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Why doesn’t the church do more to help the poor?

11/10/2019

Worldwide, the UK Church already does an enormous amount to help the poor: everything from famine relief in Africa, to foodbanks here in the UK. In recent years I’ve come across churches running community nursing projects  in UK urban areas, building homes for the homeless in Mexico, funding orphanages for children living on rubbish tips in Kenya, and feeding the hungry everywhere from Zimbabwe to Southern Sudan. I’d be surprised if there was a non-government organisation in our nation that does more to help the poor.

However there is still a perception that the church is wealthy, sitting on huge assets, and that maybe it could do more with them to help the poor. How true is that perception?

Well let’s consider how it from the perspective of the nation’s largest denomination, the Church of England. Broadly speaking, you can divide the assets of the Church of England into three chunks.

First, it’s fixed assets, ie buildings. In its efforts to maintain a presence in every community, the Church of England has over 16,000 church buildings in its 13000 plus parishes all across the nation. And at a time when government services such as hospitals are being pulled out of communities into larger regional centres, we’re all very aware of the value of the “local”. Imagine having to travel to Worcester for a regular Sunday service, or a wedding, baptism or funeral? Just as with hospitals, there is benefit in the local!

So if we’re committed to maintaining a presence in every community then radically reducing the number of church buildings to raise capital to give to the poor isn’t an option. It’s also unlikely to produce much hard cash – over 75% of church buildings are grade 1 or grade 2 listed, meaning the government recognises them as being of exceptional history or architectural importance. So they can’t easily have their use changed, and are therefore hardly an attractive option to a property developer (and let’s face it, who would want to live in a graveyard?)

Even if buildings were saleable, the church’s complex ownership arrangements make them very difficult to sell because no one owns them! The Church Council (PCC) is responsible for repairs and maintenance. The Churchwardens technically own the building’s contents (but can’t sell it), and legally no one owns the building.  If that sounds absurd, I couldn’t agree more! But then the whole legal structure of the Church of England looks like something that has been designed by Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey to ensure paralysis and indecision at all levels.

The second chunk of assets the Church of England has is the £7.9bn investment fund held by the Church Commissioners. The principal purpose of this fund is to fund clergy pensions, with any surplus going to fund the church’s work across the nation – so the Church Commissioners are already one of the UK’s largest charitable givers. Short of “pulling a Maxwell” and robbing the pension fund, it’s hard to see a way to use this money except for clergy pensions!

The third chunk of assets the Church of England has is its “day-to-day” working capital. The money that pays clergy salaries, keeps the lighting and heating on in church buildings, and funds thousands of projects across the country. However this chunk of assets isn’t a single chunk, instead, it’s 13000 small chunks – each Church of England parish is a separate charity in its own right. Whilst clergy salaries are paid centrally, individual parishes receive no money from the centre. In fact, the reverse is true, each parish contributes a portion of their income to the centre (known as ‘the parish share’) to pay clergy salaries.

So to take a local example, Upton Parochial Church Council (PCC), has the financial responsibility for maintaining Upton Parish Church, and the work we do here. In 2016, Upton Parish Church had an income of just over £20,000. 75% of that came from weekly giving by the 25 mainly retired regular attenders. The remainder came from events and fees for funerals and weddings.

Expenditure in 2016 was £28,000. 31% on clergy costs (parish share & expenses), 25% on building and churchyard maintenance, 20% on insurance, and 10% on heating and lighting. The £8000 deficit was met from our not very substantial reserves. (Please note, this isn’t a plea for money – though if anyone wants to help our work, whether on a one-off basis, or regularly, or even by leaving a gift in your will, do get it touch with our treasurer, in confidence).

You can multiply that story of Christian witness and buildings maintained on a shoestring budget all across the country. But despite the stretched nature of the finances, the church still does a remarkable amount of good: nationally over 80,000 volunteers and around 2,700 church staff (plus 20000 clergy) provide support and activities for children, young people and families, and over 100,000 children and young people participate in activities connected to the church each year.

Arguably that statistic highlight’s the church’s fourth and main asset, which isn’t buildings or investment funds or working capital, but it’s volunteer workforce. The Bible is always very clear – the church is not a building – it’s a gathering of people. And our people give sacrificially of their time and money to maintain the organisation and its mission. Every year they also pour millions of pounds into charities worldwide in their own names. Could they give more? That’s up to their consciences. Could you?

To sum up – could the institution of the church give more to the poor? Probably. But the cost in terms of cuts to staffing (and therefore the work we do in our communities) or to our buildings (and therefore our presence across the nation) make it difficult. To do more, the Church of England would need a thorough overhaul of its structures – change on a par with Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries combined with Isis’s desecration of historical sites in Syria. And in a heritage-mad nation like the UK, that seems very unlikely to happen!

First published in the Bridge Magazine, 2017

Changing your mind

05/10/2019

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind” (William Blake)

So have you had enough of Brexit? What I find most frustrating about it is that irrespective of whether parliament should have been prorogued or not, you only have to watch a few minutes of our MPs squabbling to see that the battle lines are so drawn-up that no matter how good the argument either for or against Brexit, no one is going to change their minds.

Now the print deadline for the Bridge means that I wrote those rather cynical words about no one changing their minds back on 13 September. So if by some miracle, something remarkable has happened since that date, and our MPs are now united in their approach to Brexit, then let me say how delighted I am to be wrong! But given how rare it is for people to change their minds, I bet I’m not!

The economist JK Galbraith said,

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there’s no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

Which seems to me exactly what our MPs are doing. But before we condemn the lot of them for their stubbornness, let’s admit we’ve got a dog in this fight too. For all we claim that we’re open to changing our minds, we rarely do. Despite all the arguments and statistics, we encounter day by day, and all the opportunities we have to scrutinise those facts, are we really open to changing our minds?

And what’s true of Brexit, is also true of life’s even more important issues! We all have our answers to life’s big questions, and we’re sticking to them, even if we’ve never tested them, to see if they work. And whilst I’d probably not go quite so far as Greek philosopher Socrates did, when he said that,

The unexamined life is not worth living,”

I do think he has a point. There is something unhealthy about being totally closed to change.

That’s why I love to run our annual Alpha Course. Every year people come with their questions and doubts and concerns, not just about the Christian faith, but about life, the universe and everything. At every session, we watch a short presentation about a different aspect of the Christian life, and then we discuss it, and as the weeks go by, friendships form, questions are answered, fears alleviated, and just occasionally lives are transformed.

So, if you’re open to changing your mind about anything at all, why not give Alpha a try? It starts on Wednesday, Oct 2nd at 1:15pm in Upton Parish Church (St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Old Street, Upton). For more information, visit www.hopechurchfamily.org/alpha or just turn up at one of the sessions (though it does help us plan catering and resources if we know you’re coming).

First published in the Bridge Magazine, October 2019

Latest Vicar’s email

23/09/2019

I recently circulated an email updating everyone about this Sunday’s benefice service at Hanley Swan.  To read it, click here

If you’d like to subscribe to our mailing list, use this form. It may also help if you add barry@hopechurchfamily.org to your safe sender list.

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Don’t go out, there’s a lion in the streets!

22/09/2019

Vicar’s article from the Bridge Magazine, September 2019

If you’ll forgive a small holiday boast, I was enjoying a cold drink in the poolside bar on our campsite in France, when I heard the news that Boris Johnson was to be our new Prime Minister.

I don’t know how you feel about his appointment, and this article certainly won’t tell you how to feel about it. I won’t be mentioning the Br**it word either, so please don’t accuse me of mixing religion and politics!

I’m also conscious that there’s a possibility that by the time you read this, Boris may be an ex-Prime Minister. But assuming he is still PM, one thing I have appreciated about Boris as PM is his optimism. Whether it was the pun in his first speech as Tory leader: turning the acronym DUD (Deliver, Unite, Defeat) into DUDE (by adding ENERGISE) or his first speech as PM when he rejected the “doubters, doomsters and gloomsters”, I’ve appreciated the government’s shift in tone from fear and “unfounded doubt” to hope and possibility.

The Bible has a great Proverb about fear and unfounded doubt,

The slothful man saith, ‘There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets’” (Proverbs 26:13)

It’s a proverb about how fear, worry and pessimism about the future, can paralyse us: there wasn’t really a lion in the street, the man was just worried there might be. Fear and unfounded doubt mean he stays in bed.

Sometimes these fears and unfounded doubts come from painful memories. One day on holiday, three of my older kids and I decided our beach-trip experience would be vastly enhanced by climbing the not-steep 40-foot cliff at the back of the beach, and like the fit young mountain goats they are, the kids were soon at the top. But I hung back a little, “to make sure that if any of them got into difficulty I could catch them.” Honest!

The real reason I hung back was that about a quarter of the way up, I had to stand on a small flat rock, get my balance, and then stretch out across a gap to the next bit of the cliff. As I stood there contemplating the stretch, I had a brief flashback to July 2003, when I lost my balance and fell off a similar rock.

Which brings me to a second Bible proverb,

Worry is a heavy burden…” (Proverbs 12:25)

My worries certainly were a heavy burden as I stood on that rock. The memory of falling made me so doubt my ability to stand upright, that I began to wobble, and nearly fell again.

Worry and unfounded fear weigh us down and paralyse us: in politics and economics; in business and the workplace; in our schools, churches and social clubs; and of course in our relationships. If we spend all our time worrying about what might go wrong, we’ll never get anything done. Indeed, worrying about things going wrong is probably the best way of making sure that they do.

Thankfully the proverb continues,

Worry is a heavy burden, but a kind word always brings cheer.”

A kind word is exactly what one of my kids offered: “Come on Dad, you can do it!” I laughed off the fear, made the step, and lived to tell the tale.

That’s why I’m enjoying Boris’ cheery optimism so far. It doesn’t mean everything he tries to do will be right, but his optimism and a can-do spirit mean he’s more likely to succeed than the doubters, doomsters and gloomsters. Please pray for him, and all our politicians, in the tricky months ahead.

 

 

Rev’d Barry Unwin

What does the Bible say about Heaven?

15/09/2019

Adapted from an article first published in the Bridge Magazine, September 2019

What does the Bible say about Heaven?

For a lot of people, the word “Heaven” conjures up images of white-clad angels sitting around on clouds playing harps: an old-style Philadelphia cheese advert on steroids. But is that really what the Bible tells us awaits us beyond the grave? What does the Bible really say about life after death?

Let’s start with angels and clouds, an idea that owes less to Christianity than it does to a 2nd-century religious movement called Gnosticism. The Gnostics hated the body with all its longings and urges. For them, death was a beautiful release: freed from its body the soul could soar heavenward and float uncorrupted forever among the clouds with the angels, and presumably the Philadelphia…

So what does the Bible tell us about what happens when we die? Well, perhaps the most important thing it says, is that heaven is not the final destination for Christians after death! And here’s something else that might surprise you: the Bible doesn’t really talk very much about “going to Heaven when we die” at all.

Instead of “how to get to Heaven when we die” and that Gnostic  ‘cloudy floaty’ idea of disembodied souls, Jesus and the early Christians taught that after death, we could look forward to full bodily resurrection.  That’s why they called Jesus “the firstfruits” of the resurrection (1Cor.15:23) and “firstborn of the dead” (Revelation 1:4). They saw Jesus rise from the grave, and because they were “in him”, they too would rise from the grave. Just not immediately. That wouldn’t happen until Jesus returns in all his glory at the second coming.

So what happens to us if we die in the meantime? Where do we go if we die between death and the Jesus return? The best answer Jesus gives is in John 14:2, where he tells his disciples not to worry because he was going to prepare one of the many rooms in his Father’s house for them. And what’s really striking about that statement is that the Greek word he used for room (mone) is the word you’d use for a room in a Travelodge, a temporary stopping-off point on the journey to the final destination!

So what’s the ‘final destination’ for the Christian? The final three chapters of the Bible (Revelation 20-22) tells us three things will happen.

First, the resurrection. Jesus returns in his glory and everyone who has ever died is raised to life.

Second, Judgment. The resurrected come before God’s throne for judgement, a judgement we’ll all fail because of our deeds (our failure to love God and our neighbour).

Third, our final destination: either eternal separation from God (Hell), which is our destiny if we’ve rejected God’s offer of mercy made available through Jesus’ death on the cross, or, “the new earth.”

And this idea of a “new earth” is the focus of the end of the Bible’s story of what happens when we die. The new earth is where Christians spend their forever, and here’s how St John describes it:

Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” (Revelation 21:1)

The “first heaven and earth” he refers to is the world we know today, with all its brokenness, pain and suffering. And God promises that one day, all of that sadness and brokenness will be gone forever. And then something hard to comprehend happens: God will bring Heaven down to the new earth, and make his home among us.

Many years ago, St Augustine wrote of God,

You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you.”

Well when God makes his home among us, we’ll finally be truly satisfied in him, and as we experience him fully for the first time, he’ll wipe away every tear from our eyes, and

there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4).

Then there’s a banquet – a royal wedding feast with the finest food and wine ever. And we’ll live in a beautiful city, with extensive parklands, rivers and trees, and God at the centre. The Prophet Isaiah (Is.65:21-25) speaks of us building homes for ourselves, planting vineyards and enjoying good food. There will be animals, and they’ll live in harmony with each other, and with people. If this is sounding a bit like the Garden of Eden, that’s the point: it’s God’s original creation but made new. And this time it will never break, but go on getting better and better, forever.

So that’s the Christian hope in the face of death: a real resurrected body, living forever on a renewed earth, a place of eternal peace and joy and life, that will remind us very much of this world, but without all the bad bits, because God will be at the very centre of everything. I wonder if you would like to be part of it?

If you’d like to talk more about any of the issues raised in this article (or any of my other big questions), please get in touch: barry@hopechurchfamily.org.

Further reading: Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, SPCK, 2007

What is church?

04/09/2019

Ask most people in the street “What is a church?” and they’ll probably point to the nearest tall building with a spire.

That’s what most people think church means: an imposing building to which they come for happy events like weddings and baptisms, and sad ones like funerals.  They may even come into it weekly for to meet with Christians and to worship Jesus. But for most people church is the imposing building.

Of course the building doesn’t have to be imposing. I once visited a church that met in a converted supermarket. Another time I visited one that met in a coffee shop. They ran the coffee shop Monday to Saturday and moved the tables out of the way for Sunday. Sadly, they still charged for coffee. But these sorts of buildings tend to be the exception rather than the rule in the West, so for most people the word “church” conjures up something imposing, thick stone walls, high ceilings, a steeple to draw your eyes heavenwards.

But in the Bible, the word church is totally different. The Greek word that gets translated as church today is ekklesia ( ‘a gathering’) and in the Bible it has three different meanings, none of which were a physical building (the early church had no buildings –persecuted people don’t have time to build imposing buildings).

  1. The first meaning of ekklesia is never translated as church, because it is a gathering of citizens. In Greek and Roman culture – being a citizen wasn’t an automatic right, so the word has a sense of separateness about it; for example, although most people living in a Greek or Roman city were citizens, some residents, for example, slaves and foreigners were excluded. You can see an example of this sort of ekklesia in the Bible in Acts chapter 19, when the citizens of Ephesus call an ekklesia in the amphitheatre to decide what to do about the annoying Christians who are living in their city, and it nearly leads to a riot.
  2. The second meaning of ekklesia is what the theologians call the “local church” or congregation. This is a gathering of Christians in a location, usually meeting in someone’s home. And again it has a sense of separateness about it: based around whether you were a citizen of the Kingdom of God or not. It amuses me to think that as the citizens of Ephesus met in their ekklesia to work out how to deal with the annoying Christians, the annoying Christians were probably gathered as a congregation (ekklesia) to pray and to seek God’s guidance as to how to respond (in the end the disciples prevented St Paul from going to the amphitheatre in case the crowds killed him!)
  3. The third meaning of ekklesia is what the theologians call the “church universal”. This is the gathering that all Christians everywhere in the world and throughout history look forward to: the time when all those who have trusted in the risen Jesus for salvation are gathered around him in heaven. That’s the way St Paul uses it in Ephesians 1:22,

God placed all things under [Jesus’s] feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.”

And those are the only three ways the Bible uses the word church: in other words, in the Bible, church is never about the building, and it’s always about people. But if that’s the case, how did the word church come to be associated with imposing buildings? It’s time to blame the Germans! The English word “church” comes from the German word kirche which finds its origins in the third century Greek phrase kuriakon doma (house of the Lord). Quite how and when this German meaning crept into English is unclear, but it’s similarity to an ancient Anglo-Saxon word circe meaning circle (usually a stone circle for Sun Worship) would put it as far back as the fifth century.

So “church” is a Germanic building, and also the Bible’s way of describing local and universal gatherings of Christians. But just to complicate things, there’s yet another meaning – which we don’t find in the Bible but we do find in culture: what we call The Church Visible. This is more about the institution of church, and encompasses both local gatherings (ekklesia) and their buildings (kirche) But it’s also the legal and institutional framework that holds all this together. And it even includes people who may well not even be followers of Jesus Christ– the Church of England does try its best to be an equal opportunities employer!

As you might have guessed The Church Visible necessitates that there is also a Church Invisible, but thankfully that’s really just another term for the Church Universal.

So what is church? Well clearly it’s far far more than a building! Personally I like the definition my wife is fond of, “The church is what’s left after the building burns down.” In other words, it’s all about people and God.

To find out more about the ekklesia meeting in a kirche near you visit www.hopechurchfamily.org/gatherings!

Why gratitude is good for you!

30/08/2019

One night in July last year I was woken by a loud low buzzing as something large and striped landed on my ear. Instinctively I swatted it away, reached for the light, and discovered I had a rather large hornet buzzing around the room.

Now July is the month the tabloids start running Asian Hornet scare-stories. Apparently, if just one Asian hornet queen manages to breed in the UK, our indigenous wasps and Hornets will be destroyed, our orchards devastated, and ultimately the government will fall, or something like that. And so determined to do my bit for Queen and Country, I resolved to vanquish this invader, until I remembered that not everything you read in the tabloids is true, put down the fly swatter and picked up a glass and postcard instead.

After a few slightly scary minutes of “catch the hornet”, the disturber of my peace turned out to be a rather large, but indigenous, European Hornet. And then because it was getting pretty angry at being confined, I took it outside and released it! Sorry if it flew into your house instead.

Now inevitably there’s a sting to this tale! But it isn’t about our attitude to immigration and foreign invaders, it’s about gratitude! You see, as I drifted back off to sleep I had a rather odd thought: what did hornet think when I released it? Was it grateful I didn’t kill it or were its thoughts so wrapped up in itself that all it could think was, ‘Didn’t I do well to escape there’?

Now in the cold light of day, I don’t suppose the hornet thought either of those things – but the mind does strange things at two o’clock in the morning – and mine started thinking about some of the times when I’ve thought “Didn’t I do well there?” When really I should have been saying thank-you to all the people who helped – and most especially saying thank-you to the God who makes all things possible and who loves to bless and heal and free his people.

One of the books in the Bible is a songbook largely written by an Israelite king called David. Here’s how one of his songs begins, “I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.” (Psalm 9:1) Singing that song was David’s way of helping his mind move from being all wrapped up in itself, to a position of gratitude.

And the reason David wanted to do that is he instinctively knew what the psychologists will tell you: that being grateful is good for you! According to the scientists, grateful people have more friends, are healthier, happier, less prone to being angry, feel better about themselves, and are stronger and more resilient in the face of hardship. They even sleep better (except when disturbed by a hornet).

Gratitude is good for us! We shouldn’t say “If only life were better, I’d be grateful” instead we need to learn that being grateful makes life better. The more grateful we are, the better life will be. And that’s why gratitude is good for us.

May you enjoy the rest of our summer – and give thanks for all the good things in it. Even Hornets!

 

First published in the Bridge Magazine, August 2019

Introducing our New Administrator

28/08/2019

We’re delighted to announce that Clare Bell has joined us to work as our new Benefice Administrator.

Based in the church office in Upton Parish Church, Clare will be the beating heart behind all our administrative work across our churches (except Welland) and will be responsible for making the clergy look slick and organised. Best of luck Clare!

Clare has some great relevant experience, some family who are clergy, and a mum who runs a church office in Dorset, to fall back on for advice!

If you need to contact her, you can reach her on the parish office number (01684 591241,admin@hopechurchfamily.org) from 27 August.

Her normal office hours (until Christmas) will be: Monday 1-3pm, Tuesday, Thu, Fri, 9am-1pm.

Diocese of Worcester faces financial difficulties

28/08/2019

The Diocese of Worcester’s spent around £1 million more than it received in income during 2018, and is heading for a similar deficit in 2019, a situation which cannot be sustained using reserves for more than another year or two.

Earlier this summer the Bishop of Worcester wrote to all clergy explaining what his team are planning to do to resolve the problem. Further information was revealed at the Diocesan Synod in July.

The gist of the plan is a series of changes across the diocese which should result in a saving of around £1.67 million over the next three to five years, with savings coming from two main areas:

  1. The number of clergy in the diocese (currently 163 spread across 190 parishes) will be reduced by up to 15 full-time posts.
  2. Cost cutting in the diocesan bureaucracy in Worcester. This cost-cutting will trim something like £550,000 from the diocesan budget through a combination of:
  • Budget savings (£127,500) in our spend on everything from our support to church schools, to diocesan training courses, mobile phones and closing the Old Palace’s loss-making cafe (which currently loses around £10,000 a year);
  • Redundancies at the diocesan office (£181,000) – the equivalent of 5.3 full-time posts; and
  • Moving the diocesan office out of the Old Palace in the centre of Worcester into some less impressive, and less expensive, offices elsewhere in the diocese. Due to the rent plus repairs deal the diocese currently has with the Cathedral (the owners of the Old Palace) this is expect to save some £160,000 per year. It will however create a considerable problem for the cathedral , which will have to come up with a plan for what to do with the Old Palace. Many consider it would make a fine boutique hotel: the magnificent view over the river and of Worcester’s Cricket Ground would certainly be popular with cricket fans!

Inevitably moving the diocesan offices out of the Old Palace will be a controversial decision. The Old Palace is a beautiful grade 1 listed building, and has been in religious use since the 12th century. However while acknowledging that many people feel a strong sentimental attachment to the building, the Bishop’s Council feel it is hard to justify cutting the number of vicars even further to maintain an office building where only 22% of the floor space is actually useable for office accommodation.

In addition to cost savings, the diocese has committed to reviewing the Parish Share system. Parish Share is the contribution each parish makes to the cost of its clergy. A lot of people imagine that the Church of England gets money from the government, however this is  not the case. In fact the cost of clergy, all of our church buildings and local administration, as well as the cost of things like the Old Palace, comes from individual parishioners giving to their local churches. To put that in its local context, the eight churches and five parishes for which I’m responsible contributed some £68,000 to the Diocese of Worcester in 2018, which is roughly equivalent to the cost of one clergy post (the salary itself is only just over £26,000, the rest covers the cost of national insurance, housing, pension, initial and ongoing training and central costs). It is hoped that by reviewing how Parish Share costs are allocated between parishes, a better way forward can be found for 2021.

The Bishop of Worcester has asked for all who are associated with our churches to be made aware of the challenges ahead, and how the diocese is planning to address this. He asks us to go on being generous in our giving – and to give more to our local church if we can. In particular, he asks us to pray for those who will be made redundant as a result of this situation.

 

Barry Unwin 14 July 2019

Baptisms and Weddings?