Shrink grants in favour of funding parish clergy, Bishop of Hereford urges Church Commissioners!

The Bishop of Hereford, The Rt Rev’d Richard Jackson, has been speaking to the Church Times about the recent three year funding announcement by the Archbishops’ Council. “Bishops would prefer to have sufficient funds to prevent further cuts to stipendiary clergy posts and pastoral reorganisation,” reported the Church Times.

The Bishop of Hereford was quoted as saying:

‘When I talk to my colleagues, I think the reality is that a number of them are applying for grants from SMMIB for projects they are not that convinced are going to make a huge difference to the life of their diocese. What they would really like is – Just give me some more money so I can keep my stipendiary head count up. There is very clear evidence that maintaining levels of stipendiary clergy leads to church growth.’

The Bishop went on to say that the proportion of the total funding allocated to grants for projects should be ‘very significantly lower’. Central funding should be channelled to diocesan stipend funds ‘to ensure we can keep clergy numbers up rather than constantly cutting and reconfiguring parishes and claiming it’s a clever missional strategy.’

While there was ‘some evidence’ that some of the SMMIB-funded projects had proved successful, there was ‘no control’ against which to compare this. ‘If you were to have spent the same amount of money on maintaining clerical numbers so you don’t have to go to more multi-parish benefices, I suspect that that would have had a greater effect on church growth and parochial revitalisation.

‘What will stabilise things is a well-motivated clergy workforce which is well-supported and well-financed. . . You get a well-supported gifted cleric, they can turn a parish around . . . It’s not projects that deliver new converts [or] discipleship: it’s local parish churches doing what they do really well. And in order for them to do that, they need to have the clerical resources to deliver it.’

Bishop Richard concluded by saying that his views were ‘quite widely shared’ among his episcopal colleagues, even among those who had received ‘substantial tranches of cash. . . If we were given an absolute choice, we would rather be in a position where we’re not having to cut clerical posts and amalgamate parishes and reduce our headcount. We would rather be in a position where we can have a degree of stability and maybe even increase in the numbers.’

Please watch a short video clip by the Bishop of Hereford explaining his hopes which are becoming more widely shared across other dioceses. It is well worth watching …