Dear member of the family here at St Peter’s Church,
I was struck by part of a reading at Evening Prayer on Monday this week. It came from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and went as follows: …write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, so that it may be for the time to come as a witness for ever. .. For they are .. children who say to the seers: Do not see, and to the prophets: Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions …let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel …
They tell the seers not to see and the prophets not to prophesy. Bear in mind that the job and role of the prophet or seer absolutely was not, and is not, to foretell the future, but rather to tell the hard truths as they saw them; to command the people’s attention when things were going awry and to encourage them to act before it was too late. But the people only wanted to be told that all was well, that the world was running smoothly and that there were no rocky roads ahead.
And I fear that we are the same. We turn up to church to get a nice warm feeling that will last maybe a fortnight, and then we come back and do it again.
But in the manner of the ancient seers and prophets, now is the time to speak – and to listen to – the hard and unpalatable truths.
First, a bit of background:
The Church of England is a national organisation. It is the established church in this country.
It is organised into dioceses: regions gathered around a cathedral and a bishop. We are part of the Diocese of Chelmsford, which extends across all of Essex and into east London.
Because it is such a huge diocese, it is further divided into episcopal areas: Colchester, Bradwell and Barking, each with an area bishop.
Within each episcopal area, there are deaneries, led by an Area Dean or Rural Dean. We are part of the Deanery of Brentwood, which reaches out to Hutton and Shenfield, across to Ingatestone and Mountnessing, up to Warley and even over the A127 to West Horndon.
There are currently 9.2 stipendiary priests in Brentwood Deanery; that means that there are full-time (apart from the 0.2 obviously) priests in churches across the whole area, working to bring services to the churches, minister in the schools and residential homes and able to care for the sick and bereaved, as well as conduct baptisms, weddings and funerals as needed by the people of each parish. Every parish is focused on a parish church and every person in the country is entitled to receive the care and ministry of their local parish priest and parish church building.
And all of that happens WITHOUT any funding from the government. We may be a national church, and the established church of the country, but we receive no money whatsoever from any source outside ourselves.
Now for the hard truths:
It costs a bit over £50k per year to keep a priest in a parish – that covers a stipend of less than half of that figure, plus housing (but not the household bills and expenses). In addition to that, the Church has to train new priests, maintain training programmes for existing ones, and cover the administration of each diocese. Some of these costs fall to the national church, but most to the individual diocese. Some dioceses – ancient ones such as Durham and Canterbury and Oxford – have historical wealth, but newer ones – such as Chelmsford – have no resources to fall back on when times are hard. Every diocese raises money to pay the costs of ministry by asking every church for what is sometimes called the Parish Share. Our Parish Share at St Peter’s is currently £108k. It does not directly fund your priest; it goes into a big pot, which then pays clergy and all those other things that need funding. And it subsidises parishes which have fewer people, smaller congregations and cannot hope to raise enough to keep a clergy presence in every area. That is a Good Thing to do – and a necessary thing. Jesus was concerned primarily with those who couldn’t pay their way and those who were most in need.
As I said before, the church receives no outside funding. All its money is generated by the people who worship week by week. But numbers have been going down. And some people contribute only when they attend a service. And coronavirus has made the situation, which was already not good, much much worse.
In addition to raising enough to pay our Parish share, we at St Peter’s are blessed to have a truly beautiful building in which to worship. But historical buildings cost money to run – to maintain the fabric of the building, to keep the organ and the boiler going (both of which are old and now failing), to insure all these things, and so it goes on. It costs £1100 to open this church for worship each and every week. We spend £14,200 on heating oil, water, gas and electricity, £10,000 on the cost of church services, £4,500 on insurance, £12,500 on general maintenance and over £3,800 on cleaning. In total, we need to raise nearly £60,000 every single year ON TOP OF OUR PARISH SHARE money, just to stay afloat and viable – and that does not allow us to save for any major repairs or replacements, such as roof, organ or boiler.
Within the diocese of Chelmsford, we are currently looking at a shortfall of almost £3.5 MILLION for the current year. Brentwood Deanery has been told that we must cut two fulltime priests by June 2021, with the prospect of losing two more in the next year or so. That means that the work of 9.2 priests will have to be done by 5. The parishes have been rated with a ‘traffic-light’ system: those which will have their priest replaced as a matter of course are rated Green, those where it would be nice to maintain a priest are Amber and those where a priest is not a viable possibility are Red. St Peter’s is NOT Green: we are numerically a very small parish, (3500 people in total) and because we cannot pay our parish share, we are not safe.
However, we are a parish with numerically-healthy congregations; but many members of those congregations make little or no contribution to the finances. Think for a moment: our wonderful church school is maintained by the Church of England. It is over-subscribed and highly sought-after because of its ethos, its faith-base and its amazing staff, both teaching and non-teaching. That ethos is founded on the school’s relationship with St Peter’s Church: we each work in many ways to enhance the life of the other one. If we all want that to continue, we need to set St Peter’s finances on a more solid foundation and pay our share in full by regular monthly instalments. We can only do that if everyone – literally everyone – plays their part in that responsibility. As a rough guide, the national average among those who give regularly to a church is £13/week. The average for this diocese is £17, but no-one should feel under pressure to give more than they can afford.
We need your help – regularly – to ensure that the worst doesn’t happen. Please use the checklist below to decide on your own next steps:
- Consider what being part of this church/school community means to you and your family.
- Do you give regularly (weekly/monthly) to the church? And do you GiftAid your giving?
- If you do, can you consider whether you could give more? If you don’t, can you begin to do so?
- Take a GIFT pack when you are next in church, and join the Parish Giving Scheme. It is the easiest and most efficient way of giving, both for you and for us. It can be started, revised up or down, or stopped at any time.
- Act today!
Having you as part of our community of faith is important to St Peter’s Church, because God loves you for the unique being you are. But we only get out of any activity what we put in, and if it is important to you that the Church should continue to be a presence in South Weald, you need to express that wish with your attendance, your time and your financial contributions too. This church of St Peter South Weald has been here since Norman times. We need to come together in a realistic and committed way to ensure the survival of both the church and the ministry it represents for the people it will continue to serve as best it can.
With every blessing, Jane