Diocese admits Transforming Mission failures

 Click here to read the Diocesan response to a question from Synod member Jo Heydon asking for more information about the controversial Transforming Mission schemes in five Cornish towns, which have swallowed up hundreds of thousands of Church Commissioners' funds and Diocesan reserves.  For the first time - after years of avoiding the question and deliberate obfuscation - the Diocese publicly admits that these expensive schemes have failed to reach their target.  These schemes were championed by the former Bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen.

The minutes of our September (Diocesan Synod) meeting record Simon Taurin’s request

for more information about Transforming Mission. No further information has, as yet,

been made public. This is a serious matter. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds of

Diocesan reserves and Church Commissioners’ funds have already been spent on this

controversial project which has apparently failed to bring in large numbers of new

worshippers and expected increased donations. Before Synod approves any further

substantial sums being laid out on Transforming Mission (c£560k is budgeted in 2025), can

we see a thorough analysis of benefits delivered by TM to date and a comparison of

targets reached v. the original objectives stated in funding bids for each of the five

centres in Cornwall i.e. Falmouth, Cambourne, Highertown, St Austell and Liskeard?

Jo Heydon Trigg Minor with Bodmin

 

Response from Justin Day, Chair of the Diocesan Board of Finance

Thank you Jo for your question.

You are right to identify that significant resources continue to be committed to the five

“Transforming Mission” (TM) projects. In the 2025 draft budget the total net cost of this

work to the DBF is just under £200k with the balance of the funding coming from the

National Church through “SDF” funding. This is grant funding for that work, the diocese

can’t just spend it on something else.

We are asked, from time to time, to publish detailed analysis of TM outputs and we have

always resisted doing so. It is important that you and members of Synod understand why

we don’t publish that sort of data about TM or about other parishes.

Almost every parish and benefice in the diocese is funded through a mixture of local,

diocesan and national funding. Every deanery receives significant national and diocesan

funds, this is always tied to clear and agreed expectations of what the money is for and

what the outcomes are that we are looking to see for that spending. The same 2025 draft

budget allocates £350k to the non-TM deaneries (including your deanery) to support

mission, and almost £1million of national funding across all the deaneries to support

mission specifically in communities experiencing deprivation.

We collect data from every deanery, and specifically from everywhere where TM funding,

Mission Funding, and Lowest Income Communities Funding is used. We need to know what

works and what does not, and we think that it is important to share best practice and

particularly to celebrate work that might be mirrored elsewhere, you will see some of that

at this Synod. We hold one another to account for how we allocate and use these

resources, this happens locally in each deanery, and also at diocesan level. But we think

that it would be a mistake to start publishing data on congregation size, numbers of

children and young people, income, and other key indicators about any church, parish or

benefice; doing so would expose the leaders and people of those places, most of them

volunteers, to intolerable pressure and unfair expectations. That’s not how we think a

family works best together.

 

Generally speaking, the five TM projects together did not, and probably will not, meet

most of the targets described in their original bid documents. This is obvious and not a

secret. The targets were always ambitious and probably unrealistic. The shape of the work

DIOCESE of TRURO Diocesan Synod changed quickly in response to local conditions, and responding to challenges such as a global pandemic and difficulty in recruiting staff. The projects also changed because new opportunities arose; in one place we saw that new work with young disaffected men became possible, in another there was an opportunity to work with schools in ways that had not been anticipated in the original bid. All of the TM projects continue to do good important work that would not have happened without the additional funding, the TM leads are accountable for their budgets and they report through diocesan and national structures.

We have learnt from TM already, this learning includes:

• Realistic targets and outcomes are more likely to be shaped locally than from urban

national modelling (we have changed how we relate to the national funding team,

ensuring that targets and outcomes start local, and continue to make sense and are

credible locally).

• Mission planning that is more bottom-up than top-down (local leaders are more likely

to understand local need, this is now how we create plans).

• Growth and sustainability take longer than TM timeframes (we have shifted from a five

year horizon to a ten year horizon)

• We need to resource all the churches in the diocese, not just a few (this is a strong

theme of our planning around children and young people but is also reflected in our

use of Mission and Lowest Income Communities Funding, and our training and

development offer)

We are planning a more formal review of the commissioning process for TM to help us

understand what went well and where we need to work differently when significant

resources are devoted to particular projects.