Video for July 17th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
I’m at General Synod a couple of days after the Hereford motion was debated. This is a motion requestion significant redistribution of funds from the Church Commissioners to diocese. This motion, or something very similar, has now been passed by large majorities in nearly 1/3 of dioceses. I’m grateful to those who have prayed and sent in messages of support. This effort has clearly struck a chord with many people. I would characterise the result as an initial drawn skirmish, but with the possibility now of more major changes down the line. The original Hereford motion for a re-distribution of funds was amended by the Bishop of Sheffield committing to a significant re-examination of how funding is decided. We now have a commitment to a major General Synod debate about how Commissioners funds are spent well in advance of the next triennium. It will not be business as usual. The vote for the amended motion was nearly unanimous. I accept it is too late to vary the disbursement of the next three years. However, despite not being able to discuss the motion prior to the funding decisions for the 2026-2028 period, our voice was heard. Hereford Diocese will be about £400k better off next year, which is substantial progress. This is even with a substantial increase in stipends and pensions. I must re-emphasise this will simply reduce our income/ expenditure deficit. We cannot afford to take our foot off the gas in encouraging all our benefices to be as generous as they can. Even if we do manage a more generous settlement in three years, that will not change. But it would mean that our deficit, whilst still large – and that assumes we continue to give at our current level and ideally increase it, would take us closer to longer term sustainability. It does feel as if the burden will be shared a little more equitably between the centre and the dioceses.
The reality is that rural ministry is expensive because we need far more clergy per capita to make it work. The diocese has roughly the same population as Bradford, which can run on about 25-30 clergy. If all our posts are filled, we require nearer to 70. The debate exposed how little this is understood by the more urban voice which dominates central decision making.
What all sides of the argument agree on is that the financial crisis is in fact a missional crisis. We are not increasing our giving as a diocese despite our best efforts, in part because we lose about 3% of our congregations each year due to promotion to glory. People are being kind and generous, but that is spread over fewer and fewer people. The ultimate answer is for more people to become followers of Jesus and catch the vision of the kingdom of God – a vision they want to support financially. Our diocesan strategy seeks to facilitate that: fostering more Christlike, prayerful and engaged churches so the faith is made more visible to others by the way we get along with one another. The Bishop of Blackburn made a good point in the debate, and I quote, “too much direct support encourages spiritual torpor and unhealthy conservatism”. I perhaps wouldn’t have expressed it quite so melodramatically, but even if we were to get substantially more financial support from the centre, we still need to ponder whether the way we are doing things is the most fruitful if we are to be missionally faithful. We all need to own our missional calling, seek God’s call on our lives and pray for his Kingdom to come. I’ll say a little bit more about Synod and the funding debate in my final video before the summer next week.
Yesterday’s Synod sessions finished with a presentation on the Thy Kingdom Come initiative, now in its 10th year, that runs between Ascension Day and Pentecost. The presentation was full of stories of hope and change given mainly by young people. It has captured the imagination of many churches. This invites us to pray for five friends who don’t yet know Jesus and then take that one stage further by inviting them to an event where they could hear more about the Christian faith. It was a welcome change from the sort of navel gazing that Synod can become. Thy Kingdom Come fleshes out a stanza of the Lord’s prayer we probably pray almost daily into something very practical. I’d love us to make a real effort with that in 2026, the year of celebration of our 1350th diocesan anniversary. It would be wonderful of we could make that a year to set aside anxiety about what we don’t have and celebrate all the Lord has given us instead. God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine. That is the basis of our hope.
+Richard