Next week's General Synod - your support is vital!

 An urgent message from Save The Parish founder Rev Marcus Walker. Please do write to Truro Diocese Synod reps to encourage them to support key motions put forward by him, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells.  Here are their names - https://trurodiocese.org.uk/resources/policy-governance/general-synod/gsreps/
A sixth, Save The Parish supporter Vivian Hall is not listed: please use the contact form in the sidebar and we will send you his contact details.

Rev Marcus Walker writes: 

General Synod is about to meet, and I ask for your prayers as we do so. This is going to be a very difficult Synod, not least following the various scandals which have caused so much hurt and pain across the church. Alongside the very important discussions regarding safeguarding, there are some crucial votes regarding church funding - putting our money where our mouth is. There is, for the first time since Save The Parish arrives in Synod, the opportunity actually to change something for the better - and you can help us. First let me explain the background. If you have a subscription to the Church Times you can read my article explaining how funds, set aside to fund parish ministry, have been redirected on a huge scale. Click here to read the article. (I rather enjoyed the cartoon they put with the article:)

The article lays out the background to the problem: For centuries, the Church of England has known that poorer parishes cannot be expected to fund their ministry purely from their own resources. Queen Anne knew this and set up an endowment: the famous Queen Anne’s Bounty “for the augmentation of the Maintenance of the Poor Clergy”. Parliament got in on the act with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the two endowments are now joined and looked after by the Church Commissioners. Their portfolio stands at more than £10 billion, and the income from that money is supposed to be ring-fenced and spent, to quote the governing statute, “with particular regard to . . . the making of additional provision for the cure of souls in parishes where such assistance is most required”. But, as churches close and merge, and parishes are stripped of clergy, one pattern has started to become clear: the brunt of this is being borne by the poor. The Church Buildings Council has shown that 40 per cent of church closures take place in the ten per cent most deprived parishes, and that churches in the ten per cent most deprived are five times as likely to close as churches in the least deprived quintile… How was this allowed, given the strict rules limiting what the Commissioners’ money can be spent on? The answer is a small clause in the Miscellaneous Provisions Measure 2018: “The Church Commissioners may make grants out of their general fund to the Archbishops’ Council for the purposes of the Council’s functions.” Although the General Synod was told that this Measure dealt only with “uncontroversial matters that do not merit separate, free-standing legislation”, it has apparently justified the total redirection of the Church’s endowment away from its primary purpose. Only £33 million a year is now spent on the Lowest Income Communities Fund, and, in 2022, of that, only 61 per cent makes its way to parishes. This is how we got here. But now, finally, General Synod has something that it can do. There are two motions coming up which would go a long way to undoing this mess: On Thursday 13 February, Synod will be voting line-by-line on the National Church Governance Measure.  Section 8 of this measure lays down how the new Church of England National Services board can spend the income of the Church Commissioners. I will be laying down and amendment putting all spending back under the rule that they must have “particular regard to . . . the making of additional provision for the cure of souls in parishes where such assistance is most required”. On Friday 14 February, the Bishop of Bath and Wells will propose a motion to ringfence a certain amount of income from the Church Commissioners to go straight into Diocesan Stipends Funds. This is because another thing we have realised recently is that since the 1990s, the entire burden of funding church pensions moved from the Church Commissioners (who had an endowment to fund this) onto dioceses (who only had parish share to fund this). It has been estimated that the endowment necessary to fund this pension obligation would be £2.7 billion, with an estimated income of £100 million a year. If this were channelled into diocesan stipends funds it would transform the situation on the ground - and lead to significant parish share reductions. You can find out more about this by clicking here. So what can you do? The answer is “a lot”. First of all, if you are on General Synod, please vote for these two motions. If you are not on Synod… please get in touch with your representatives and tell them how important this is. Sadly governance legislation and questions of finance leave a lot of people bored and they often don’t turn up for key votes. It’s essential that anyone who wants to rebalance the church’s finances to support parish ministry - and, most importantly, parish ministry among the poor - are present and voting. You should be able to find out who your representatives are on your diocesan website - every diocese is different, of course, and there’s no guarantee that they will be there, but it’s a good place to start. If you have their email, get in touch and ask them to support these motions. Also, please email your bishops. Their voice carry a lot of weight and if the bishops decide to stand up and support parish ministry visibly and publicly, many of those who are undecided might choose to support these motions too. So, friends and supporters of Save The Parish, now is your chance. Please help us try to get these crucial amendments over the line. If we do, I hope and pray that this will enable churches across the country to get back to their primary vocation: the worship of Almighty God in the places where we have each been set and the passing on of the light of Christ to the next generation. With every blessing,

The Reverend Marcus Walker Chair, Save the Parish