The difference between expenditure and investment - and which the Church should cut

One of the central planks of New Labour thinking which led to its election in 1997 was that public services had been starved of investment, and that situation should be put right. What has happened since has been the confusion of expenditure and investment. Building and staffing a new hospital is undoubtedly investment. Giving staff a good pay rise is debatable. Flushing billions down the toilet on a failed IT system is simply expenditure. What we've seen in the public sector is massive increases in expenditure, but questionable return on investment by way of increased productivity. The lesson is not to confuse investment with expenditure and to ruthlessly control expenditure, whilst maximising investment.

So we turn to the good old CofE. The church has been hit just as much as anyone else by the recession. The Church Commissioners have managed to lose £1.3bn of the Church's investments, whilst the new pensions scheme, set up in 1998 to stem the bleeding from the old scheme, has also managed to lose a quarter of its value. Diocese across the country are struggling to deal with budget deficits, and some are resorting to cutting ministerial roles.

The Times published an article on Saturday highlighting the problem, including that of rural parishes which are increasingly asked to get by with a single ordained member of the clergy covering multiple parishes through united benefices. Whilst some argue that this is due to a lack of ordinands, this seems to Mouse merely coincidental if they cannot be paid for in the first place. (The Ugley Vicar has a good discussion on the topic).

And this creates real tough choices. What do we cut. Winchester Diocese has taken some flack for their decision to cut the role of University Chaplain to Southampton University out of their £12m budget. 24,000 students will now have no pastoral provision from the Church of England.

This cuts right to the heart of what builds the church. Mouse would draw the analogy of a company who cut out their sales and marketing budget in an attempt to make the budget balance. That will undoubtedly balance the books in the first year. Loyal customers will probably stay for some time. But without investment in sales and marketing, the company is ultimately doomed to failure, as it has given up on winning new customers.

So what is the answer? Mouse has a little suggestion.

Mouse's theory starts with the position that investments have a payback. Whilst the church does not like to talk about such grubby things as money when deciding on ministry provision, it is an important part of the equation. In this context it means that when putting a minister into a role, part of that is to grow the church in that context, and this will lead to a congregation which will give.

So the answer is simple. A Church Growth Fund should be established which pays for specific roles, for specific periods of time. Those roles have specific objectives to establish the church in areas where it is currently weak. These roles would be self funding in a few years, but would reduce the burden on Diocese in these difficult times who are currently providing clergy to simply man the alter once every few weeks, with no real hope of effective parish ministry. The source of funds for this could be from a number of places, but the Church Commissioners should take a big share of it.

The other side of the equation, of course, is for everyone else to pick up the church growth agenda. If all parishes were really focused on mission and were able to grow the church overall by any noticeable amount financial worries would disappear.