Putting the C of E at risk
by Ian Paul, Psephizo:
In these days of governing-by-bureaucracy, every organisation is obliged to have a risk register. If you are a trustee of an organisation, reviewing such a risk register will be a regular item on your meeting agendas. The Church of England is no different, and the Archbishops’ Council reviews the risk register regularly at its meetings. Before reading any further, what would you identify as the main risks to the Church of England as an institution?
The 2014 report from Archbishops’ Council included a fairly general statement of risk management (p 26), which included some areas of more specific risk:
The following areas contain inherent risks, which are subject to management actions:
- efficient and effective use of funding received from dioceses
- delivery of grants to fund mission development and growth
- influencing of policy in areas such as education, Church conservation and support for the Lord Spiritual
- providing advice and support for dioceses in areas such as safeguarding
The 2015 report (due out quite soon) will be much more specific about the particular operational issues, and lists
- Failure to recruit sufficient new clergy and lay leaders
- Failure of new initiatives to deliver church growth
- Failure of safeguarding processes, and impact of national enquiries (such as the Goddard report)
- Failure to gain support for the Renewal and Reform programme
- Financial insolvency in a significant part of the church
- IT capacity and security.
I wonder how that compares with your own list? I suspect most people would suggest that there is one very significant strategic risk for the church as a whole which isn’t covered by the above list of operational risks: the danger of schism over a major issue of belief or practice. Reading newspaper headlines, or attending to the internal workings of the Church, it would be hard not to notice that the debate on sexuality and its outcome is the ‘major issue’ currently threatening the future of the C of E as we know it.
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