by Ian Paul, Psephizo (Image: Unsplash)
A lengthy new report argues that the primary reason for decline in the Church of England is the wrong allocation of money and resources. It proposes that decisions about ministry should be delegated to deaneries, and that this will resolve many of its problems. But do its claims stand up to scrutiny—even on the report’s own terms?
A new report from Robin Gill and John Craven, Wasted Money in a Diminishing Church, has been doing the rounds, and it has touched a raw nerve. (It was extensively reported in last week’s Church Times though I found it very odd that the report itself was not published online. You can read it here. [1 MB PDF])
The authors are no lightweights—one a former Professor of Applied Theology and adviser to three Archbishops of Canterbury, the other a former Professor of Economics, Vice-Chancellor and member of the Archbishops’ Council (though he finished in 2013, two years before I joined). They have pulled together a great deal of history and data, and their diagnosis is stark. Dioceses have nearly doubled their administrative staff in 25 years, while parish clergy have fallen by a third and attendance by more than 40%. The Church, they say, is caught in a cycle of decline, and the cure is to shift money and decisions away from dioceses and bishops and into the deaneries.
There is much here I want to agree with, and I will come back to that. Many parish clergy will read it and nod vigorously, particularly those supporting the Save the Parish agenda. But when you look closely at the argument—and in particular when you test it against the authors’ own numbers—it begins to come apart. And the remedy it proposes would, I think, make things worse rather than better.