rev Hugh Nelson. micro-managed the development of the plan from the start.
A deanery synod to approve the revised version is scheduled for 8 September 2022.
Rev Bush's email reads:
To: Carnmarth North Deanery Synod reps and other interested parties
This email is to update you on On the Way, and to set a new date for our next Synod. We apologise that once again it has been necessary to postpone this Synod which was to have been held on 26th July. The new date is 7pm on Thursday 8th September 2023, venue to be confirmed.
On 30th June the steering group for the On the Way process met with Bishops Philip and Hugh, Archdeacon Paul and Diocesan Secretary Simon Cade (the key members of Episcopal College for this subject) to present the deanery OtW plan that Synod had voted to support on 15th June.
The vision element of our plan could not have been more warmly received, and EC was complimentary about the way our plan had been put together and the way the whole process was communicated to the deanery. However, the EC was not able to approve the large MMF budget deficit in the plan. They said that the essential problem is that the diocese needs to be fair (and seen to be fair) to all deaneries, so if they lived with our budget deficit, they would have had to be willing to do the same in other deaneries, when a key part of this entire OtW process is to deal with the diocese MMF deficit. Because of key people's holidays etc, we are not able to meet with EC again until 21st July, at which meeting we are hoping to come up with other ways we can settle this matter.
To keep you in the picture, there are various possible financial avenues we will explore:
1. There might be a bit of extra diocesan finance via TM Camborne to pay something towards the fifth stipendiary priest.
2. We could use some of our £160,000 LICF to support the MMF deficit, though that would require us to reduce what we spend on new LICF-type lay posts.
3. We can prepare applications for the new Church Commissioners money announced in mid-May in the hope and expectation that posts like the Christians Against Poverty worker(s), the Parish Nurse and perhaps the Children and Families worker could be funded from this alternative income stream. We expect more information about this funding stream in October 2023.
4. We could go back to deanery churches to see whether the cumulative total forecast MMF giving in 2023 could be increased somewhat from £210,000.
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