A tribute to Clive Billeness
RIP Clive Billeness (25th May 1954 – 15th February 2025): General Synod representative and Audit Committee member, passionate advocate for the victims of abuse, and genial member of the financial scrutiny team of Save The Parish
Clive was a multi-talented, kind, committed, thoughtful and amusing contributor to STP’s work analysing the CofE’s accounts and its strategic direction. He had technological skills and produced material for STP’s You Tube channel. He was a specialist in project, programme, risk and business continuity management and a certified information systems auditor. He drew not only on this financial acumen but on his degrees in Latin and French, Computer Science and Theology (including Canon Law as a special subject), his varied career with the police, the British Library and audit bodies, and his elephantine memory, in all he said and wrote.
He wrote with an engaging use of imagery – “the CofE is like a colander when it comes to accountability – it leaks through so many holes that it is hard to pin down”. He always (police style) instinctively included evidence; in September 2023, Clive wrote with reference to the Vision and Strategy: “Older people have more money, more time usually a lot of spare energy. A long time ago I was at a talk by IBM who have a very strong attitude towards maintaining existing customers – they reckon it costs 10 times as much to bring in a new customer as to retain an existing one. I am sure this is true with congregations as well.”
Clive’s sense of humour was never far from the surface even when raising serious concerns with intellectual rigour. For example, he wrote in March 2022: “When I look at this document I smell a very large rat. Like many things, it is the sound of unseen things going bump in the night, but when I see attempts being made to dilute and weaken a process, I always ask myself the classic (ex-cop) question “Cui bono?” – whom does this advantage?” He used to tell the story of Jesus and the ten lepers to suggest that by today’s “growth” standards Jesus would be regarded as a failure because he only got a 10% return.
Clive had moved to live in France and was a retired lay minister, now a General Synod representative for the CofE’s Diocese in Europe. He made the local Catholic Bishop choke on his coffee laughing, by pointing out that Jesus and the Apostles would not qualify to be registered as a church under French laws.
He drew on his overseas perspective, writing sadly on 17th October 2023:
“Over the past few weeks/months I have concluded that with the C of E I am watching a church-wide replay of the fire at Notre Dame and I am feeling the same emotions as I did when I watched that building unstoppably collapse. The awful collapse of the central spire as the fire consumed it can be equated to…….well you choose.
Remember that the alarms about Notre Dame were sounded but after a quick look it was decided that there was nothing to worry about going on. And then the blaze exploded. Many similarities there perhaps.
France is rebuilding Notre Dame, and many people have come forward to help fund it. They want it back in all its glory. They are including new measures to prevent such a fire ever happening again.
I hope that we can do the same with our church, but the fire has to be put out first and right now it is still blazing very brightly.”
We will carry on with Clive’s fire-fighting for Save The Parish, but we shall miss him.
Rest in peace, Clive – that “peace which the world cannot give” – and may eternal light shine upon you.
This prayer was offered at Clive’s funeral by The Revd Dr Anders Bergquist, who presided:
Almighty God, before whose face the generations rise and pass away, we thank you for the life of Clive Billenness and for all that was good and fine in his life: for his gifts of mind and character; for his many-sided professional achievement in so many different places of work; for his deep Christian faith and for his living out of it in worship and practical action. For his commitment to the Church of England in its grassroots; for his immense sense of justice and fairness; for his courage and undauntedness; for his unusually strong love of truth; for his solidarity with victim and survivor; for the contribution that he made to the General Synod and to its committees.
But, beyond all these, Father, we thank You for his warmth and humour, his friendship and his wisdom, his kindnesses. Thank You for all that he knew of human warmth and affection, for his love for Linda and for the remarkable partnership that they made together in their marriage, which has flowed out to so many of us in warmth and in welcome.
Perfect now Your loving purposes in him; and be present, merciful Father, to those who miss him the most. May Your Spirit of healing and encouragement, of consolation and strength, be given to them.
And as by his death You have reminded us of our own mortality and of the horizon that inevitably bounds our lives, grant us wisdom, to number and use well the days that remain to us on earth; grant us courage, to encounter our own deaths however and whenever they come to us; and, of Your very great mercy, grant us at the last to share with him and with all the company of the saints in the vision of your glory.
This prayer we make through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
