Campaigning
We are planning to devote more time to campaigning on behalf of our members and for this purpose we would invite your comments about the concerns you may have and the issues you would like us to concentrate on. To this end we would like to hear from you about what is happening in your diocese, so that we can be in an informed position to help us make representations.
Some specific areas that seem to us to be of concern are as follows:
Now that each parish no longer has its own endowment, there is very little local say in how funds are spent by the central Church institutions. We are concerned about how much money is spent on bureaucracy. For example, in York Diocese analysis by Save the Parish suggests that there are 63 full time equivalent staff “supporting” 184 stipendiary priests. And although the lack of opportunity for curates has been recognised by the recent announcement of £5 million extra funding for clergy posts, access to this funding is only through the Diocese via a form that only addresses Diocesan and national objectives. We believe local involvement is vital and would like to suggest that application forms printed on the Church of England website and procedures designed solely for the use of the diocese should instead enable local input.
We are concerned that stipendiary parochial ministry should be sufficiently resourced and valued and that the ministry should be supported by increased recruitment.
We believe that full details of those on the payroll of the central Church institutions including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the diocesan and suffragan bishops should be published with an evaluation of how necessary they are, given that the total staff list no longer seems to be published, and also that there should be an investigation of the optimum number of suffragan bishops, and of why these have been increasing at a time of clergy decline, and of whether the resources to support them could be better used by having more parish priests.
We propose to continue to monitor the operation and fairness of the new procedures for clergy discipline.
We would like to gather information about the use by the dioceses of retired or “house for duty” clergy, and to what extent this is favoured in order to effect reductions in stipendiary clergy.
We are concerned about the impact of the new Mission and Pastoral Measure proposals and would welcome your views on the pastoral model behind the proposals and its impact on the parish system.
We would like to examine the sale of parsonages and how the funds raised from disposing of a valuable resource designed for ministry to the local community have specifically been used, a matter on which there has been no transparency.
We look forward to hearing from you on these issues or any other areas of concern you may have. Please contact us on: ecacampaigning@gmail.com.