Synod, seize chance to refund poorest parishes

Revd Marcus Walker has written a piece for The Church Times on how members of the General Synod now have the chance to vote on the new National Church Governance Measure.

Finally, the Synod can put back into legislation what it had not realised that it was taking out: that, when the Church is spending the Commissioners’ endowment, it should do so “with particular regard” for the purposes that it was left for: the cure of souls in parishes where such assistance is most required.

Rebalancing our funding to avoid the demise of poor parishes will not mean that everything else has to come to a stop: it just means that the Church absolutely has to consider whether those poorest parishes, which will never be able to fund themselves, are properly provided for. Then it can spend the rest of the money elsewhere.

This is not “subsidising decline”: this is the Church continuing to be present where it is most needed, and where our Lord would most be found. A Church that has abandoned the poor and retreated to the gardens of the rich does not deserve the name “Church”, and will have earned the judgement that will surely come for it

You can read the article in full, here on the Church Times website.