Charlbury vicar in the headlines

Tue 10 Dec, 15:56

If you want to wind your vicar up this Christmas, then ask how fundraising is going. Given the current standard of morale amongst parish clergy it would take a Christmas miracle for them to smile sweetly and give a bland reply. Lots of people moan about being asked to put something in the plate at Christmas but, in truth, I know of some churches who only survive due to Christmas collections. It’s an oft repeated trope that “the Church has loads of money”. Well, up to a point Bishop Copper. The Church Commissioners have an investment fund of circa £10.4 billion. But when it comes to the church where you might pop your head in for carols or midnight mass, they don’t see a penny of it. In the 70s an asset grab in the name of fairness (as they so often are framed) erased the ancient irregularities of having some parishes “worth” more than others. Now, nobody sane goes into ministry to make a buck, but the irritation is that this shift fundamentally changed the financial relationship between parish and central Church. Today parishes are still expected to pay their share to the diocese, but most historic assets have been centrally grouped and the profits from them go to, you guessed it, the centre as well. Now all this would be just another minor gripe were it not for the fact that the central Church has proved to be so cavalier with those assets. The commissioners do free up cash from time to time but never for the parishes. Indeed, dioceses often act like the mafia, withholding funds or staff from parishes that don’t toe the line. Money can be found for “new disciples” projects or fresh expressions, for initiatives which undermine or supersede the ministry of parishes on the ground,it can be dished out merrily to external consultants or to favourites of a particular church party but I can almost guarantee you that the vicar whose hand you shake at the door this Christmas won’t see a penny. In the furore over the Archbishop’s resignation, another scandal that illustrated this problem perfectly got lost. The Church of England spent vast amounts of money on a report by Lord Boateng which not only maligned most of its churchgoers as troglodytic racists but also admitted that it had absolutely no evidence for this assertion but rather had based it on vibes. The professional managerial caste will have been paid vast amounts of money to churn out this rubbish, money in part provided by the very people they slander in the report. Of course the CofE isn’t alone in this. Every institution in the country is under the Babylonian captivity of managers. The NHS, the civil service, the BBC – all labour under consultants who sell voodoo magic fixes and empty nonsense that costs lots of money for its practitioners and then does the square root of naff all for the institution itself. However it is particularly egregious in the Church, which is supposed to model a different way of doing things, to speak of eternal truths, of profound meaning, to look not to “best practice” in the secular world but to God. At a recent training day I had endless guff about “leading change management” wafted at me. When I pointed out that it might be the job of a priest to be a constant in an ever changing world, I was looked at as if I was from Mars. None of this current trend is ever grounded in theology but entirely lifted from other managerialist codes of practice. At this two day leadership event Jesus Christ wasn’t mentioned once. Under Welby and his shadowy consigliere William Nye, the CofE lifted wholesale the recruitment practices of the Civil Service for the appointment of senior leaders, as if the skills required to run the Department of Transport might have any bearing at all on what it might mean to be a shepherd of souls. Yet, there are signs of hope. Some bishops get it – Dorchester, Ramsbury and Chelmsford to name a few – and realise it is the job of the centre to resource what is on the ground rather than to sap energy and morale. The new Archbishop’s in-tray will be the stuff of nightmares, but an easy win would be a bonfire of management and a refocusing on the core mission of the Church of England, namely to show the love of God to his people on the ground. In doing so, the Church might even recover a prophetic voice to a culture groaning under the weight of managerial nonsense. Now that really would be a Christmas miracle.