Sports Day

Sports Day at Christ the Sower today! An afternoon standing around waiting while watching our children stand around waiting to run along the track and then wait around again... Fortunately, rain stopped play after each of ours had done something, so we were released an hour early! Hooray - and back to work - after a quick coffee...

Spent the morning in Bletchley waiting for the car to be serviced. Found a table in Ikea and sat down to do some work with a free refill glass... The only way to work!

This evening I'm meeting the Finance Committee for our first look at the 2010 share allocations. I've printed off a number of sheets, including my fantasy 2018 spreadsheet - in which we not only break even but overpay by £10,000! All I need is to do in order to achieve this is to persuade a couple of parishes to increase their parish share by 10% per year for the next nine years...

The more realistic projections leaves us short by 50K - the reality will hopefully be somewhere in between...

Money, money, money

As the world faces a "financial meltdown" or "credit crunch" there are similar problems in many of our churches.

In Milton Keynes we have been wrestling with the uncomfortable reality that we do have to live within our means rather than rely on an external subsidy. Bit by bit over the past few years, we have been slowly working to find ways of covering our own costs, through a process of increased giving and more realistic ministerial deployment.

Overall this has been working and I've been feeling very postitive, but there are still challenges ahead...

Firstly, of course, is the credit crunch and the impending recession. Our financial plans are dependent on increased giving: around 7% for Anglican share and 11% for the Mission Partnership. If people's ability to give declines then we will have some issues...

Secondly, there are the inevitable local issues. In Watling Valley these have recently come to a head because long term financial difficulties in one church have left them unable to pay last year's share in full and well behind on this year's.

If you combine the two you get local crises with no room for manoeuvre...

In Watling Valley there was a really super meeting this evening, between treasurers, church reps and the ministry team. Those present reflected on the current state of things and acknowledged that none of the churches would find share payments easy next year and would probably dip into dwindling reserves to keep themselves afloat. I think it was suggested that more than £20,000 would be needed... but I may have misheard...

In spite of the challenges, the mood was positive and a lot of valuable discussion took place. There was enthusiasm and a desire to maintain existing levels of ministry - to continue developing new work and develop greater capacity for mission.

One of the main themes was a desire to help church members understand the financial need by giving them more information about how their money is used. There was also a desire to find ways to address some of the popular myths about church finance, i.e. that the government pays for it all...

There is much to be done, but great potential for growth as we take our responsibility as stewards of God's gifts more seriously. There is also an opportunity to rethink how we use those resources and what we actually need.

"Sustainability" may sound like a dull concept, but it is crucial to the long-term survival of the planet. Only sustainable churches will have anything meaningful to offer a post-peak, environmentally challenged world...

Deanery Finance Committee

I attended the Deanery Finance Committee tonight. This was a break in my sabbatical, but one that I'd planned back in April. The reason for the occasion is that the diocese has just released its figures for 2009, we are therefore able to set parish shares for 2009.
We found 3 mistakes in the diocesan figures. They don't affect our figures this year, but they might be significant for the future - and it would be daft for the diocese to budget for posts we no longer have...
We set our share allocation (most of it) following the formula we set in place last year. This moves slowly towards an 80% target in 2013 and a 100% target in 2018 - long term planning is the only way out of the MK muddle. We'll get there, as long as people can find the share we've negotiated...
There are a couple of parishes which we still need to talk to, so we can set an achievable target. We'll do that in the autumn.
It was good to see people again.

Early Morning Stormy Share Session

I woke up at four this morning with the storms and wind. Couldn't get to sleep again, so ended up answering the call of temptation to do some work...
It's great to get going on something at this time of the morning. You can get things done without interuption, so I spent a productive hour and a half tweaking our Deanery Share spreadsheet to incorporate the key principals that we decided to add at the last Deanery Finance Committee - in particular the decision to share the "Poverty Allowance" between the parishes according to the number of ministers and the decision to share the cost of "Deanery Ministry" on the same basis. This might sound like a small matter to you, but this is the kind of thing that will add a bit of transparancy to our finances and give us a process for funding Deanery mission and work...

Plus, I'd had plenty of sleep having colapsed into bed early after a dose of LOST...

Hello World

At Team Space Alison encouraged us to pray for the wider world...
I then had to attend the Presidents' Meeting to present our report for Local Shared Ministry which meant speaking to denominational big wigs about what we do, knowing that their perspective is a little wider. This was challenging, because I don't want to end up doing nothing because we're already doing it... (if that makes sense?)
Popped into St Andrew's Bookshop and discovered that Roland Allen's 1912 classic "Missionary Methods: St Paul's or Ours" has at last been reprinted. Alleluia! I'll finally get to read it. More soon...
Lunch time meeting with Ministers West - two very practical new ideas emerged which we may be acting on soon...
Spent the afternoon working through a huge pile of jobs (one of which I'd already done).
In the early evening Isla carried out a number of complicated tests on my brain. Ouch! My Head hurts!
In the evening we have the Deanery Finance Committee... Planning for 2009 begins now...

DFC

Small gathering of Deanery Finance Committtee in the evening (2) to discuss the presentations we're going to give to parishes. The first one will be at Walton next week. The idea is to give a clear presentation of the facts about Parish/Deanery Share and help churches have a discussion about the implications and what they plan to do.

Back to the meetings...

After a relatively quiet Christmas and New Year, today sees the return of regular meetings. This is a fairly typical day with four meetings to attend - three of which are primarily about buidling relationships - which is good - but on a day like today, it's hard to find time to do the jobs that need doing. So I'm consciously up at 5:00am and will probably sit up after the evening meeting - otherwise I get behind...

9:00am - Team Space: Only four of us this morning. We all commented that it seems a long time since we last met. It's only been a couple of weeks - but they've been very full!

11:00am - Ministers West: Meeting of the ministers on the west flank of Milton Keynes. Only four of us here too, but good to catch up on what's going on in the other churches...

No time for a lunch break... Beginning to get hungry... good job most meetings have a plate of biscuits on the table...

2:00pm - Ecumenical Oversight Group: Meeting of local denominational leaders. We were joined by the Salvation Army for the first time. A good time of sharing. Questions asked about Local Shared Ministry...

Home for tea. We're all on different diets so cooking was complicated...
Peter Ballentine rang. 26 people have booked for the Pastoral Care Course!! Beginning to get worried about room in the church...

7:00pm - Deanery Finance Committee: Meeting to discuss the presentations/discussions we hope to organise with the three parishes with most challenging share/deployment calculations...

The Last Christmas Breakfast

Christmas Team Social at Dobbies
- and farewell to Richard....

We had a special team social to celebrate Christmas and say goodbye to Richard. He's on good form at the moment and had three pieces of good news to share... We began to reminice back to 1999 - when most of us had yet to arrive...

Liz is going to do her first solo funeral next Wednesday. She'll be fine.

Time to think...
Went to the dentist (a filling repair) and did some Christmas shopping. I parked at All Saints' and walked into town via the dentist. It was good to have some space to think. I spent some time thinking about the Christmas events I need to plan - and also about the work I want to do during my sabattical... following the meeting of the Fresh Expressions Oversight Group, and with an awareness to how the Local Shared Ministry Project seems to be developing, it would seem to be sensible to shift the emphasis of my work into the area of ministry - since that's my specialist area - rather than get too bogged down on finance... still thinking... "Emerging Ministry" is looking like a good working title... (must check the web address)

Deanery Finance Committee
The Deanery Finance Committee met in the evening and we finalised the share allocations for 2008 - Alleluiah! This has been a massive project. We started work in January - setting out our working principles in February...

1. Know what we’re paying for: Each parish/partnership needs to have a clear target to aim for. This should include all payments associated with their clergy (of all denominations), denominational costs and sector ministry.

2. Transition Plan: We want to have a clear plan, which enables us to reach 80% of these targets in five years and 100% by ten. This plan should start with what parishes/partnerships are actually paying at the moment, not with what they have been asked to pay.

3. Openness: We need to nurture a culture of openness and create opportunities for all parishes/partnerships to share their difficulties and expertise. This will help with planning and crisis management. Different methods of raising finance could also be explored and shared between parishes/partnerships.

4. Mutual Support: All parishes/partnerships should be meeting 80% of their responsibilities within five years. Variations will continue for various reasons (e.g. unexpected costs, major change, poverty, etc…). These will be agreed between the parishes/partnerships through a process of conversation and discussion. Factors like relative wealth will be used as an aid rather than made part of the calculation.

...the rest of the year has been taken up with making this happen. We now have a ten year transition plan, and some detailed notes for 2008, and the the Mission Partnership is working with our figures, and the Diocese is working with us...

Producing figures for 2009 should be much more straightforward. The next challenge is to visit the three parishes who are in the most precarious situations, and then the three parishes who are borderline. This is the challenge for 2008...

Deanery Share

Spent some time today working on Deanery Share calculations for the next five years. Needed to do this because I was meeting a coleague this afternoon to talk about their parish. I was pleased to see that his area (which is reletively) deprived will only need to find an extra 5% per year. On the other hand, we will all have to find at least 10% to pay for non-parochial clergy - which may be an issue for some.