THE Church must tackle with urgency “the structural and financial injustices that prevent flourishing and sustainable worshipping communities on every estate”, the General Synod agreed on Monday.
During a debate that concluded with a unanimous vote in favour of building such communities, clergy and laity who serving on estates spoke candidly concerning the challenges they faced. In Wythenshawe, certainly one of the most important estates in Europe, stipendiary clergy numbers have greater than halved since 2019.
Back in 2019, the Synod commended the vision of the Estates Evangelism Task Group (EETG) — now chaired by the Bishop of Barking, the Rt Revd Lynne Cullens — “to see a serving, loving and worshipping Christian community on every significant social housing estate within the country” (News, 1 March 2019).
The motion put before the Synod this week asked members to dedicate themselves afresh to the goal. An accompanying paper by the duty group challenged the Church to “increase the pace of change required to have a real and sustained ‘bias to the poor’ culture evidenced through intentional strategic decision making and resource allocation”.
It is estimated that one quarter of C of E parishes either contain 500 or more social-housing homes and/or are in the underside 20 per cent for income deprivation. The 2021 census indicated that greater than two-thirds of the population live in these parishes, including two-thirds of those aged under 19. There are currently greater than 1300 parishes in the primary category with “no Church of England worshipping presence directly on the estate”, mapping suggests.
Monday’s motion was introduced by the Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Phillip North, who reported that that, while there had been advances since 2019, including recent churches planted of all traditions, there had also been setbacks: at the very least ten estate churches had closed prior to now five years. The real-terms freeze in Lowest Income Communities Funding (LICF) (News, 8 November 2019) had posed a challenge to dioceses, as had the wealth disparities between them (Comment, 7 July 2023).
“How can it’s fair that estates parishes within the north are paying more in parish share than wealthy communities within the south-east simply due to historic endowment of their dioceses?” he asked. “The time for excuses is over. We need a recent and just financial settlement across the entire Church.”
Since the 2019 debate, dioceses in straitened financial situations have made further cuts to stipendiary clergy posts. In the diocese of Manchester, such posts have been reduced from 201 to 175 in recent times. Parish share receipts fell from £7.3 million in 2016 to £5.7 million in 2022 and the diocese is running a budget deficit of £1.3 million. But it has also invested in estates, securing the Church’s first diocese-wide Bishop’s Mission Order to ascertain the Antioch Network, which plants churches in areas of deprivation, corresponding to estates (News, 13 July 2018).
During the controversy, Abigail Ogier spoke of the “signs of renewal” in Wythenshawe, where she serves as a licensed Reader, including people who find themselves pursuing vocations in ministry. But she also emphasised the importance of supporting the present clergy, reporting a greater than halving of stipendiary clergy there since 2019.
After sharing the testimony of a person who had come to faith after first visiting a church food pantry, the Vicar of St Bede’s, Bolton Le Moors, the Revd Vincent Whitworth, urged the Church to “increase our financial investment in estates ministry. . . For too long we have now tried to do it on the low-cost.”
The Archbishop of York admitted that he was “deeply concerned about how we fund ministry”. The diocese was “really, really struggling” to fund ministry in Hull and Middlesbrough.
While speakers acknowledged sources of funding from the Church Commissioners and others, in addition they identified its limitations. The Revd Mark Miller, Vicar of Stockton, within the diocese of Durham, described as a “disgrace” the undeniable fact that only 61 per cent of LICF was reaching essentially the most deprived communities (News, 11 March 2022).
The Chote review of LICF reported that the funding was supporting at the very least 1700 parishes, with each allocated, on average, £14,000 (“roughly akin to 1 / 4 of the fee of a clergy post”). The amount allocated to the 25 per cent poorest communities had risen from 35 per cent of the whole in 2017 to 56 per cent in 2020.
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesAbigail Ogier (Manchester)
In an emotional speech, the Team Rector of St Michael’s, Stoke, within the diocese of Coventry, the Revd Claire-Louise McArthur, spoke about her role as Area Dean of Coventry East. It had the fastest-growing population of any deanery. It was also essentially the most densely populated and most deprived within the diocese. Yet it was served by the least variety of clergy per head of the population. Parish share to pay for stipendiary clergy was limited.
While grateful for LICF and Strategic Development Fund money, the challenge of recruitment remained, she said. Every church within the deanery had been in at the very least one interregnum prior to now ten years. One emptiness had been advertised 4 times, and inside the subsequent yr five further posts would wish filling. “House for Duty posts we will’t fill, as the homes should not in desirable locations,” she reported.
”One of the explanations we will’t recruit is due to the protection of clergy living in these places. Our homes are broken into, cars are stolen, drug-taking and prostitution in our gardens. Our children can’t walk to the local shops after dark. We have verbal abuse once we get up to people.
“I would like Synod to acknowledge how tough inner-city ministry is, and the needs should not getting any less. More investment is required to support clergy and the parishes that we serve inside. We must discover and train clergy, and importantly, those that have a shared understanding or empathy of how difficult life in these areas is.”
Her speech highlighted each the extent of the challenges of ministry and the thrill to be found. “We walk alongside those that are most struggling, to clothe their children, to heat their homes,” she related. “We welcome the refugee, the misplaced, those running from domestic violence, the lonely, and the isolated. It breaks my heart, the ministry that I do. I even have lost count of the quantity of times I even have had a call or a message, to say, ‘I haven’t any food, I haven’t any electricity, I even have 86p left till next week.’
“But we have now joy, too. We have a recent service in certainly one of our churches made up of refugees and asylum-seekers who’re attending to know Jesus. We are running local Alpha courses, we’re baptising people, we’re walking alongside those grieving in our funeral ministry. . . God is within the midst of us.”
The motion — amended 4 times — features a commitment to “the formation of young people from estates and low-income communities” and to “raise up and support a recent generation of lay and ordained leaders from estates and dealing class backgrounds”. Ministry Council data suggests that, last yr, 25 per cent of candidates for ordained ministry were from working-class backgrounds, compared with 39 per cent of the broader population.
Many speeches in the controversy got here from clergy who had themselves grown up on estates, including the Assistant Curate of St Nicholas’s, Worcester, the Revd Fraser Oates, who had grown up on the Dewsbury Moor estate, once the location of an infinite police operation within the seek for a missing girl, Shannon Matthews, where the community had stood “shoulder to shoulder”.
“We must understand that trust is paramount,” he warned. “Only authentic incarnational, committed expressions of ministry will suffice. . . We must radically rethink our inherited rhythms of discernment, training and employment.”
Canon Jane Richards, Assistant Curate of St Andrew’s, Leytonstone, within the diocese of Chelmsford, offered advice to those discerning a call to ministry on estates: “Don’t make assumptions about us based on what you see or what you’re thinking that you see: our lifestyles are sometimes rooted in necessity, not alternative,” she said. “Listen to us and listen to what we’re saying. Ask us what we all know we want, reasonably than imposing what you’re thinking that we want.
“Don’t judge our intelligence by the extent of our formal qualifications. Some of essentially the most inspiring Bible studies I even have attended have been led by individuals who know and love scripture deeply but have been nowhere near a theological college. Be prepared to relinquish power that it’s possible you’ll take with no consideration. . . Jesus is already present on our estates. He at all times has been. He at all times can be. Let’s work together to bring his like to those that are yet to know him.”
Billy-Jo O’Leary, a licensed lay minister within the diocese of Rochester, told the Synod that the work spoken of within the motion was already under way: her presence was testament to this. God had called her here, “but he sent me one other gang to get me here: the Church.”
Bishop North’s call for a recent financial settlement comes because the Archbishops’ Council prepares to contemplate the findings of Diocesan Finances Reviews, carried out in partnership with an accountancy firm, BDO. Data collected indicates that, at the tip of 2022, there have been about 6500 stipendiary clergy in full- and-time posts paid for by dioceses. A central goal of the Renewal and Reform programme was to secure a “stable pool” of 7600 full-time clergy (News, 23 September 2016).
Further findings are resulting from be put before the General Synod in July. The chair of the Finance Committee of the Archbishops’ Council, Carl Hughes, confirmed in a written answer that the subsequent phase of labor would consider “what changes to financial flows inside the Church may be proposed (including but not limited to Diocesan Apportionment and Lowest Income Communities Funding).” Last yr, he spoke of expecting “significant change in the idea of funding flows across the Church” (News, 14 July 2023).
In the identical yr, the General Synod considered the Diocesan Stipends Funds (Amendment) Measure, which is designed to enable dioceses with historic wealth to present financial help to those without, transferring money through the diocesan stipends fund (News, 17 February 2023). The diocese of Oxford has allocated £1.5 million of its income from land and investments to support the five most financially disadvantaged Church of England dioceses within the period 2025-29 (News, 1 December 2023).
Nevertheless, this week’s General Synod has heard warnings concerning the parlous state of diocesan funds, and calls for the Church Commissioners to attract on their assets of £10 billion to alleviate the pressure on them.
During a debate on clergy pensions on Monday, the Revd Barry Hill, Strategy Development Enabler within the diocese of Leicester, said that the BDO review was expected to discover “significant financial deficits in lots of dioceses, probably in total running well into eight figures”. Noting the reduction in giving, and parishes struggling to cover their ministry, he suggested that the Church Commissioners be invited to tackle responsibility for post-1997 clergy pension contributions. This would save the typical diocese about £1 million, or about 15 clergy posts a yr, but would cost lower than one third of 1 per cent of the Church Commissioners’ asset base, he said.
