Video for July 24th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this last video for a few weeks to give you all a break!
There is a mysterious parable told by Jesus in Luke 19 about a man who went away to be confirmed as King in a far country. He leaves three servants behind to conduct his business while he is away. When he comes back, he finds that two have traded successfully, demonstrating their loyalty publicly, whilst one has hidden the money to hedge his bets. It finishes with the re-distribution of assets, so the wealthy one gets even more. In v.26, Jesus says, “I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away”. It often feels like this is a law of economics. As St. Bono of the band U2 put it in one of their songs, “the rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor.”
As a I have spoken to many clergy and heard their stories around the recent Hereford motion at General Synod, the statement of Luke 19:26 describes what many of them experience in relation to current funding models from the Church Commissioners and the Triennium funding working group. As a diocese we have been excluded from a lot of funding because of our population. The old Strategic Development Board would only give funds for church planting for population centres over 100,000. The current incarnation of the funding Board – SMMIB, is a little more flexible, but nonetheless rural dioceses are significantly disadvantaged and funding for ‘standard’ parish ministry doesn’t really get much of a look in.
As Diocesan Missioner in Chichester I had the opportunity to watch the growth and development of Holy Trinity Brompton’s first church plant outside London from its inception on November 1st, 2009. Overall, the fruits from this were extraordinary. When I left that diocese in 2019 40% of the adults and 55% of the under 16’s in their deanery were in that church on an average Sunday morning. They had planted several other churches and grafted congregations into areas of deprivation. My analysis, albeit imperfect, found that 1/3 of the growth was transfer from other churches, both Anglican and non-conformist, and 1/3 came from the high turnover of people in the South-East going to those churches when they moved into the area, i.e. existing Christians. I did rejoice that 1/3 of the growth was from genuine new disciples. They were putting over 300 people a year through an Alpha programme, many of whom came to living faith from nowhere, or more frequently came back to the faith of their childhood. It almost seems churlish to ask awkward questions, especially as so many of those converted were young adults.
I rejoice in the growth, but there was a cost to it. Several local churches, hitherto thriving, lost substantial numbers to the new churches. Sussex is a very wealthy place, and despite these losses they remained just about sustainable. That hasn’t been the case where the pattern has been repeated in poorer areas of the country. More troubling was the loss of small numbers of keen, generous Christians from a lot of smaller churches within a 20 mile radius. We experience the same in the north of the diocese where many Christians commute to Shrewsbury to Church. The effect on some of those congregations was devastating: a loss of missional energy, finance and clergy morale. Several clergy have said to me, “I’d be able to grow a church if you gave me an administrator, youth worker, student worker, operations manager, 50 energetic missional Christians and several hundred thousand pounds!”
In my role as Chair of the national committee on clergy morale and well-being, this cost troubles me. We rightly rejoice in growth, but when the corollary is many clergy and lay leaders hearing their sacrificial energy and commitment dismissed as subsidising decline, its no surprise that morale is at an all-time low. Clergy with low morale are hardly likely to encourage vocations to join them on the treadmill! Unsurprisingly, we have a vocations crisis. Even if we are successful in gaining more funding for dioceses, the current trajectory means there won’t be the clergy to fill the posts we create or retain.
So, as I sign off for the summer, let me affirm the little, the local and the ordinary. To the clergy and lay leaders who feel dismissed and devalued by the current funding regime. You are not the limiting factor. Supporting and valuing your ministry is not subsidising decline. Your sacrifice and love is the ministry of Christ. You are working heroically, ploughing in the hard ground of a culture that varies from the apathetic to the outright hostile. You are demonstrating the flexibility to do things for which you weren’t trained and aren’t necessarily life-giving, but you do them anyway. Much of the fruit of your labour is unseen, but nonetheless transformative. Well done, good and faithful servants and thank you to all of you, ordained and lay who work so hard to be a blessing to the communities you serve. I hope you have some wonderful sabbath rest this summer.
+Richard