The problem is the church is running out of money. The solution is a new committee.

During the years I’ve been attending an Anglican church, committees have come and gone leaving little behind them but a disagreeable whiff of empty posturing, very similar to IBM committee meetings that I attended during what passes for my career. The ecclesiastical version will, no doubt, be far more effective in inducing crippling ennui, since it will be populated by a gaggle of theologians, bishops and clergy whose tenuous grip on reality is summed up by this sentence in the article below: “The Communion has not split.”

Archbishop Linda Nicholls is suggesting “finding potentially radical solutions”. Before anyone rashly jumps to the conclusion that the Anglican Church of Canada is about to try Christianity to halt its dramatic decline, I refer you to another article, published at the same time, where Nicholls affirm[s] the dignity of LGBTQ+ people and their place in the church – which, in translation, means she affirms same-sex activity. And there is nothing less radical than that.

From here:

The church may soon have a new commission tasked with finding potentially “radical solutions” to the demographic and financial challenges that now face it, according to a proposal introduced by Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, in her opening statement to the Council of General Synod (CoGS) March 2.

Nicholls said a new strategy would be needed for the church to go forward into the post-pandemic world. It will need to respond to challenges including financial pressure “as parishes struggle to sustain full-time or part-time stipendiary ministry and dioceses struggle to meet multiple responsibilities at local, regional and national levels.” The national church, on the other hand, is facing the challenge of supporting ministry in regions where donations do not cover expenses, she said. Meanwhile, statistics show the church’s membership is aging and declining. Cultural shifts in Canadian society and a newly redefined relationship with the Indigenous church, she said, also demand new ideas.

[…….]

But in fact, Nicholls said, “the Communion remains committed to walking together—some at a great distance, others working more closely together.

“The Communion has not split.”

The deficits are expected to be: $495,000 in 2024, $1.45 million in 2025, $460,000 in 2026 and $524,000 in 2027.

Income from diocesan contributions is projected to fall from $7.25 million in 2021 to $6.93 million in 2024.

The Anglican Church of Canada likes to think of itself as identifying with the poor. This should help.

Read all about it here:

The Anglican Church of Canada’s national office is forecast to have a balanced budget this year—but substantial deficits and program cuts are likely in the years to follow, documents prepared for the November meeting of Council of Synod (CoGS) state.

The budget for 2023 is expected to have a modest surplus of $43,000, according to a budget document prepared for CoGS and dated Oct. 27. This includes the projected cost of $791,900 for the meeting of General Synod planned for the summer, as well as a gathering of Sacred Circle planned in the spring. To balance its budget, the church will use just over $1 million in funds that were set aside in previous years to cover these expenses, General Synod treasurer Amal Attia told CoGS. The national church was expected to have a similarly modest surplus in 2022, she said.

Prospects for coming years, however, as revenues are expected to fall, are not as rosy. The Oct. 27 document forecasts a deficit of $495,000 in 2024, $1.45 million in 2025, $460,000 in 2026 and $524,000 in 2027, and a budget narrative predicts cuts at Church House.

“Years 2023 to 2027 in the trend indicate that in the absence of increased revenue, program cuts will likely be necessary,” it states.

The budget projection shows expected revenues from diocesan contributions—by far the largest element of the national office’s revenues—falling from 2021’s $7.25 million to $6.93 million in 2024, and then staying at $6.93 million until 2027, the last year covered by the projection.

As I mentioned here, in 2019 the Anglican Journal abandoned all pretence at editorial independence.

I am not convinced it would have made much of a difference to the muddle the ACoC hierarchy has made of dealing with charges of sexual misconduct made against ACoC clergy, but there remains no doubt at this point that the Journal, its policies and its articles are in the firm grip of the Anglican Church of Canada.

The names of the complainants were extracted under protest by the ACoC from Journal staff who were made aware of them on the understanding that they would remain confidential. The promise of confidentiality was broken by Alan Perry, general secretary of General Synod.

To his credit, the Journal editor resigned over this breach of trust. Alan Perry did not, even though some are urging him to do so.

As in so many of these grubby affairs, hand-wringing and wordy (how these priests like to prattle) apologies abound but the only real consequences are those suffered by the innocent parties: the victims, the Journal editor (Matthew Townsend) and a staff writer (Joelle Kidd).

If this were a secular organisation – sorry, I misspoke, it is, of course – heads would roll. Heads close to or at the top.

There is more in this article from the Journal and a great deal of detailed information on the ACCToo website:

In a footnote to their open letter posted this February, #ACCtoo organizers Michael Buttrey and Carolyn Mackie blame the Anglican Journal governance policy General Synod adopted in 2019 for enabling the alleged breach of confidentiality and privacy for which the letter calls the church to account.

“We believe this abuse of power was enabled by a motion adopted at the 2019 General Synod meeting in Vancouver that changed the mandate, oversight, and reporting structure of the AJ,” the footnote reads.

The subject of their open letter is the sharing in spring 2021, by senior church management, of a draft article intended for Anglican Journal sister publication Epiphanies containing allegations by anonymous sources of sexual misconduct in the church, with four institutions related to these allegations. By the time this article was being written, #ACCtoo’s open letter, which calls for the Anglican Church of Canada to apologize, make amends with the survivors and require the resignation of Archdeacon Alan Perry, general secretary of General Synod, had attracted the attention of several news outlets. But very little of the media coverage had dealt with the governance issues the letter raised—the policies that govern the Anglican Journal.

This, we are told, is not so much a reversal of a general financial downward trend but a saving on travel expenses during the pandemic and shrewd investments in the capitalist system the church is otherwise bent on destroying.

Read all about it here:

The Anglican Church of Canada’s national office recorded two consecutive multi-million-dollar yearly surpluses in 2020 and 2021, for a combined total of just over $8 million, the church’s treasurer and chief financial officer has confirmed.

As reported to the Council of General Synod (CoGS) in March, General Synod netted an excess of revenue over expense of $3.6 million. But the corresponding figure for the previous year was also in the millions—just over $4.5 million, treasurer Amal Attia says.

The two figures added together approach the national office’s total spending in 2021, which was $8.5 million.

A 2020 financial statement was presented to CoGS in May 2021, but was not reported on by the Anglican Journal at the time. The CoGS session took place on the weekend immediately after then-acting editor Tali Folkins departed for a sabbatical leave, and immediately before then-editor Matthew Townsend returned from a two-month parental leave—and shortly before the sudden departure of both Townsend and staff writer Joelle Kidd over the sharing by church management of a draft article on sexual misconduct. (See “Off on the wrong track?” on p. 8 of this issue.)

The church should plan to carefully steward the combined $8 million in revenue surplus and savings it accrued across 2020 and 2021, say two of its financial leaders. General Secretary Archdeacon Alan Perry and Attia caution that the pandemic years have offered a windfall that will not likely be repeated.

There’s no recent precedent for this, says Perry, noting that over the past couple of decades, the revenue for the church has been trending downward as congregations shrink. “Having a surplus of any kind is quite extraordinary. And especially of this size,” he says.

The surplus should not be taken as a reversal of that downward trend, Perry says. Rather, it represents a couple of key factors that set the pandemic years apart. The first is a substantial savings on money the church normally sets aside for travel expenses as clergy and lay leaders travel for ministry and church governance. When the pandemic postponed some of those meetings and moved others online, the church saved money.

The other major component is that the past few years have been unusually successful for the church’s investments, which increased in value by about $6 million over the course of their eight-year maturation period, says Attia. Some of that comes to the church in the form of capital gains, she says, but the majority of it doesn’t come back in cash until and unless the church decides to sell those investments. As a result, much of that $6 million is in the value of the stocks the church holds, not money it has at its disposal.