by Madeleine Collins

Archbishop Peter Jensen is leading a major funding project aimed to supply finance for Christian work.

It is known as the ‘New Capital Project’ and involves discovering whether parts of the Diocese’s asset base, which is estimated at $3 to $4 billion, can be used to raise the money needed for ministry.

Between $100millon to $500million is needed to build new churches in rapidly developing areas of the Diocese, rebuild inadequate ones to cope with swelling numbers and give more funding to Moore College and Youthworks College.

The Mission and its goal of reaching 10 per cent of Sydney for Christ by 2012 calls for prayer, more congregations and trained ministers and reform of church life.

Under the Mission, Moore College needs to at least double in size, and a minimum of 10 new church sites and five new churches need to be established in growing areas within five years.

A two year study found traditional ways of raising money, through fundraising appeals, bank loans, selling off property to invest elsewhere, bequests or philanthropy may be successful in the short term, but would not raise the huge amount of money needed for the Mission goal.

“When we started to look at ways of raising that sort of money it’s clear to us that appeals may raise some millions of dollars, but nowhere near the sums we’re talking about,” said Archbishop Jensen.

“The first part of this exercise is really to assess where we are at – making a survey of our assets. We ought to have done this many years ago.”

The Diocese has never done a survey of its own asset values. The project is believed to be the first of its kind undertaken by any church in the world.

Sydney’s Standing Committee have approved an allocation of $1million from the $160million Diocesan Endowment (Synod funds) for ‘Stage One’ – the setting up of an ‘asset realignment’ database.

Consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers have been employed and a number of senior staff are being sought to manage the project internally in the Diocesan Secretariat. This stage will take 12 months.

All the assets of the Diocese – including parishes, schools, welfare facilities and other institutions – will be assessed in terms of their contribution to the Mission and a strategy developed to see how capital funds might be raised through them.

The project will need considerable cooperation from the trustees of the Diocese’s major assets, which have a long tradition of strong independence.

“A project of this nature and size will challenge the culture of our Diocese,” said Dr Jensen. “It will require immense goodwill, trust and wisdom. It may require sacrifice so that others may receive the gospel. We are undertaking something very large for God.”