Stewarship for Christ John Spence is a man of great experience in the finance sector, who has just been appointed to the Archbishop’s council as the financial advisor. Livability met him at the National Stewardship conference and were so struck by his approach to stewarship, all with Christ and community put at the centre we asked him to write a post for us. To find out more about John, take a look here. The age of 62 is proving significant for me. I became an elected Councillor for the first time and, through my appointment to the Archbishop’s Council, will make my entry into General Synod. Now I’ve been asked to attempt my first ever blog following my address to the Church of England Stewardship Conference. It can feel like performing A Midsummer Night’s dream to an empty theatre. The theme was stewardship in an age of uncertainty – yet both terms pose a challenge. Historically, stewardship has been about the wise use of resources to enable their passage to future generations; but today it typically means securing more money, time and talents from a pretty closed community. The Church Commissioners have proved a terrific example of full stewardship through their wise investments; if their funds had only operated at the average over the last 10-20 years, the funds being made available to the Church each year would be 20% or more lower. And rarely have things been more certain. We know that interest rates will never be lower, that both interest rates and inflation will increase over time; we know the number of members across the Church of England is decreasing and ageing. We know older people face continuing and escalating strains on their wallets where interest rates and savings are negative in real terms and benefits will come under increasing scrutiny. We know that there are ever more parishes whose finances are stretched by the cost of expensive and historic buildings, by the declining numbers and their inability to give more. Yet this is no excuse for not asking. Asking costs nothing and if requests are made in the right way, they avoid giving offence and may yield unexpected results. Ultimately, of course, the finances of the Church will be reliant on reversing the trends in our membership; we are all here to promulgate the wonderful story of the risen Christ and we need to excite and enthral the communities we serve so that they see how finance can facilitate a new evangelism. Until and even after we get there, we also need to think more laterally. I can list below a range of thoughts, none of which are new, but none of which are being deployed to their full extent. So here goes! We serve communities, often rural, who want to keep a church in the village just as much as the pub or local shop – but who will not commit to membership. The most imaginative ‘Friends of…’ schemes are reaching out to those who want somewhere for their child to be married , to celebrate
key feasts or even to have their own funeral in ways that eliminate all those building costs. How liberating for a congregation to be freed of that burden so they can focus on mission! Investments can be used more rigorously and sweated harder. How well are we working out ways to pool funds to maximise returns and gain the attention of investment managers? How well do we understand the full range of safe enough investment options? We have thousands of church schools. My own diocese has about 138, with 28,000 pupils attending at one time. That means we are seeing about 50,000 children go through our schools each decade – a number well in excess of our total membership. If we only converted 20% and their parents to an on-going engagement, we would see a considerable impact. There are wonderful schemes for cooperation on insurance, energy, operations and so on. The more we can promulgate best practice, the easier it becomes for all our communities to overcome hurdles and to engage. And all of this is not for the sake of the money, but for what that money can enable us to do. Having faced the certainty of blindness over 20 years ago, I came to understand that such a challenge enables one to unlock new gifts in new ways. Who among us can say there are no such gifts waiting to be unlocked in their community? I was inspired by the activities of the stewardship managers I met at the Conference and by others present wearing different hats. Money isn’t a dirty topic; it does, as they say, help the world go round. How wonderful it will be when we give true, varied and creative stewardship the profile to ensure that Christ is really at the centre of that world.