AMID debate amongst bishops in regards to the pros and cons of the “strings” attached to financial grants from the Archbishops’ Council, national funding of £6.2 million has been awarded to Liverpool diocese, the poorest within the Church of England.
The award is an element of a bigger sum agreed in principle — about £30 million over the subsequent seven years — with a goal of ensuring that each parish is “missionally and financially sustainable”, the diocese says.
The grant will enable it to take care of a reduced level of parish share, avoid a discount in clergy numbers for financial reasons, and spend money on a youth and youngsters’s hub in most deaneries. Other goals include the creation of deanery resource hubs, with employed administrative posts, “lightening the load for parish offices and volunteers”.
Last 12 months’s national Diocesan Finances Review warned of dioceses’ “increased dependency on the NCIs”. In the General Synod last month, some bishops criticised this balance of power, referring to the “exhausting” demands of the grant system (News, 18 July). Last 12 months, only Archbishops’ Council fundings prevented the exhaustion of Liverpool’s usable reserves.
In March last 12 months — before the newest triennium-funding announcement — the diocesan board of finance (DBF) told the diocesan synod that without national funding the 2025 budget could possibly be “simply a bridge towards a special landscape, considered one of less certainty, reducing capability and almost actually on-going medium-term decline”.
Over the past 30 years, Sunday attendance within the diocese has fallen by 65 per cent. Its latest annual report says that a scarcity of historic assets, a “difficult demographic”, and low land values mean that the general difference in income between Liverpool and the common diocese in England is sort of £5 million a 12 months. This context meant that parish share as a proportion of parish income had been higher than elsewhere: “too high”.
ROB BATTERSBYVolunteers on the St Paul’s, Wigan community cafe
The 2025 budget, described as a plan for growth, reduced parish share by 13 per cent (to 37 per cent of parish income — commensurate with what could be expected in one other diocese) and expected that this could possibly be maintained were a bid to the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board successful. But the parish-share situation would wish to enhance, it said: “Without credibility with our national partners, we won’t secure additional funding for the period from 2025-31 and we’ll face increasingly curtailed financial freedom.”
At the tip of August 2024, the gathering rate stood at 88 per cent, creating an “unsustainable” shortfall of £665,000. But on Wednesday, the diocesan director of finance, Matt Elliott, said that this had increased in previous months to about 98 per cent.
Liverpool is rolling out a Fit for Mission programme, under which larger single parishes are being formed on an opt-in basis, bringing the overall down from 250 to 25 or fewer by 2028 (News, 10 May 2024). Participating parishes will likely be expected to commit themseves to breaking even of their budgets over a three-year cycle with a view to receive “funding the longer term” grants (£5000 p.a. per stipendiary post for as much as 4 years) and to deploy future clergy. They will use a “health and viability tool” to trace attendance and parish reserves, and undergo a mission planning and review process.
A press release on the bid, issued in October, spoke of the necessity to “be realistic” and “take into consideration those churches who struggle to be viable. . . we might have to usher in fresh leaders or plant recent congregations. We could have to contemplate closing unviable church buildings and finding other ways to serve.”
In September, in a letter to clergy within the diocese, the Archdeacon of St Helens and Warrington, the Ven. Simon Fisher, spoke of the necessity for “cultural change”, with greater collaborative working, and observed that the diocese was “woefully under- resourced on the frontline stretching all who wish to do mission and diverting them to mandatory but not missional administrative tasks”.
The full bid, first made last October and covering seven years, was resubmitted after the SMMIB requested further information and reassurance about leadership within the diocese. In his letter, Archdeacon Fisher set out targets for 2030, including 20- to 30-per-cent growth within the variety of adult disciples and 100- to 120-per-cent growth within the number of youngsters and young people in worshipping communities, and a fivefold increase in youth staff.
ROB BATTERSBYThe community cafe at St Paul’s, Wigan
On Wednesday, the diocesan secretary, Sharon Parr, said that the SMMIB process had been “hard”, but that the national funding had helped the diocese to be “rigorous. . . The more that we are able to adopt a partnership approach, the more it should help the national Church understand well what is occurring on the bottom.”
Mr Elliott said that feedback from national consultants, who could draw on the experience of other dioceses, had been “really helpful” in devising a plan that may work in Liverpool.
“The diocese has been through lots,” Ms Parr said. But there was “an actual energy and commitment to seeing God moving on this place”. The diocese has reported that the primary two deaneries participating in Fit for Mission had seen 17-per-cent growth in adult, and 25-per-cent in child, numbers in worshipping communities in 2024.
In the subsequent triennium, the diocese is on account of receive £2.4 million in Lowest Income Communities Funding.
