The Church of England is overspending on HR staff as well as ‘diversity officers’ and ‘net zero’ officers, at the expense of parishes which are now struggling to survive, a new report has warned. The Telegraph has the story.
Research by the think-tank Civitas found that a “managerial turn” in the Anglican church in the past two decades had left ordinary parishes “struggling to survive”.
The report, released on Wednesday, said the Church’s 42 dioceses had taken on “large numbers of staff” since the turn of the millennium while merging parishes and reducing clergy numbers to cut costs.
These administrative positions include human resources jobs and a series of “politicised roles” such as diversity, social justice, LGBT and net zero officers, the report found.
It means that “dioceses across the country now employ so many people that, on average, there is one administrator to every three-and-a-half priests”.
In Truro, the diocese covering Cornwall, there are as many as 39 diocesan officers to 41 clerics.
Analysis conducted for the report went on to find that 21 per cent of diocesan spending is on administrative costs, almost double that of large charities like Oxfam (10 per cent) and the RNLI (12 per cent).
Esmé Partridge, the author of the report, told The Telegraph that the Church of England spends “millions of pounds” on bureaucracy at the “expense of parish churches”.
“In dioceses across the country, numbers of parish clergy are being cut, and those who remain tend to be thinly spread across large areas,” she said.
“The result is the disappearing presence of the Church within each community and, potentially, the loss of local heritage, charity and welfare.
“Against the CofE’s claim that the traditional parish model is unsuited to ‘the networks of contemporary life’, this report argues that there has never been a better time to revive the parish as a source of tradition, sanctity and community solidarity.”
The report also found that significant funds are being directed by the Church to “strategic mission and ministry investment” schemes which often involve the merging of parishes.
It pointed to one project in Wigan, Lancs, where the Diocese of Liverpool was given £1.2 million to reorganise churches into seven “hubs” accompanied by “worship communities” in unconventional settings.
In a report later commissioned by the diocese, it was found that churchgoing in the town declined by 30 per cent and donations from congregants fell by a third following the “pastoral reorganisation”.
“Both the expanding diocesan bureaucracies and new funding models are part of a managerial turn within the Church of England which has led ambitious new projects to be prioritised over support for existing congregations,” the report stated.
Since 1969, more than 2,000 CofE churches – 15 per cent of the total in England – have closed, 300 of which shut their doors between 2016 and 2021.
The number of stipendiary incumbents – ministers who are paid a salary by the Church – is also in decline in many dioceses, including in the Diocese of Sheffield where there were 155 such ministers in 1999 but 83 will exist in 2025, marking a decline of 46 per cent.
The report stated: “These choices are not, it would seem, being made out of financial necessity: the Church Commissioners are the custodians of a £10 billion endowment fund which was originally instituted for the sole purpose of providing support for parishes.
“Why, then, is it not being spent on saving them?”
Worth reading in full.
