Letters to the Editor 

It’s the dioceses’ bank statements we need to see

From Emma Robarts

Madam, — I was surprised by the tone and content of Dr Eve Poole’s article “Time to get out those bank statements” (Analysis, last week). She is looking at church finance through the wrong end of the telescope. It is parish-share donors like me who should be shown our diocese’s bank statements, not the other way around. See, for example, John Stott and Chris Wright’s book The Grace of Giving on the theologically based necessity for careful stewardship, accountability, and trustworthiness, so that donors can feel confident that their money is well spent. Parish share is a voluntary free-will donation. Trust is currently an acknowledged issue in the Church.

Dr Poole describes donors as “investing” in “the provision of ministry and church buildings”. My church has a vicar, who has responsibility for multiple parishes. Since I joined the diocesan synod, however, I have discovered that parish share is being used less than transparently for purposes other than funding parish priests or church buildings. Moreover, the statistics reveal that this diocese (and indeed the Church nationally) is reducing the number of front-line priests. This will inevitably drive decline in church attendance and giving. Dr Poole mentions a “persistent public narrative of decline”, but this narrative is a symptom rather than a cause.

Dr Poole states that clergy are made to feel embarrassed by asking people for parish share; but this is not an argument against transparency. Rather, it shows that poorer parishes and low-income congregations should have more financial support from central funds. Dr Poole states the total cost of ministry to be £70,000 (although in some dioceses it is much lower).

It is quite straightforward for an incumbent to disclose the national average stipend of £29,243 to parishioners and readily apparent that this is insufficient to fund expenses as well. It is the balance that is troubling and embarrassing. The figures show that the funds from parish share that are in theory being used to provide parish ministry are having administrative costs added that in some dioceses are as high as 23 per cent (a good rule of thumb for a charity might be ten per cent).

Some bishops and dioceses are now openly commenting that people can have only the priests that they can afford. Such a system of “priests for the rich” is quite against the Anglican model. Yes, there is (as Dr Poole writes) a feeling that parishes that cannot pay parish share will be vulnerable to closure. This, however, is fuelled not by (welcome) transparency or a “narrative of decline”, but by the Church’s own evidence: for example from the “Transforming Wigan” pilot project, in which reducing parish priests only exacerbated the diocese’s financial crisis, publicly leaving many of those churches under threat of closure.

Dr Poole states that “there is not enough interest from the historical wealth to pay the ongoing running costs of the Church of England: parishes would still need to contribute, regardless of how monies collected were then transferred around the country.” This is misleading. There are just over 7000 stipendiary clergy (the most recent Ministry Statistics showed that 980 ordained people are in diocesan posts, not in parishes). Even if we take the cost of a priest (which includes stipend, housing, pension, and curate training) as Dr Poole’s overstated figure of £70,000 p.a., the total cost might be say £490 million p.a. The £16.4 billion of Church Commissioners’ and diocesan endowments would need a return of only three per cent to cover that £490 milllion p.a.. The “downstairs” church of priests in parishes is thoroughly affordable without any contributions in parish share.

It is the “upstairs” Church — the diocesan hierarchy — that needs major reduction in scale and cost. although the Commissioners claim an average return of ten per cent, which would leave seven per cent of the return available. Even if the Commissioners did not distribute the full ten per cent, it would surely be enough for the “upstairs” Church; and there is no excuse for not supporting poor parishes financially.

The rainy day for the C of E is now. Those who seek to advocate generous giving should be advocating good stewardship by the dioceses. The dioceses should take the beam out of their own eye and cut their cloth accordingly after first funding parish ministry. They should not top-slice endowments and other guaranteed income, then treat parish share — an unreliable income source, which depends on goodwill as well as ability to pay — like a tax.

EMMA ROBARTS
Address supplied

From Mr Jonathan Baird

Madam, — Andrew Orange and Oliver Iliffe (Letters, 21 and 28 February respectively) are quite correct in highlighting the significant sums that have been made available as grants under Clause 1 of the Miscellaneous Provisions Measure 2018 at the expense of annual distributions of income for the cure of souls under the National Institutions Measure 1998.

In 2023, as evidenced by the answer to the cited parliamentary question, more than three and a half times as much money was distributed under the former as under the latter (£119.4 million v. £33.5 million).

Regarding Clause 1, the Secretary General, William Nye, informed the Ecclesiastical Committee in 2018 that “this extra power will give just a little degree of extra freedom”. And yet the erstwhile chair of the Finance Committee of the Archbishops’ Council, John Spence, had said previously to General Synod during the only debate on the then draft Miscellaneous Provisions Measure 2018: “I must say to you that the price of delaying this piece of legislation for twelve months is very considerable indeed. That Clause 1 issue will be crucial as I work on your behalf with all parties to secure a long term funding arrangement which will enable many of the things we want to do to continue [my italics] and I could not progress on that if I was still waiting for legislation to be passed in February 2019. The price of delay, ladies and gentlemen, is very considerable indeed and I must urge you to reject the motion.”

This prompts two questions.

First, was the Ecclesiastical Committee apprised fully and accurately in 2018 of the intended use, to which Clause 1 of the Miscellaneous Provisions Measure 2018 would be put?

Second, given that Clause 1 came into force only on 1 March 2019, on what lawful basis were Strategic Development Funding grants totalling £118.3 million made available between June 2014 and December 2018?

These are important questions, which merit full answers.

JONATHAN BAIRD
General Synod member
Flint Cottage, Conock
Wiltshire SN10 3QQ

Stipends, pensions, housing, and lifelong ministry

From the Revd Malcolm Liles

Madam, — The letters headed “The English clergy’s pensions and retirement housing” (28 February) reflect accurately the current groundswell of concern among both stipendiary and retired clergy about stipends, pensions, and housing.

A new Facebook page has also emerged, “Clergy Pension Action group”, with a swiftly recruited membership of 1000-plus.

What has to be recognised by those of us who want to campaign for improvements in stipend, pension, and housing is the need for strategic planning to bring about change. Last year, the diocese of Sheffield passed a resolution calling for more investment in retirement housing, after a debate in this deanery. The recent acquisition of a £50-million loan by the Pensions Board will enable more provision, although regrettably the interest on the loan will be paid by the charges to tenants. It could have been a grant from the resources of the Church Commissioners.

If we are to see substantial improvement in stipends, pensions, and housing, those who are concerned about these issues need to make good use of the Church’s decision-making bodies. For example, retired clergy with permission to officiate (PTO) can be represented on deanery synods, and, if on deanery synod, can be elected by their fellow clergy to be part of the diocesan synod’s House of Clergy, or even on General Synod if elected to that. Yet few of the retired seem willing to engage with these structures, which can be time- and energy-consuming, and prefer to stay on the sidelines, shouting.

The Retired Clergy Association tries to bring forward concerns about stipends, pensions, and housing issues, alongside others such as PTO and Safeguarding, in regular meetings with the Pension Board and Ministry Development team. Church of England Employee and Clergy Advocates do likewise, and we liaise with them in seeking change. We ask people to think about joining us and using the structures that are already there in the Church’s governance.

MALCOLM LILES
Secretary of the Retired Clergy Association of the Church of England, and of Attercliffe deanery synod
473 City Road
Sheffield S2 1GF

From Canon Rachel Taylor

Madam, — Your article “Needed: Affordable Homes” (Comment, 28 February) was a feel-good piece on the way in which the Church is involved in housing justice. Sadly, the story of clergy relying on the Pensions Board for both income and housing at retirement is not one of such good feelings.

I have served 29 years as a stipendiary priest, but my pension, cruelly slashed by the 2011 changes, will, after tax, not be enough to cover the rent of a modest Pensions Board house, let alone the council tax and other bills. Is it any wonder that clergy are desperate for the Church of England to reinstate the pension provision that we were promised at ordination and to look again at retirement housing for those who have lived in a vicarage?

The vicarage is counted as part of our working renumeration, keeping stipends artificially low; despite this, the vicarage isn’t included in the pension calculation, keeping pensions similarly low.

More significantly the pension was slashed in 2011 to protect the coffers of the Church Commissioners, who now have more than £10 billion in reserves, while more than one in five of working clergy have had to turn to charities such as the Clergy Support Trust to manage. Yet the response of the Commissioners is not to look to improve the conditions of clergy, both working and retired, but to donate £2 million to the very charity that the clergy are forced to rely on.

If we were a commercial business operating like this, the Bishops would quite rightly be calling for justice; but, it seems, justice doesn’t grow well in the Church’s own backyard.

RACHEL TAYLOR
Holy Cross Vicarage
2 Douglas Avenue
Motspur Park KT3 6HT

From the Revd Simon Douglas Lane

Madam, — I have been thinking about the comments in the letter from Fr Nairn-Briggs (14 February), and it led me to ponder the part played by the retired clergy in the Church of England. As we read of decline in vocations, ordinands in training, and reductions in parish clergy, the retired clergy’s ministry becomes ever more crucial. A completely new mindset is required in diocesan offices in relation to including and valuing those on whom greater reliance will be expected in the years ahead.

A review of the policy on statutory retirement at the age of 70 needs to be looked at, as it must conflict with secular legislation on age discrimination. As Fr Nairn-Briggs says, we don’t want to push ourselves forward, but we have decades of ministerial experience and counsel to offer to parish clergy who may be new to incumbency. When there are long vacancies, we can be up to two years in a parish, providing some kind of continuity to parish officers and congregations alike.

In a Church rightly concerned with inclusion in the love of Christ, it seems perverse that this is often not extended to retired clergy working hard to proclaim the gospel and, if not actually growing the Kingdom, making sure that it does not diminish: as retired-clergy representative in my deanery, a colleague and I had to ask for the retired clergy to be included in the process for nominating a new area dean, not least because we outnumbered incumbents by two to one! That request was answered, and we were included, but one should not have to ask. Being retired does not mean that we should be just tolerated for service cover.

SIMON DOUGLAS LANE
30a Belgrade Road
Hampton TW12 2AZ

‘No score of wrongs’

From the Revd John E. Sclater

Madam, — I wonder when the last time was Donald Trump or Volodymyr Zelensky read, or heard read,1 Corithians 13. If I remember correctly, the Anglican missionary and trainer of missionaries Florence Allshorn, who died in 1950, once read this chapter of St Paul every day for year. Perhaps to read it every day would be a good Lenten discipline for us all as we pray for peace in our world.

JOHN E SCLATER
3 East Court
South Horrington
Wells BA5 3HL