Diocesan Council faces difficult decisions in tough economic times

Diocesan Council, in an open and frank session, continued work on a strategic plan that promises to change the face of the diocese.

“Going along the way we have will not get us anywhere,” said Dean Peter Elliott, one of the co-chairs of the council’s Strategic Plan Working Group. “The world is changing, things are changing, and they’re changing fast.”

The dean and Jane Osler, the other co-chair of the working group, and several diocesan committee chairs presented facts and figures about the financial state of the diocese at Diocesan Council’s regular December meeting.

Diocesan Council, a group of about 45 members, includes clergy and lay representatives from each of the diocese’s ten deaneries, the chairs of diocesan committees, the five archdeacons, and most the diocese’s clerical and lay officers. It functions in the place of Diocesan Synod between meetings of synod.

One chart presented on screen by Osler showed that of the diocese’s parishes, 17 have an average Sunday attendance below 50, and another 24 have 100 or fewer coming to Sunday services. Only six have average Sunday attendance above 200.

Osler suggested that the chart showed that the diocese is “an unsustainable system.”

“A general rule of thumb is that a parish needs a minimum income of $120,000 to sustain a small parish,” added the dean. “It takes about 150 parishioners or 100 households, at an average giving of about $1,000 a year each, to provide that kind of base,” he said.

Dean Elliott emphasized that the working group recognizes the complexity of the Church’s mission, and that parishes must not be closed solely for financial reasons or small membership.

“We have always said it’s not just about the numbers. And it isn’t—there are lots of other factors that come into play. However by saying it’s not just about the numbers does not mean that we can ignore them.”

The working group in its report to council suggested that parishes should be “vital” and “sustainable.”

Vital parishes, they argued, should be making a difference in the lives of their parishioners, and in the life of the external community which it serves. A vital parish is mission-focused and outward looking.

A sustainable parish should have a “critical mass” of people so that lay leadership can be shared and rotated. “You’re not just burning out the same leaders year after year,” said Elliott.

Parish income in a sustainable parish should come primarily through the free will offering of parishioners—money from endowments and rentals should be supplementary to giving. Capital reserves and assets are not being depleted for operating expenses.

“To me, sustainable doesn’t mean just being able to ‘hang-on’ in the short term,” said the Rev. Jeremy Clark-King, chair of the diocesan Ministry and Congregational Development Committee (MCDC) and a member of the working group.

Rob Dickson, diocesan Business Administrator, told the group at the council’s regular meeting in December, that normally out of the diocese’s 77 parishes, there are two or three parishes — “four at the most”—which have come before the Diocesan Administration and Finance Committee (A&F) due to financial problems.

“The treasurer and the assistant treasurer asked me for a list of parishes that are before A&F or coming up to A&F. I came up with a list of 16. That was really an eye opener,” said Dickson.

Treasurer Jim Stewart, who chairs the Administration and Finance Committee, joked that his committee acted as “The Diocese of New Westminster Memorial Hospital.”

“Parishes show up looking for grants and loans and assessment relief and all sorts of things and we have to deal with it in a way that helps the parish and the diocese, with ever decreasing resources,” said Stewart.

“We are really cognizant of the minimum numbers needed to be healthy and sustainable,” said the treasurer. “Those parishes that are on the lower end of that scale...are constantly showing up on our doorstep. They come back, year-after-year.”

“We really can identify them. That’s not to say we’re dumping on them, but that’s just a fact of life that A&F has been dealing with them for some years.”

“If we’re to be a vital, sustainable, healthy diocese, we have to have vital, sustainable, healthy parishes,” said Stewart.

Following the working group’s presentation, Diocesan Council split up into small groups to discuss it. Dean Elliott asked them to discuss several issues:

“You saw the graph,” he said, “you know the numbers. There are some parishes that are not going to survive.”

What are the factors, Elliott asked, that should be considered when Diocesan Council has to make the decision to close a parish? Or, put another way, “what are the signs of health and vitality and growth?”

Several comments followed the discussion. Some members of Diocesan Council felt that too much emphasis was being placed on sustainability, and not enough on vitality.

The Rev. Kevin Dixon of St. Mary’s Kerrisdale suggested that the diocese should consider more “what are the things that we urgently feel need to be done?”

“Maybe it’s our institutional thinking over the years that has resulted in our thinking and talking more about sustainability than vitality.”

“Do we need to break out of the mold?” asked Chancellor George Cadman. “We should be talking about what is ministry in this place going to look like five or ten years from now. Is the parish the right model to make that ministry happen, or do we need to do things differently?”

Asked Stephanie Shepard of St. Timothy, Burnaby: “If we are able to do what God is telling us in the moment, isn’t that enough?”

Some members felt that there was great urgency, and that the diocese must act fast. Jane Osler said the question of how to resolve the diocese’s financial and structural problems is “urgent.” “There is no time to waste,” she told Diocesan Council.

Peter Kains of St. Francis-in-the-Wood suggested that people were trying to avoid decisions—that it was the “600 lb. gorilla in the room” that people were ignoring. The current economic difficulties of the world and of the diocese show “a need for fairly fast action,” said Kains.

 “The current economic sphere that we are in is precipitating decisions whether we want to make them or not—decisions which have been put off for 12 or 15 years,” said Rob Dickson, referring to the report of a commission headed by Judge John Spencer that called for restructuring of the diocese in 1997.

However, Bishop Michael Ingham disagreed with “an implication that we have been avoiding reality.”

“I do not believe that’s what we’ve been doing in this diocese. Quite the contrary—we’ve addressed this issue for a number of years and we’ve done so openly and honestly.”

“The reason it has taken a lot of time is we have not attempted to take a top-down decision making approach. We have attempted in this diocese to engage people in decisions that affect the future ministries of their own communities.”

“There are some dioceses that have taken a very kind of executive approach where they’ve had people sitting around and said, well, we’ll close “A” and we’ll keep “B” open–and it dramatically affects the lives of the people in those congregations,” said the bishop.

“I think the warning is correct that we are now under serious pressure through dramatically changing circumstances financially in the world and we probably do need an accelerated process.”

“But I also think we have been doing it in the right way in our diocese and we haven’t been hiding our heads in the sand. It is a difficult process. It’s important we make these decisions together and not for people,” the bishop concluded.

Dean Elliott said the Strategic Plan Working Group will continue its work and bring the issues back to Diocesan Council several times before its final report to Diocesan Synod in May.