AUDIO
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Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
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And so we wait.
The Bishopscourt debate was passionate, long, and informative but for me, sadly soul-less. It was like watching an American Football game - full of predictable, slow moving set plays.
In Rugby Union, flair, creativity, skill, and incisive and surprising behaviour wins the day. There was little of that in the debate. Don't get me wrong: there were passionate speeches and laughter (Professor Bernard Stewart won the Award for best on ground in my view). But there was little evidence that anyone is seeking creative, surprising solutions to our cash crisis.
Perhaps I am being too harsh, but for me the debate can be summarised like this. We need extra money to pay our bishops. Selling Bishopscourt will (possibly) get us extra money. Let's sell Bishopscourt.
In my little corner of the house, we came up with at least seven solutions to the cash crisis and I don't count any of us as flair-filled geniuses (sorry guys!).
Nevertheless, at about 3.35pm today we will hear the result of the ballot.
Planting new fellowships
In more exciting news, we set Al Stewart on his merry way to recruit new evangelists to preach Jesus to the people of Sydney in a variety of ways including planting new fellowships.
The Ordinance still needs some work and truth be told, no one really knows how this whole "New Churches" thing is going to play out, but I am glad we are giving it a go.
In my short ministry, I have seen the truth of the adage "new things reach new people". So bring it on - there is plenty of room in our backyard and we are a fair way off being able to say we have connected with everyone in our parish.
Today we will discuss euthanasia, which is topical given the new billboard on the Hume Highway at Yagoona. Allegedly 85 percent of Australians agree with euthanasia.
While I am sure the figure will not be so high in the Synod, it will be interesting to see what happens.
Show us what you've got!
If the sale does get knocked back today I suspect it will come back next year - they will just have to show more thinking has been done!
What are your seven solutions? I'm keen to hear...
Moore College receives around 30% of the Synod budget - a little under $2M out of little over $6M.
Two important facts.
One: In the past, the grant was itemised, although now it has been consolidated into a lump sum. The amount hasn't changed much. When it was allocated, $500,000 was earmarked for the new library.
Two: Students pay $0 out of pocket for tuition. The fee level is set as the same as fee help. I have been told that this is not required by the fee help system. They graduate with a debt which most will never repay, since they will not get over the minimum taxable income threshold to trigger repayments.
So, the first thing we could do is reduce the grant to MTC by $1.5M immediately, and charge the students $1000 per semester (still the most affordable education you're ever likely to find), and admit that the Diocesan funds are not sufficient to keep contributing to a new library (and that if the college wants one, it will need to find it another way).
And not single thing would change at college - same staff ratios etc.
Next idea tomorrow!
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree with you.
My wife and I are both in 3rd year at Moore College and I can tell you now that if we were charged $2000 a semester we would not be at College.
The fact is that at the moment, every student is being subsidised by the Diocese around $3,500, and it's pretty clear we can't afford that.
http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/luxury/packers-splash-out-12-million-for-pool--tennis-court-not-included-20100324-qwt5.html
12 million to buy 985 square metres of land in Bellevue Hill.
Bishopscourt has over 6000 square metres of land in Darling Point, the suburb which has the highest land prices and average incomes of any region in Australia (higher even than Bellevue Hill or Vaucluse)
This is the problem that we have as a Diocese. We place far too much value on physical assets (money, land...) and far too little on spiritual assets (right relationship with God, desire for the lost..) 1.5 million gouged out of synod funds at the loss of support for training... is foolishness. In the end Bishopscourt is a house. It is a non income producing asset and it and St Andrews House are a real burden on the assets of the EOS. Far too much of the assets of the EOS are bound up in property and particularly non income producing property. The EOS needs to be fixed, but not at the cost of losing funds from Moore College or the other things that are core in supporting our mission.
It si b
I'm not sure Synod was in that position last night, but I'm expecting the vote to be close - maybe 50 in it either way.
On creative solutions, anyone who parked in St Andrews House for Synod will have noticed the very high proportion of 'nice' cars - either new or expensive or both. It is clear that God has blessed Sydney Anglicans greatly financially in recent times, but His blessing has been on us individually rather than 'head office'.
(If you want to disagree on the 'blessing' comment please type carefully into your new blackberry or iMac before going to your paid-off (or at least very manageable mortgage) home in your car that is less than 3 years old to watch photos of last year's overseas holiday on the plasma you bought in the sales at Harvey Norman).
The money is in our pockets. The Diocese needs it. Its time to consider an appropriate transfer mechanism.
You need to understand that it's harder to find a paying student ministry position than it was back then as well. There's a growing trend of churches to say, "We're sorry, we can't pay you, but we're a TEACHING church."
Without that extra $5k or what ever the stipend's meant to be (I wouldn't know as I've never seen the full amount, which is not to say I havn't loved my student ministry churches for their love and support!) life at MTC is pretty tight.
And this goes double if you're an independant and you have to buy your own books. The library does not have sufficient copies of any of the required texts to permit even a handful of students to do the level of reading that is expected. Purchasing your own copy is often the only way to get the job done.
I appreciate that it was tough when you had to pay fees. I'm greatful for the blessing that Fee Help has been in allowing me to go to College. But you have to allow within your calculations that other factors have come into play: even just the cost of rent has risen dramatically, and that killed our savings in the first year when we didn't have College housing!
Just wanted to comment on the proposed "schools" amendment. Setting aside issues such as zoning, the proposal seemed bizarre to me. It was suggested that the schools corporation (or similar) lease Bishopscourt with an upfront premium of $25m and subsequent lease payments over 50 years.
Given that the estate agents apparently valued the place at $24m wouldn't we then be simply asking the schools to subsidise the diocese by paying well over market rate? We tried that before with "Loane's loan" re St Andrew's House. Were they effectively suggesting that we shift the burden to the schools corporation since that's the most cash-rich organisation amongst us? Madness! It was wisely defeated.
Please tell us what they are
Right, I paid over $40k in tuition fees alone. It was a struggle and some of it came from generous supporters and God's provision in other areas but it was doable. We just had to prioritise in specific and very profound ways.
But this dovetails in with Jim Flavin's point - we have very shallow pockets. Local churches should take it upon themselves to, where they can, support students at Moore. Do we really think a quality education like that is worth the money? If so, let's put our money where our mouth is.
The current limits for fee-help is $85,000 (total). So MTC could charge more for a degree (almost double), and the students could borrow more from the government to pay it. Of course - they would then pay a 25% fee for the privilege of borrowing the money. And it doesn't cover international students, or local students who aren't eligible for for FEE-HELP.
But it's not even a simple as that. To be eligible for FEE-HELP, a institution must pass very strict criteria, including justifying what they are charging students. It's naive to suggest its as easy as charging an extra $1,000 per student to pay for a new library. I also doubt they would be able to charge a tuition fee separate from FEE-HELP that FEE-HELP rules don't cover.
There is no doubt in my mind that there has never been a better time financially to go to college. With FEE-HELP and the generous support payments from the government, it is astonishingly easy to go to MTC (my apologies to those students who are doing it tough, especially our international friends)
However - even with the the current material riches of todays MTC students, I find it sad that the first suggestion to fix the diocean money problems is pick on the most financially vulnerable among us. Dropping stipends by $1,000 pa is another way to raise the money.
The 2010 undergrad fees at MTC is $15,750. Link
Which means over 4 years, the student has a $78,750 in debt from FEE-HELP (including 25% fee). This is indexed at CPI (I think).
I believe the 25% fee does not contribute to the FEE-HELP limit (but I could be wrong)
Mike
Certainly a possible option.
However, to increase the fees charged is not the same as dropping the stick on the students. As I note above, it falls upon us all as a community to meet the costs.
Yep, absolutely
And it's worth keeping in mind that the "value" of MTC is more than the education it provides for students. It provides value to the diocese as well. And so if we want to "fairly" share the cost of running MTC, it is right that the diocese pays for the value it receives.
Again - it's not as simple as saying that the diocese is subsidising each student by $3,500. The diocese gets substantial value from the college.
How much value? That's really hard to say. At the very least it's a resource for the diocese. It provides lots of free theological students who do much unpaid work at your churches. There are other, intangible ways that MTC contributes to the good of the diocese. To suggest that students should foot the entire bill for running MTC suggests they should be subsidising the diocese!
I'll leave it up to those smarter than me to argue about how much value. Perhaps students should be footing more of the bill. Perhaps the diocese should be footing more of the bill.
Mike
Having sat through the debates, the key question I was left with was, 'what would happen if we went without assistant bishops for a few years, say until St Andrews House has tennants again'?
Given the emphasis now being placed on mission areas by the Archbishop, and the financial gutting of the regions, wouldn't now be an appropriate time to consider the place of assistant bishops and to perhaps at least imagine what a world without them might be like? Or a world where the fine pastors we currently have in those roles were released back into front line parish work?
I'm not clear on what the impact would be, but I'd like the discussion?
now that's an intriguing suggestion - certainly worth discussing.
Is it really an either/or? In recent years, Canberra and Melbourne have had assistant bishops who were also parish rectors/vicars.
Stuart Robinson was P/T national church missioner while also rector of Chatswood.
We can have assistant bishops being delegated specific areas from the Archbishop and they don't have to be completely on the EOS payroll.
Sure - no doubt we could do it that way. I'm just intrigued by trying to work through what difference it would make in practice, on the ground, for the gospel, if the positions didn't exist at all - given the shift away from regionalism represented by mission areas and the gutting of the regional budgets.
Craig
www.stmarks.com.au
I can't see how we can do without assistant bishops all together.
There is a lot more troubleshooting that goes on behind the scenes than most people see. I don't think we want some of our best performing parish ministers (ie mission area leaders) tied up in human resource issues, sexual misconduct issues, parish conflicts etc etc.
I can speak with some confidence about my own area of work. Today we have Bishop Forsyth spending a significant chunk of the day speaking to a whole range of media about the ethics/SRE issue. This is not unusual.
We need somebody for the Archbishop to delegate the spokesman role to and this does take up real time.
Not at all convinced that it's not as easy as increasing the fees for MTC and getting the students to pay some. If that's not possible under the rules, then it needs to be shown.
And I don't hear anyone defending the $0.5M contribution to the new library.
And this is the point is - it's now 'game on'.
The move to tax the parishes entails the claim that every single dollar the center spends is better than the last dollar of every single parish - that there was not a single dollar of expenditure that was save-able. And since every parish is now a financial stakeholder in the decision - whether they like it or not - that means every dollar of central expenditure should get full scrutiny, and justify itself against the ministry cuts that will now need to be made.
The next half million put away for a new library versus $500,000 left in parishes to do the frontline job? That's a no brainer. And frankly, so is another, say $350,000 left in parishes by charging students only $500 per semester. There's your 1.14%.
It's just not good enough to say that parishioners are wealthy, and should give more money to cover these expenditures.
Especially it's not good enough coming from a center that blew $160M by inappropriately gearing a long term endowment. And it's unthinkable coming from the EOS, which has lived outside its means - running deficit budgets, annually spending millions of dollars more than it earns - for 17 years or more, as we were told last night.
We have become spending addicts, and my fear is that this decision simply feeds the addiction. We get addicts coming to our church office quote often, and we never give them cash, we try to help in real ways, not help sustain people in their addiction.
The only real solution here is to cut expenditure, to do what every parish in the Diocese does - and live within our means. And that means some really good things that we have gotten used to doing will have to change or stop - like $0 out of pocket for MTC students.
It's fantasy to think there's any other way. The value of the Diocesan Endowment was cut by 60% and we chose to reduce expenditure from it by only 50% - that's nuts!
true enough - but none of us are as rich and fat as the EOS ($70M) or the Diocesan Endowment ($100M).
Or for that matter the recipients of the grants - MTC (annual budget $15M or so), Youthworks about the same, Anglicare 5 times that, etc.
But to keep them in the style (read business model) to which they have become accustomed, we tax the parishes as the first and only thing this Synod - go figure!
And I find the statement "$0 out of pocket for students" offensive. I was going to say how much our savings have dropped over 2 years at College, but I remembered me that this is a public forum and I won't embarass anyone, but it can be measured in the tens of thousands of dollars and our savings are at 50% what they were pre college. If I were staying for four years it would end in costing us everything we have. "$0 out of pocket" forsooth!
Yes it is easier to go to College than once it was, praise the Lord, but that is due to the generosity of the Government, not the Diocese. And now you're asking for the diocese to be LESS generous to students than it has been in the past? There just seems to be soemthing fundamentally wrong with saying we can no longer afford to be generous.
I take no point with your comments regarding the library, nor concerning the ecconomic management of the Diocese. And I'm fine with more scrutiny. Then maybe we'll better understand the value the Diocese receives from Moore. i've every confidence that it will be considerable.
Andrew, did you have any comments to make on Mike's suggestion of cutting the stipend?
This comment is a bit OTT Andrew. By all mean talk about DE Synod grants but the annual turnovers of the various Anglican organisations is irrelevant.
ARV would have by far the biggest budget of all. (and we haven't even mentioned the Diocesan schools).
However it would be highly irregular for Synod to turn round and tax them on a whim, even if it was legally possible (??). They don't even get representation on Synod.
Let's keep this in perspective. The assessment was an emergency measure for 2011 only.
As far as I can see most parishes will be paying around $1-$2k.
Most of the diocesan organisations which receive Synod grants took hits of $100,000s last year and will do so again in 2011.
We probably should distinguish between what has happened and what should happen. (Synod's options were limited once they knocked back the Bishopscourt sale)
It may help this discussion to focus on what should happen at the 2011 Synod.
don't get me wrong - i understand the costs of going to college, both out of pocket costs and opportunity costs - anyone who left a paid job to go to college is giving up tens of thousands of dollars, of course.
But then, that's a choice that they are free to make or not make.
My simple point is that there is not enough money to go around at the moment to do all the things we would like to do. There never is, because there are always more things to do. And so we have to make prioritising decisions.
I happen to think that the Synod made a bad decision - several actually.
I think it was sentimentality re bishopscourt that ruled out the sale. the consequence is that we sink at least $850,000 per year into maintaining this house for the Archbishop.
Because times are tight, and because there's not enough money to go around, that is equivalent to saying that that $950,000 is better than anything else we might do with the money, and since we now tax the parishes, better than the $850,000 we will take out of parish ministry - that's nuts.
all going to fast!
The average net receipts for a parish are $300K, and so the average amount for the parishes will be around $3500.
we have not been given any break up of the $3M costs.
But the limited details we got this year is to my knowledge the most information Synod has ever been given about the mysterious workings of the EOS.
I am confident the sky would not fall in if we changed the way we do things.
But I was not at all happy with the imposing of a levy on parishes.
I am still trying to work out the right way to tell the struggling families of Outer Western Sydney (some in my own church I know are struggling to pay their family grocery bills) why they should pay a levy for the upkeep of Bishopscourt and the large episcopal team.
the reason I raise the size of the budgets of the Diocesan agencies is that it effects the proportions involved. And of course, I don't mean tax them, I just mean re-allocate some of the grant currently given to them in the Synod budget to other higher priorities. They can handle it better than the parishes, precisely because of their financial size / capacity.
I'm arguing that the amount of money at stake (savings by selling Bishopscourt = 1.14% = $850,000) could have been found elsewhere in the Synod budget. But we went for the easy option - not reduce expenditure, grab extra income.
And grab the income from the very place that we say is the center of the Diocese - the parishes.
And no Mark, I don't see MTC as frontline ministry. That doesn't mean it's not vital / crucial / etc, it just means that the college serves the parishes, not the parishes serve the college; the college is a means to an end (or nearly an end, the real end is the glory of God); the parishes are (nearly) end - the church of God.
We have $170M of endowments to serve the parishes. What we earn with that is what we should spend. But taxing the parishes to augment the income of that $170M seems crazy to me - especially when 60-80% of them are plateaued or going backwards!
yeah :)
Andrew said: And grab the income from the very place that we say is the center of the Diocese - the parishes.
I agree with you on that point, Andrew. But the complexities around the diocesan organisations makes its hard to see how Synod could have tackled the issue on the run yesterday.
I agree with your final point - which is why I said in my speech that it was hopelessly premature!
But perhaps deeper than that - the failure over the last years has been a lack of fiscal discipline, at least with the EOS. The only long-term way forward is regaining that fiscal discipline.
Part of my concern about this decision is that it misses the opportunity to do precisely that, and instead, dodges the bullet. Hence, my 'addict' analogy.
Just to clarify, I don't recall that being the number in the report. Didn't it reference spending $850,000 over 5 the next 5 years on maintenance?
my recollection was that figure was $800-950,000, and was made up of 2 elements.
First, if we sold Bishopscourt, and invest the net proceeds, then we conservatively get $500-650,000. And there are about $300,000 per annum costs in maintaining it if we keep it.
So adding the 2 together means if we'd sold it and reinvested the net proceeds, and not having the upkeep costs, we'd have about $800-950,000 extra money sloshing around!
This is clearly a problem, and we need more transparency.
There is a bit of a proprietary issue, though. From what I understand, the EoS consists of gifts to the Archbishop's office, rather than to the diocese itself. Perhaps, then, the diocese is not entitled to this information. Come to think of it, who does the EoS ultimately report to? If it's to the Archbishop, I'm not sure why the sale of Bishopscourt came before Synod in the first place.
The Rev David Clarke to ask –
1. Could a brief historical background be made available to members of
Synod with regards to the establishment of the Endowment of the See
and the Diocesan Endowment in particular covering why two separate
funds were originally established, and what was to be paid for from each
fund?
The full answer is here on the business paper:
http://www.sds.asn.au/assets/Documents/synod/Synod2009/Synod.Questions.21October2009.pdf
I got real excited when the Daily Telegraph Breaking News just ran this headline :
But then I realised that they were talking about the "FORTESCUE Metals Group" - not passing the plate around the Diocese ;)
BTW, along with Craig and others, I would love to read about those possible seven solutions to the cash crisis sometime.