THE General Synod called on the Business Committee to schedule a debate to enable it to “express its view on the approach to disbursing funding, including support for local stipendiary ministry”.
The vote meant that an amendment that called for one per cent of the Church Commissioners’ endowment to be allocated to diocesan stipend funds (DSFs) in perpetuity was not debated.
Moving the motion on the Saturday morning, the Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, called on the Church Commissioners to allocate a sum based on the amount that diocesan boards of finance (DBFs) could have gained had they invested the sums that they had contributed to clergy pensions since 1998: an estimated £2.6 billion. A debate on this had been adjourned in February.
Bishop Jackson said that he had been “overwhelmed by the groundswell of support”: the motion had already been carried in one third of dioceses. While he still believed that the amount set out in the original motion represented a “just” redistribution of funds, it had “become clear that such a capital redistribution is unrealistic”.
He spoke of the “parlous state of diocesan finances”, which had had a cumulative deficit this year, standing at about £60 million. “The effect of this over several years is a cut in the number of stipendiary posts, the amalgamation of parishes, increased clergy stress, reduced morale, and a collapse in vocations: undoable jobs with a commensurate increase in the length of vacancies.”
His diocese had benefices in the fourth round of advertising which had had no applications. This had a depressing effect on congregations, which, research showed, would not recover during the average length of an incumbency (seven years). “This is an existential threat to the Church of England,” the Bishop said.
“Many dioceses like ours have made exhaustive efforts to raise our level of giving . . . but sadly we have been unsuccessful. While we have increased individual giving, it is more money from fewer people. Our demographic time bomb means we lose 3.5 per cent of congregations each year due to promotion to glory.”
A common narrative was a reluctance to give due to the large assets held by the Commissioners, he said.
Bishop Jackson welcomed a friendly amendment from the Bishop of Bath & Wells, Dr Michael Beasley. The question was how the income generated by the Commissioners was dispersed, and whether it was local decision-makers at parish and diocesan level — “usually as the result of an exhaustive and exhausting process” — or experts in the NCIs, who knew how to get the maximum value from it.
A small grant of £450,000 for Hereford, for example, had required more than 500 working hours, he said. There was an “unpleasant subtext that says that local diocesan leadership teams are incompetent to make these decisions and money for standard parish ministry is subsidising decline. . .
“I do not have confidence that central control distributing money through SMMIB [Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board funding] is the best way.”
The evidence from other agencies around the world was that “externally driven projects designed by well-meaning people based far away by do not prosper”. He urged members to support his motion as amended by Dr Beasley.
“We are at a kairos moment. Do we still have faith in the parish system or are we going to let it wither on the vine, to be replaced with regional centres and lots of forlorn empty buildings? That is where the current trajectory will take us.”
The Revd Andrew Hargreaves (Portsmouth), the interim Director of Ministry and Discipleship, was a former Team Vicar in a group of churches revitalised by church-plant by Holy Trinity, Brompton, he said. Over the past eight years, it had been an “absolute joy to see the profound difference that SDF and SMMIB step-change projects have made to the ministry, numerical growth, and culture of Portsmouth diocese”. The eight parishes, whose congregations ranged from 54 to 1600 in some of the most deprived areas in the country, produced disciples “proportionally beyond any other church” and featured in the “top ten” for children and young adults.
“Intentional, strategic investment brings change,” he said. While he supported the call for funding for priests, he said that the Church was struggling to produce enough vocations. A total of 660 priests had retired last year, replaced by 370 deacons. Four out of five stipendiary deacons ordained in June had come from SMMIB-funded parishes, while three such parishes were producing about half the vocations to ordained ministry. This had made ordinands “younger and more diverse. The tattoo count is up. . . Let’s not cut this pipeline off.”
Sam Atkins/Church TimesThe Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, spoke in support of the call for a redistribution of funds
The Archdeacon of West Cumberland, the Ven. Stewart Fyfe (Carlisle), said that, in 2015, he had been a “keen supporter” of Renewal and Reform, but that, over the past ten years, the Church had “underfunded our bedrock of parish ministry to a dangerous point”. Clergy jobs in rural areas were “unmanageable”, and “cutting parishes is not a strategy for mission. . .
“What makes us distinctive as the Church of England is we maintain a Christian presence in every community and that is never going to pay for itself, but it is a proper charitable priority for Church Commissioners’ redistribution.”
It was “also a sensible strategic decision because much of our innovative mission is dependent on our parochial presence”.
In his archdeaconry, a rural church-plant had grown rapidly because of its “symbiotic” relationship with parish churches. “It’s win-win, but it requires that deep-seated presence in every community to be properly funded. . . Why would we have a strategy based on allowing that to die?” Funding decisions had an impact on clergy numbers, he said. “The narrative, unintended but very loud, around the creation of the SDF was that the parish system was dead and we had to stop funding failure.” As a result, he had young clergy who said that their calling was to new ministries, “but not the cure of souls”.
The First Church Estates Commissioner, Alan Smith, said that the Commissioners understood the “genuine motivations and concerns” underlying the motion and amendment, but warned that the motion would “not achieve what is being sought” and had “the potential to do the opposite”. A statutory requirement to pay out one per cent of the fund’s value in perpetuity would “crowd out” almost every other area of discretionary spending. It would require the ring-fencing of £3.5 billion, lead to “sub-optimal asset allocation”, necessitating the moving of funds to lower-yield assets with greater liquidity, with lower returns, and reduce the ability to manage the fund professionally, potentially putting the credit rating at risk, he said. The £2.6-billion figure was “not based on robust assumptions”.
The Revd Vincent Whitworth (Manchester) said that clergy were “at breaking point. . . The role of parish priest is becoming an impossible job. We are in crisis.” He did not, however, believe that the motion was the way forward. Even if funding were made available for more clergy posts, there would not be enough vocations in place to fill them. SMMIB funding would help to increase disciples and thus vocations. In his own parishes, youth ministry had “grown and thrived” through a SMMIB-funded project.
Sarah Tupling (Deaf Anglicans) said that more clergy were needed to serve deaf communities. She knew of one deaf chaplain who was struggling to cover one large rural area.
Moving his amendment to call for a “greater level of stakeholder engagement” in national spending plans, the Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, said that no bishop would disagree that there was a “financial crisis across the Church of England”; but they disagreed on how to address this.
It had “grieved” him to have to reduce, for budgetary reasons, stipendiary clergy numbers in his diocese, and he was “longing for the day” when this could be reversed. “I do regard prayerful, creative, missionary stipendiary clergy as the greatest asset in revitalising our dioceses.”
He recognised the “precarious” financial position of many DBFs, and shared the “widespread anxiety about the extent to which decisions about the disbursement of funding are centralised and subject to bidding, and how hard it has been to secure funding simply to secure ordained stipendiary ministry”.
But, as a Church Commissioner, he was unable to support the current motion, with Dr Beasley’s amendment, because of Mr Smith’s warnings. Stipendiary-clergy numbers were set to fall from 7500 to 6500 by 2031. “This, too, is a crisis,” he said. “We need urgently to reverse that trend.” DSFs might not be able to spend the additional funds, and he warned that Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee might not find the legislation expedient. His own amendment would nudge the debate “into very closely mown short grass, where we will be able to discern more carefully the most fruitful way forward”.
Dr Beasley said that it was “much better” to put the “real control” surrounding decisions about how to get the most value from the Commissioners’ distributions into the hands of local people. His amendment contained “multiple safeguards designed to answer many of the critiques made of the amendment”. He urged: “Let’s not accept more conversation as a substitute for action. It simply lets the same small circle decide and deliver more of the same.”
The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, said that his diocese had supported the motion until the announcement of the Triennium Funding Working Group (TFWG) spending plans, which was “like waking up on Christmas morning and finding Santa is even nicer than you thought”. He continued: “I don’t want a no-strings subsidy, because that will encourage torpor and disincentivise missional imagination.” Nor did he want to be “financially dependent”, because people in Lancashire were “proud about paying their own way”. The diocese needed both formula-driven support and grant funding, he said. “There is a presumption in some quarters that this debate is SMMIB versus the parish. In Blackburn, it’s SMMIB that is renewing the parish.”
The Archdeacon of Liverpool, the Ven. Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes (Liverpool), a member of the Archbishops’ Council and the TFWG, backed Dr Wilcox’s amendment, but understood the “frustration about the continual rounds of bidding and the work and effort that goes into that and the desire to rebalance how we distribute the historic resources”. There was a need for a debate about “how we do the long-term sustainable funding of a parish church and a priest in every place, because it’s really expensive and it’s really important. It is our core business.” She described the TFWG as “the best committee process I have ever been in”.
The Revd Dr Ian Paul (Southwell & Nottingham), a member of the Archbishops’ Council, said: “We could simply release the money, assuming that across the dioceses we would reach the point where we are all equally sharing a passionate and disciplined commitment to mission and growth. The hard truth is that we are not there yet.” In one or two places, “disciplined investment” in youth ministry through SMMIB had meant that numbers had recovered to 2019 levels. But, in other dioceses, the numbers had halved. “It is a sure sign that we are not yet in a place where the main motion would work.” Dioceses reported that the SMMIB process was a “stimulating” partnership.
The Revd Marcus Walker (London) said that one question facing the Synod was “Where does power lie? So far, we have seen a phalanx of Church Commissioners and a member of the Archbishops’ Council coming forward to tell us that power best lies in their hands. . . All of our experiences across the country tell us that people who know best how to minister to their people are those on the ground.”
The Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, spoke in support of the call for a redistribution of funds “so that dioceses can discern how best to support their shared life and sustain a Christian presence inn every community”. The “dire shortage of money” in the DSFs was having a “seriously adverse impact on the welfare of parishes and the well-being of clergy. Growing annual deficits mean we are cutting more and more clergy posts, with those who remain spread thinner and thinner.
“At the same time, we place more and more pressure on the remaining few with talk of measurable outcomes based on numbers of worshippers, as if success in ministry can or should ever be defined in such terms. . .
“We must recognise that morale is low in many parishes, who see pastoral reorganisation bringing clusters of churches together under the leadership of fewer clergy. Stress levels are high among clergy, some of whom, especially in smaller churches, feel like they are failing, and it is difficult to see how we can increase vocations to ordained ministry if people see that we don’t have the funds to pay the stipends.”
Obtaining grant money was “enormously time-consuming and comes with restrictions which, crucially, mean appointments have to be time-limited. Nine years may seem like a long time, but parish churches have been built on the religious and spiritual capital of centuries, and the Holy Spirit cannot be expected to act within the scope of our predetermined timescales.”
Dr Wilcox’s amendment was carried: Bishops 22-9, with two recorded abstentions; Clergy 89-75, with eight recorded abstentions; Laity 87-83, with nine recorded abstentions.
Continuing the debate, Canon Kate Massey (Coventry) asked for a change of narrative. Until six weeks earlier, she had been the sole priest in a parish qualifying for Lowest Income Communities Funding, with 15,000 people and a schools ministry for 2000. Listening to speeches that called for increased SMMIB funding to revitalise parishes and secure more vocations and young people in parishes that had already had significant funding support was “bittersweet”.
She had served with a “faithful community of believers who are chasing an ever-receding horizon of cost-of-ministry payments . . . It’s so disheartening to be in that space and feel like you are constantly being told you are failing, without the resources you need to do what you believe God is calling you to do. Please can we have more trusting [of] parish priests.”
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Jonathan Gibbs, had, he said, felt “hugely conflicted” during the debate. He hoped that options for “concrete proposals” would come back to the Synod “sooner rather than later”. There was an 18-per-cent vacancy rate in Rochester. SMMIB was not the answer to everything.
Sam Atkins/Church TimesAlison Coulter (Winchester), a former member of the Archbishops’ Council and the SMMIB, defended the Board’s work
The Archdeacon of Cheltenham, the Ven. Katrina Scott (Gloucester), said that the original motion had been carried locally with high levels of support. Parish ministry meant coping with “highly challenging finances, with small PCCs doing amazing jobs, taking care of beautiful missional buildings and very frequently coming close to running out of money”. She was regularly asked whether the Commissioners could help.
The Revd Adrian Clarke (London) is the Vicar of a Bishop’s Mission Order church-plant established five years ago. He said that it had grown to be one of the most diverse churches that he knew: 27 nations were represented, and there was a “thriving” youth group. Funding from SDF was drying up after three years, however, and the Archdeacon had said that no more money was available. There needed to be a “whole change of culture in the way we do things”.
Alison Coulter (Winchester), a former member of the Archbishops’ Council and the SMMIB, defended the Board’s work, about which, she suggested, “myths” had been voiced. “We do not impose our ideas on dioceses,” she said. SMMIB bids were not for a “parallel Church outside the parish system, but for a renewal of parishes for the cure of souls”. She had been elected by the Synod and was not an “unaccountable faceless bureaucrat”, and she was disappointed to hear the SMMIB’s work being “trashed by two bishops that have not consulted with us”. The Board sought to be accountable to the Synod.
The Archbishop of York was in favour of the amended motion. There was a need for a “conversation about a reset between the national and the local . . . and greater accountability of the national to the local, as well as the other way round”. He had lived with the “struggles and unintended consequences” of replacing the Darlow formula, he said. The Church needed to carry on “investing strategically” and to maintain historic funding.
The amended motion was carried by 361-7, with 14 recorded abstentions. It read:
That this Synod
Noting the precarious financial position of many dioceses, concerns about the approach to National funding, and the challenges of sustaining stipendiary ministry in dioceses:
a) Recognise the successful management of the Church’s historic endowment over many years by the Church Commissioners, and the resulting significant uplift in recent triennia in distributions, and calls upon the Church Commissioners to continue to make available the maximum sustainable level of distributions in support of parishes and the work of clergy and other ministers
b) Welcome the greater level of stakeholder engagement which informed the spending plans for 2026-28, including the commitment to address concerns about clergy welfare through increasing clergy stipends and a range of other measures, and the commitment to increase funding for ministry in the most deprived communities
c) Call upon the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners to continue that engagement from now on, including ensuring Synod has a more formal role in the development of the future Funding Framework at a formative stage, as proposed in the draft National Church Governance Measure
d) Call upon the Business Committee of the General Synod to schedule early in the next triennium a full debate that will enable Synod to express its view on the approach to disbursing funding, including support for local stipendiary ministry. This should be based on robust financial modelling to avoid unintended consequences and to inform the development of the Funding Framework.
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