“MAINTAINING the established order isn’t an option when it comes to our financial sustainability,” the chair of the Finance Committee of the Archbishops’ Council, Carl Hughes, told the General Synod on Saturday.
The planned budget for 2025 was “business as usual”, totalling £64.1 million — almost £7 million above the 2024 budget. Next yr, diocesan apportionment would fund broadly half of the budgeted expenditure. This proportion had reduced consistently from almost 90 per cent ten years ago. There can be an inflationary increase in apportionment next yr — the primary increase since 2019 — but still nine per cent lower than it could be had it been increased by inflation since then.
“Sadly, we expect the variety of ordinands this autumn to be some 38 per cent lower than the recent peak reached 4 years ago,” Mr Hughes reported. The ministry- development team was working with diocesan directors of ordination and others to encourage more vocations.
Mr Hughes went on to speak of the broader landscape, referring to an array of figures that “lays bare that the first crisis the Church is facing today is missional. The financial challenges are consequential.”
In the Church of England, there had been a decline in average weekly attendance from 1.2 million in 2001 to 654,000 in 2022. This had obviously been “exacerbated” by the pandemic. A modest growth of 5 per cent, recorded in 2023, didn’t “significantly move the dial”. Overall, attendance had declined by 43 per cent (News, 24 May).
“We have applied patches to maintain the Church economy afloat,” Mr Hughes said. “And we have now develop into ever more hooked on funding today’s mission and ministry from historical wealth, fairly than . . . from today’s giving.”
The Church was now at a “key inflection point” owing to a mix of things: the undeniable fact that the hoped-for bounce-back from Covid was “slow to materialise; the inflationary impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and the ensuing cost-of-living crisis”. Average weekly attendance in every diocese since 2015 was down by between 25 and 50 per cent, and greater than 20 per cent of the Church’s 15,000 churches had a median weekly attendance of fewer than 20.
In some dioceses, parish share was down by a couple of third in real terms since 2019. Two-thirds of ordinands were at one third of the 22 theological training institutions (TEIs). A review of the financial condition of TEIs was under way.
Among the more positive indicators were that the Parish Giving Scheme had 75,000 users, giving greater than £8 million a month, including Gift Aid. The Church was “beginning to see positive outcomes” from its strategic investment programmes. Chairing the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB) was “essentially the most uplifting part” of his role.
The funding flows and calculations underpinning them were “largely obscure and lacking in transparency”, and either misunderstood or viewed with suspicion, Mr Hughes said. The findings of the diocesan-finances review had been “sobering”: 30 dioceses had an underlying deficit in 2022, and the forecast consolidated deficits for 2024 stood at £60 million (News, 21 June). But there was “loads of money around”: parishes had reserves totalling £1.6 billion, “clearly very unevenly distributed”.
Phase two of the review was now under way, focused on whether the present financial arrangements, particularly between dioceses and the national Church, needed to be “updated, modified, or replaced. Our organisational and physical infrastructure isn’t commensurate with either the scale of our worshipping communities today, or with a Church that’s searching for to operate and minister in today’s technological world.”
The review would explore areas including Lowest Income Communities Funding (LICF) and its interplay with other funding streams; the Archbishops’ Council’s budget, including diocesan apportionment; and the funding gap that ordinands faced between ending training and starting their first curacy.
There was a have to be certain that “appropriate funding arrangements for the clergy retirement housing service” were in place (News, 5 July). He argued that “an actual sense of urgency must be breathed back into diocesan collaboration and regional, national shared service arrangements.”
On clergy well-being, “all studies indicate significant mental-health issues and financial anxiety amongst clergy”. Clergy stipends had not kept pace with inflation, especially since 2021, and this had had an impact on pensions.
The Triennial Funding Working Group is about to convene within the autumn, and there may be a plan to introduce a General Synod Reference Group for the primary time.
“Undoubtedly, there will likely be some difficult selections to make,” Mr Hughes said. “We won’t have the ability to afford all the pieces that everybody might want to do. We have to seek to deploy our resources to best effect, focused on effective front-line ministry. . . We have to refocus our efforts on mission and evangelism, underpinned by prayer for our nation to return to Christ; we should be teaching that giving is a component of Christian discipleship; and we want to work towards a time when today’s mission and ministry is again funded by today’s giving.”
Mr Hughes then took questions from the ground.
The Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, saw that the forecast overspend in 2024 was £7.7 million, or 13.5 per cent. Looking to 2025, could the Church be reassured that there was not such an overspend in 2025? What budget controls were in place?
Sam Atkins/Church TimesThe Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally
Andrew Orange (Winchester), referring to missional challenges, suggested that the Synod looked inward, fairly than discussing “outward opportunities”. He encouraged Mr Hughes to deliver church grants direct to parishes fairly than to the “great bureaucratic system”.
Mr Hughes described this as an “administrative nightmare”. On SMIIB, he said: “We expect those grants to go to dioceses, after which to be applied in front-line mission and ministry, and we do clearly monitor that.”
The Revd Jane Palmer (Salisbury) warned that young people drawn into the Church didn’t have the identical economic resources as older generations. “To say that the missional challenge will solve the finance isn’t enough. . . We usually are not on the lookout for people to be money: we long for people to know Christ, for lives to vary, generosity flows from that.” Ordinands needed confidence that they might be supported financially.
Mr Hughes said that there was “no correlation between deprivation and levels of giving”.
Canon Eleanor Robertshaw (Sheffield) said that the claim that the crisis was missional could possibly be heard by parish priests as “Are we working hard enough? . . . Both lay and ordained individuals are working really hard to attempt to grow the Church, nevertheless it is de facto tough.”
The Revd Martin Poole (Chichester) asked for attention to be paid to the supply of posts for individuals who accomplished ordination training.
Sarah Tupling (Deaf Anglicans Together) asked how most of the 940 ordinands currently in training were deaf. Was funding available for deaf people to undergo training? She knew that some were self-funding. There was a necessity for more chaplains who could sign.
Julie Dziegiel (Oxford) said that the pandemic had had “quite a major effect on the psychology of treasurers”. Reserves were going “up and up and up”, and treasurers and PCCs needed to be educated that it was “as mistaken to maintain an excessive amount of in reserve as to maintain too little”.
Amanda Robbie (Lichfield) spoke of a emptiness rate of 24.3 per cent in Lichfield diocese. With lower emptiness rates, diocesan deficits could possibly be even greater.
Lucy Docherty (Portsmouth) asked what can be needed to extend the grants for ecumenical instruments. The Church was still, by a great distance, a really wealthy one compared with many others.
The Revd Christopher Blunt (Chester) asked when the review of LICF funding can be accomplished.
Sue Slater (Lincoln) asked how much of the budget for training for ministry went to put ministry.
Dr Ian Johnston (Portsmouth) asked in regards to the correlation between what was paid to ordinands in training and their numbers, and the pay of stipendiary priests and their numbers, and whether it implied causation.
Mr Hughes said that his “biggest concern was how attractive, from a financial standpoint, the stipend is for ordinands once they’re in full-time ministry”.
The Revd Professor Morwenna Ludlow (Exeter) urged the Archbishops’ Council to keep in mind that TEIs were “places where necessary theological work is finished, which enriches the mission of the Church more broadly”. She raised concerns about how their value was measured.
The Revd Neil Patterson (Hereford) was struck by the “curious form” of the present debate, which was “fairly stilted in format”. It was a dialogue with the chair of the Finance Committee, and only about one third of the budget was being discussed. There was a “mismatch” between what was being discussed and what was being done with money at a national level, he suggested.
Clive Scowen (London) said that the model had been devised for John Spence, the previous Finance Committee chairman, due to his disability. He agreed in regards to the “constrained” nature of the controversy, which could appear as a “fait accompli”.
The Bishop in Europe, Dr Robert Innes, had felt “uneasy myself, that the Synod isn’t scrutinising the operating budget of the Archbishops’ Council to the degree that I might feel comfortable with”. There was an item of the Finance Transformation Project of £2.2 million that had not been budgeted for. There was no details about who was managing it, and whether there was capability to audit the project. More detail was needed.
In response, Mr Hughes said that he had “loads of sympathy” with these arguments, and that there can be a possibility to reset the way in which by which finance was debated: “I’m totally open to bring to Synod any level of detail that you prefer to regarding funding and spending.” Scrutiny of the operating budget and performance against it was the responsibility of the Finance Committee, he suggested.
The Dean of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, the Very Revd Joe Hawes (Canterbury), spoke as chair of the clergy-retirement advisory group in his diocese. By Easter this yr, three clergy had approached them and the Suffolk clergy charity for help with debt, all of them in CHARM housing. “It seems that there’s a crisis amongst a few of our clergy in retirement housing.” The response of the Pensions Board was “swift, pastoral, sensitive, positive, and helpful. But, if we’re plucking people out of the deep water of debt, the query still stays about why forces of circumstance are causing them to fall in further upstream.” A wider conversation needed to happen between the NCIs, including consideration of a more generous means-tested approach, he suggested.
Mr Hughes said that the Pensions Board would proceed to be “responsive in a pastoral way”, and that, through the present Triennial funding, an additional £10 million a yr was being put into retirement housing.
Debbie Buggs (London) welcomed the £6.5 million but said that it was not enough.
The Archdeacon of London, the Ven. Luke Miller (London), spoke of the needs of clergy who had been told to sell their housing before starting training. This was not a difficulty that was necessarily going to go away. Those living in tied accommodation found it very difficult to get mortgages. The whole issue was about greater than finance, raising the query of whether clergy entered into “a lifetime of membership and participation in an organisation into which you give all types of things, and from which you then receive a cradle-to-grave sort of care, or whether you’re in effect in some senses an worker, with mutual duties and obligations that are framed and that are constrained.”
Mr Hughes said of stipends and pensions: “These usually are not easy things simply to wave a magic wand over to repair. Particularly pensions: whatever you do has quite significant long-term implications.” He hoped to bring “tangible proposals” to Synod at the identical time next yr. He expected that these would look “quite different”.
The Archdeacon of Ashford, the Ven. Darren Miller (Canterbury), said that he was intrigued in regards to the methodology of apportionment and caps, with regard to different sums being sought from dioceses depending on how well-resourced they were. Canterbury had low historic resources, and yet it was being capped at five per cent.
The Archdeacon of Liverpool, the Ven. Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes (Liverpool), referred to the governance report, which described the flows of cash within the C of E as “complicated and at times onerous”. The apportionment table seemed to be one example of this. Most dioceses were struggling, and it felt as if “the left hand doesn’t know what the fitting hand is doing.” Why could central costs not be funded by a block grant from the Church Commissioners? Liverpool was in receipt of emergency short-term sustainability funding of £750,000 to £1 million, but was also paying £450,000 in apportionment.
Jane Patterson (Sheffield) said that she was surprised by the “muted response” to Mr Hughes’ diagnosis of a missional crisis.
