Bishop says Wasting Money on Bureaucracy Hampers Mission

The Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, has criticised the Church of England for wasting too much money on bureaucracy during a recent interview with The Church of England Newspaper.

While the mission work of the Church of England continues to decline, the inefficient use of funds may have intensified the crisis faced by the Church. Bishop Chartres is the Chairman of the Church Commissioners, who manage the Church's central finances. Acknowledging the increasing "missing pews", he has been motivated to bring revival to the Church. However, at the same time, he has discovered a problem in the Church's budget that has hampered mission.

The Bishop said the Church is obsessed with "carousels of consultation". The money that has been spent on this aspect could be better utilised in promoting mission work so as to save the dying Church.
"When you have a situation where the Church is so averse to risk, it's so pedestrian it doesn't seem to be doing anything, that's a terrible problem."

Over recent years, the Church of England has been suffering from a serious decline in Church attendance and membership. The figures released by the Church of England show that weekly adult attendance has fallen alarmingly below one million. The figures published in the latest "UK Christian Handbook: Religious Trends" in March 2004 projected that Church membership will have fallen to 5,598,000 by 2005, down by more than a million people in 15 years.

Some evangelists commented that people were reluctant to attend services in a Church they believed to be "dull and boring". Whilst money has been seemingly wasted on bureaucracy, the decline in attendance will carry on as the institution continues to be perceived as "pedestrian and dull", Bishop Chartres lamented.

Bishop Chartres has 3.5 million people in his diocese, which covers London north of the Thames and some surrounding areas. But just two percent, or 74,300 attend an Anglican church.

The Bishop urged more risk-taking and a loosening of structures to allow clergy to build "communities of trust" that were more appealing. He also suggested putting more funds into organising mission initiatives to reach out to the de-churched and un-churched.

"We want a radical look at whether in this 21st century, the expensive way we govern the Church, the plethora of bodies, the particular activities that are conducted at national level are really worthwhile," he said.

"The Church leaches its own energy by living in too complex a way with its over-elaborate structures and over-bureaucratisation. Real engagement is very local so let's get rid of a few of these carousels of consultation."

Under the gloom of schism over homosexual bishops within the Anglican Communion, not only the congregation may have been affected to leave the Church, but some of the conservative evangelical parishes have also boycotted their contributions to the central funds in protest of the liberal agenda that accepted homosexual bishops. A study of diocesan finances in late July stated that the Church is losing millions of pounds. Therefore, a wiser budget is very crucial.

In the light of a shortage of funds and memberships, the Bishop urged the Church to wake up and see the real needs of people in the country.

He described a "hollowness" at the centre of modern society and of "people who don't know how to celebrate without getting drunk".

"We are faced with a world where the ground has disappeared," Bishop Chartres said. "Any society that tries to live as if there wasn't a God and as if there wasn't a ground of meaning and values, that society begins to drift and loses energy and loses joy."