Massive funding of poorest parishes demanded by Save the Parish
At the Save the Parish Conference
in York (Thursday 6 July 2023) , its chairman, the Revd Marcus Walker, unveiled a
proposal he will be presenting to the Church of England’s General Synod
next week to pump £150,000,000 a year into the poorest parishes of the
Church of England, revitalising them for mission and saving them from
the risk of closure.
An
amendment to the motion on GS2314 (Note 1) will force the Synod to
decide whether the Church intends to fulfil its twin promises “to be a
Christian presence in every community” and “to give priority to the
poor”.
The amendment would have the following effects:
1)
This will turn the present £50 million “Lower Income Communities Fund”
into something that actually sends money to lower income communities. As
the Chote Report (Note 2) specified, “Most dioceses in receipt of LInC
distribute the funding to their poorest parishes by formula through the
parish share system, sometimes with a top-slice to fund relevant
diocese-wide spending. But some dioceses treat LInC income more as part
of general resources.”
2)
The money being sent to lower income communities will be turbocharged
by £100million from the failed SDF scheme. Strategic Development Funding
was introduced in 2014 as a way that the central church could fund
projects they predicted would bring in new worshippers. In 2022 the
former head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Sir Robert Chote,
published his analysis of the success of this scheme: with £176 million
earmarked to be spent attracting an estimated 89,000 new churchgoers,
the end result was just over 12,000 “new witnessed disciples”. Despite
the project catastrophically failing in its intentions, it was given
vastly more funding over the nine years of the current budget, with £100
million set aside for these projects. That money would be
transformative at a local level, and we want to target it right at the
heart of the CofE.
3)
The poorest parishes of the Church of England may be found in the
dioceses with the least resources to support them. Two surveys from
Greater Manchester and Glasgow tell us that poor areas suffer most from
church closures (Note 3). The dioceses tend to link a parish’s ability
to afford a priest to their own willingness to provide clergy, but
having only “priests for the rich” is profoundly immoral. What this
scheme would do is ringfence the funding for our poorest parishes and
remove any incentive to cut their priests or close their buildings - as
they are the ones with the guaranteed money!
4)
This scheme would further benefit poorer parishes by giving them a
“jubilee” from their debts to the diocese, freeing up resources to spend
on their communities and bringing people to Christ.
5)
All the churches of the diocese would benefit by this explosion of
money into the Church of England ecosystem, enabling dioceses to reduce
parish shares across the board, or to develop their own, homegrown,
schemes to target growth and new projects.
The
Revd Marcus Walker said, “Now’s the time for the Church to put its
money where its mouth is. We know that churches grow when they have
enough clergy to staff them and we know that the churches which are most
at risk from cuts are the poorest parishes in each diocese, now Synod
has the chance to fund the revitalisation and renewal of the communities
most in need of good parish ministry. Let’s stop wasting money on the
bishops’ pet projects and reacquaint outselves with the basics of being a
church - and the Church of England at that.”
Notes to editors:
1) The motion reads as follows:
'(f)
request the Archbishops' Council to support the above by preparing
proposals for the next triennium, for consideration by this Synod in
July 2024, that would:
i)
restructure lowest income communities (LINC) funding so that it is
measured and spent (until the fund is exhausted) directly on covering
one stipendiary post in each of the most deprived parishes, with
parishes being given priority in order of their level or deprivation,
the most deprived being given the highest priority;
ii)
ensure that where money is granted to a parish by LINC, the PCC will
not be asked, by way of its common fund assessment, to contribute to any
costs being met by LINC;
iii)
redirect all Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment( SMMI)/Strategic
Development Funding (SDF) into LINC to augment that fund by the amount
already promised by the Church Commissioners for SMMI/SDF purposes;
or set out other proposals for achieving similar objectives.
2) The Chote Report can be found here: https://www.
3) The two reports showing poorer parishes were more at risk of closure than richer parishes can be found here: https://www.ekklesia.co.
4) A recording of the event will go up on our website in due course.
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