THE latest report in the ten-year Living Ministry study identifies parish share as a particular cause of anxiety, shame, and embarrassment to members of the clergy (News, 7 February). Well-intentioned diocesan attempts to be transparent about the full cost of stipendiary ministry are making the clergy feel “expensive”, particularly in poorer parishes, and in those with low-income congregations.
Together with the persistent public narrative of decline, this well-meaning transparency is fuelling a feeling that parishes that cannot pay will be vulnerable to closure. Confusion about the estimated cost of ministry (£70,000 per annum) also makes clergy feel uncomfortable about recovering expenses, because parishioners think that this figure is their take-home pay, and charging expenses adds to the woes and fears about viability in parishes that are short of money.
Because I have written about economics and money, I am often helicoptered in for Stewardship Sunday. This I am happy to do; but, to save you the bother of booking me, here is Stewardship 101: pay the Levites (Numbers 18.21), because where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also (Matthew 6.21). Simples. But the findings of the Living Ministry study explain why so many of the clergy feel that they have to outsource that message to me.
It is a particular failing of Anglicanism that we have been unable to establish a positive theology of money which is not tainted by the prosperity gospel or overly reliant on biblical teaching about tithing. Money is only ever about comparative power. This is why the New Testament is full of warnings about it.
Market transactions shape supply and demand; so the transactions that people make literally create our economy. That is why we have a problem with the distorting effects of the rich using their wealth to vote for super-yachts and spaceships, instead of clean water and affordable medicine, because power magnifies whatever the powerful choose to attend to. Positively, using money deliberately to pay attention to things that you value empowers those things, hence Matthew 6.21 and the need for us all to invest our comparative might — or mite — in the provision of ministry and church buildings.
BUT, it is equally problematic that we have such a peculiar view of the payment of the clergy because of the stew that we get into about “employment”. I could be rude and say that this is a hangover from the days when it was the third son who took the cloth, and, in those days, it was positively vulgar to talk about money, let alone for it to change hands physically among the landed gentry, who preferred to use credit and IOUs. In such circles, nobody worth speaking to worked for a living.
And perhaps old habits die hard. I was taken aback during a conversation in the Cotswolds a few years ago, when a neighbour had popped in for a gossip. We knew someone in common. “Three sons,” she boomed, “and that one, he’s the one who works.”
Is it dirty to labour? Is it dirty to be paid for your labour? If we ignore the very British class overlay here, the New Testament would suggest otherwise. Parables such as the Labourers in the Vineyard are not about whether you pay people, but about comparative value and how people feel about fairness.
Clergy could never be paid “fairly” for what they do. How on earth could you put a monetary value on the cure of souls? But they can be afforded the kind of remuneration that enables the comfortable exercise of their ministry. The fact that current stipend levels do not seem to be able to achieve this is why they are so roundly criticised. The recent announcement that the Archbishops’ Council is to give £2 million to the Clergy Support Trust (News, 7 February) serves only to illustrate how badly this has broken down.
In the Church, the debate is further complicated by the vocational nature of many posts, ordained and lay, and the existence of an army of volunteers who are not paid for their labour. Indeed, more than one third of the clergy themselves are self-supporting/not in receipt of a stipend. It would, therefore, be extremely helpful if we could separate in our minds the value of work from what, if any, remuneration it attracts, given that we do not regard a sacrament administered by a priest to be in any way diminished or enhanced by whether they are paid or not.
The stipend is nationally set to avoid manipulation by richer parishes and dioceses. This could be pursued to its natural conclusion by having stipends paid nationally, allocating the entirety of the Church Commissioners’ discretionary income to stipends, and charging the dioceses the shortfall.
But this does not address the underlying issue. Even if you called in the remaining endowments of all the parishes, dioceses, bishoprics, and central bodies, 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. The only way to avoid this, especially if you think that the Second Coming is timed for 2040, would be to cash in the Commissioners’ £10.4 billion, and the £6 billion held in diocesan funds, which could sustain the Church for about 15 years.
WE WILL still need to talk to the parishes about money. And the best way that I have found to drive honest conversations about Matthew 6.21 is to encourage people to discuss their bank or credit-card statements with one another. I imagine you have just winced at the very thought. I doubt any of us would feel wholly comfortable discussing their bank statement in church, but that is, in reality, what we ask the clergy to do.
So, it would be fairer if we did this together, because those telling monthly summaries are undeniable, and there is no better way to examine the very tangible choices that we all make every day about our treasure. And did you know that the bishops have already submitted themselves to something rather similar? A few years ago, after the end of block grants, they all disclosed their expenditure to the Commissioners and to each other, so that better decisions could be made about how best to resource them. It was very brave, and not without pain, given the inevitable inconsistencies, but it led to some honest and very necessary conversations.
Following this example, perhaps we should take a deep breath, and replace Stewardship Sunday with Bank Statement Sunday. After all, it will be much easier to broach the subject of giving with your congregation when you have just seen how much they spend in Starbucks every month.
Dr Eve Poole, a former Third Church Estates Commissioner, is Executive Chair of the Woodard Corporation. She writes in a personal capacity.
