… what should you do in the face of a budget deficit? The Diocese of Winchester has the answer:
- cut the funding for work with students
- cut two training posts for new clergy
- cut the communications budget and replace the worker with an adviser
- cut the funding for the canon missioner
Dave Walker notes tonight that Winchester Diocese passed its budget cuts package.
Reporting on the debate, the Southampton Uni chaplain whose funding is axed notes this conversation:
I overheard one person saying “There are 24,000 students and we’re paying for them to have a chaplain, there are 22,000 people living in our deanery and we have 6 vicars and the students aren’t paying a penny for one of them.
One chaplain for 24,000 young people. Six vicars for 22,000 older ones. Don’t you just love that forward-looking and mission-focussed attitude.
It looks as though the Bishop of Winchester (or the bishop for monarchy and marriage as I tend to think of him) and the Diocesan secretary told people they could put amendments. They seem to have forgotten in the process to tell them that amendments would only be accepted if they came fully costed and with alternate cuts or additional sources of income. There’s a fine line between misleading and lying, and it looks like they’ve walked it very cleverly indeed.
One (recently-retired) priest in the diocese told me a couple of years back: “You should understand our bishop has a handful of very passionately held beliefs. One of the main ones is that he’s a very senior and important bishop.” It looks like another is that the church should never look outwards or forwards, while backwards and inwards are on the agenda.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 20 comments }
You have got it in a nutshell. I read Yellow’s post. Sad day for the church and the chaplaincy.
Perhaps it needs a Downing Street Petition?
“There’s a fine line between misleading and lying, and it looks like they’ve walked it very cleverly indeed.” – I fully agree. I was one of the people present at both the meeting with the Diocesan Secretary and the meeting with the Bishop, and we hoped that they were genuine in what they said. Sadly, it seems that they might not have been.
this is just more proof that britain has the same sort of idiots in charge that we do.
The deeper question is how the budget in Winchester was allowed to get so hopelessly out of hand for so long, resulting in these drastic cuts. Was there any management of it prior to the November synod? Some insiders who have worked in the diocese saw it going pear-shaped as far back as three years ago, when a large proportion of parishes were no longer able to pay their full parish share, and started defaulting in payments. Why were modest adjustments not made to the budget then, in order to avoid the draconian cuts now?
@John Owen – a good point. Full marks to the students for mobilising public opinion, but the questions go much deeper IMHO.
Factoids:
- By the end of this month, there will be vacancies for both Area (Suffragan) Bishops in the Diocese.
- The recent vacant Winchester Archdeaconry took over two years to fill.
- My Lord Bishop of Winchester is 66
PS – The Diocesan Missioner (‘funding to cease’) has been in post for less than a year.
http://www.winchester.anglican.org/page.php?id=1678
“Steve is the newly appointed Diocesan Missioner and Canon Residentiary of Winchester Cathedral. He will take the lead role in promoting, encouraging and enabling mission, evangelism, discipleship and renewal in the parishes, sectors and Cathedral of the Diocese. He will work closely with the Bishops in communicating the vision for mission and in stimulating a commitment by the churches to making and growing disciples of all ages. Working closely with the Discipleship Department, Steve will oversee the strategic development of this area of the Diocese’s work.”
Nothing to add other than I whole heartedly agree. A budget cut says more than words ever do about the attitude to mission of some in the diocese.
A dangerous offer! What would have happened, I wonder, if a synod member had decided to propose as alternate cuts making the bishop and the diocesan secretary redundant? Such an amendment might easily pass on a secret ballot.
This Diocesan Secretary has only been in post since Feb 2009. And one also needs to appreciate how episcopacy works under a “very senior and important bishop”.
Whilst others are going for growth, it sounds very much as if Winchester has adopted a strategy of managing decline gracefully.
How sad.
Personally I’d have done things differently, but to be fair to the Diocesan Secretary in particular, there’s no easy way to cut a budget. Withdraw parish posts? You’d have the congregations up in arms – and quite possibly withholding their payments, which would make the crisis worse. Close the Diocesan Office? Most of its work is legally required – you have no choice on that. Sack the bishop? He, his expenses, office costs, staff, house etc are all paid for by the Church Commissioners – the one bit that was paid by the diocese has been cut. Delay appointing suffragans? Again, paid by the Commissioners not the diocese.
Ultimately, the answer needs to be to raise income – and alternative funding for the chaplaincy posts has got to be something to pursue. The prison service pays for its chaplains, the NHS pays for hospital chaplains, Oxbridge colleges and many universities pay their chaplains – for a start, couldn’t Soton Uni respond to the clear message from the students by funding their chaplaincy as others do?
Those are all fair points, especially regarding a fairly new in post Dio Sec (something I didn’t know when I wrote the post). However, to make the majority of cuts where ministry is outward or forward looking suggests a church that simply wants its existing members to be comfortable.
Agreed – and growing the church (thinking, for example, of the Diocesan Missioner post) is the best way to grow its income as well. 10% more people in the pews will probably lead, after a while, to 10% more income.
I can see, though, that the obvious alternative of cutting parish posts doesn’t help growth either (cf Bob Jackson’s research on long interregna) and I know from my diocese that cutting clergy numbers below a certain level, linked to the Sheffield Formula, leads to the removal of financial support from the Church Commissioners – so in the bizarre and Byzantine ways of the CofE, doesn’t necessarily save you money.
Hopefully this shock to the system for Winchester will lead to new sources of funding – and for all they grandly consider themselves to be a “secular” institution, I would stridently hope that Soton Uni follows the example of their poorer neighbour in Portsmouth, for example, in putting cash on the table to keep the chaplaincy going – or at least to waive the rent they charge on chaplaincy building, for heaven sake!
ISTM that this debacle looks like the inevitable results from the naive implementation of the new Parish Share arrangements.
@CB:”to make the majority of cuts where ministry is outward or forward looking suggests a church that simply wants its existing members to be comfortable”
Or – might it be deliberately intended to be a (belated) wake-up call to the Deaneries who are now having to grapple with the realities for the first time. In some cases, with dysfunctional structures and processes.
Returning from last night’s deanery dinner in Slough, where deanery colleagues took the courageous decision in 2004 to hold their number of sector ministers and develop their work, under the leadership of a gifted (half time) area dean and really dedicated parish clergy, Usual Sunday attendance in parish churches has doubled in the five years since. Financial challenges remain — big ones, when you take into account the pensions thing. All of these, however are common to everyone employing anyone these days. Unless the events lying behind this thread are actully some clever strategy to confront people with the idiocy of their own boring, weedy and faithless ways, i.e., if they really mean it, it’s the kind of stuff makes one feel like sticking one’s head straight in a gas oven! If they could afford the gas, that is…
@BpAlan: “Unless…”
Depends if one subscribes to the Conspiracy or Cockup model of diocesan decision-making.
I’m a Methodist Minister so struggling to understand the language, but after translation
I can see why the Anglican-Methodist Covenant exists (remember that….thought not…)- we are the same!
At our worst, our hermaneutic is:-
(1) We are dying
(2) So we need to attract more people
(3) We have this incredible story of a God who goes out, whatever the cost and a people who are called to do the same.
(4) Why don’t we reorganise ourselves around that story? It was what we were intended to be. It will have huge costs and may mean the end of much of what we know.
(5) Hang on old chap…lets live in the real world…. we like what we have got. Its all very well to talk like that, but this is 2009 (and how I wish it were still 1959)…we need looking after…
(6) Repeat steps 1-6.
Perhaps we should ask why so many diocese resist appointing non-stipendiary ministers as full incumbents; or even dividing the incumbency into two and appointing two non-stipendiary ministers. With a non-stipendiary minister recruitment drive and locally based distributed training a lot of money could be saved.
+Michael’s Pastoral letter read in the Diocese this morning.
http://www.winchester.anglican.org/page.php?id=2324
If the money is not available, the axe has to fall somewhere.
Ultimately those whose posts do not bring in an income – such as those cut by Winchester – must find ways of funding themselves, or disappear when the budget is up against the buffers.
The parishes are already being asked to pay more and more, and in return are seeing their staffing inexorably reduced. There comes a point when such a policy can no longer be sustained.
Comments on this entry are closed.