Finance

Guiding Principles

Christian Stewardship calls us to give generously and joyfully, using the unique gifts we have received to serve others. As faithful stewards of God’s grace, we are to give not out of obligation, but with a willing heart, knowing that God loves a cheerful giver and desires that we use our gifts for the good of others and the glory of His kingdom. (2 Corinthians 9:7, 1 Peter4:10).

1. We equip local churches to fulfil their mission

The new Larger Parish is committed through best practices to support local churches in raising new income to empower them to accomplish their local church’s mission in the world, with administrative support and guidance from the Diocese.

2. We support local church mission, ministry and justice initiatives towards sustainability

We support each local church, as part of the new Larger Parish to seek a sustainable breakeven budget to realise their church’s mission, ministry and justice initiatives. All local churches will create and manage sustainable budgets, including parish share, agreed-upon shared costs, and local running costs.

3. We invite Christian Giving

We invite Christian giving as an expression of God’s grace, marked by generosity, integrity, and joyful sacrifice. Giving should be proportionate, promoting thanksgiving and equality through their local Church. Christians are called to give thoughtfully, living simply and contentedly to contribute more. All gifts should be met with gratitude. “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share” (1 Timothy 6:18 NRSV).

4. We honour the intentions of donors

We honour the intention of donors by committing that all financial income given to local churches, past or future, (including Parish Giving Scheme (PGS), donations, legacies), are credited to that local church’s fund.The charity (the new Larger Parish) is legally required to use the money only for the specified purpose intended by the donor (Charity Act 2011). Compliance will be monitored through the Financial Policies and Procedures created by the new Larger Parish.

5. We ensure transparent and mutual accountability

We ensure that the PCC of the new Larger Parish, as faithful stewards and charity trustees, will oversee parish finances through a unified shared financial system, ensuring compliance and accurate reporting. Each local church will have its own fund, and at any time create transparent reports, to ensure mutual accountability. Each local church will have representation on the finance committee.

6. We encourage giving toward a shared mission with other local churches and the community

We encourage local churches, within the new Larger Parish, to prayerfully consider supporting, with both human and financial resources, the shared mission of the other local churches and the community in the new Larger Parish.

FAQs

In March 2024, local church PCCs who decided to engage in the Fit for Mission journey submitted key questions to be answered.  Below you will find a summary of the questions and answers.  Should you like to explore additional information you may access the FFM FAQ with over 200 responses or send an email to info@hopeparishliverpool.org.

Q: Who will be responsible for [owns] all the money from the current parishes?

A: The Trustees of a charity are the ones who ‘own’ (are the custodians of) that charity’s money with the legal responsibility to account for that money and to ensure it is used responsibly to further the charity’s objects. For Church of England Parishes, the Parochial Church Council are the Charity Trustees. Thus, it is the new PCC who will be responsible
for all the money and assets that were originally held by the previous PCC’s.

Q: Who pays the Parish/Deanery Share?

A: The Larger Parish. Parish/Deanery Share is principally your contribution towards the cost of our clergy (their stipends, pensions, housing, training, etc.), licensed lay ministers and work with schools. These costs are shared out proportionally amongst all the deaneries of
our diocese based on criteria set by our Diocesan Synod.

Q: So what financial responsibility will our congregation/worshipping community have?

A: Individual congregations/worshipping communities are responsible for the stewardship of their resources as parts of the wider body of Christ that is the larger parish. The leadership team of each church/worshipping community will oversee the day to day finances relating to that worshipping community against an agreed budget, monitor their income streams, grow their all-important giving base, and control local expenditure so that the church is financially sustainable and attending to biblical stewardship including generous giving. Larger areas of expenditure and expenditure relating to the whole parish will be managed by the PCC.

There will be a common accounts system for all congregations/worshipping communities. The system will enable the larger parish Treasurer to easily create regular reports and a year end accounts for the new PCC.

Management accounts for both individual churches/worshipping communities and the whole new Parish will be available from the system at any time and will be able to be accessed by the finance team. In order to give a true picture, items of expenditure managed at whole parish level (e.g. Parish Share, Insurance, Parish wide mission) will be allocated across the churches/worshipping communities. A finance team member will either be designated within or available to each worshipping community. Finance team members will be responsible for entering small amounts of information into the accounts system (MyFundAccounting.Online) through the internet.

Training and support will be available for everyone volunteering to help with entering financial information.

Q: Will we lose all our reserves into the larger parish budget?

A: Some parishes in the diocese have significant reserves – most do not. There is therefore a fear that those with decent reserves will lose them as they now belong to the new parish; and these reserves will be spent or automatically re-distributed across the larger parish to support those with less. This is not how things will work for 3 reasons:

i. Legal – if the monies were given for particular expressed purposes (a restricted fund) those purposes must be honoured. They cannot simply be overridden.

ii. Principle – free or unrestricted reserves held by a parish will become designated funds by decision of the new PCC. They will be designated to the church which held them and that designation will be honoured unless it is agreed, through discussion with the church’s leadership team, that the funds should be reallocated for something of greater priority (an emergency or other parish wide mission).

iii. Practical – the aim of FfM is to invest in growth, not subsidise decline.
Congregations/worshipping communities in a new parish are expected to work together for growth. So, all money should be used to resource growth (which ultimately will benefit the whole parish) not keep a church or an activity on its last legs for a little longer. St Paul puts it like this: “our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality”. (2 Cor 8:13)

Q: If people give money specifically to a church, either via legacies or general giving to, for example, fund a youth worker, how is this money ring-fenced in the single pot? And the flip side of this is how do we stop people giving just to their church?

A: Modern organisations’ finances are not managed through multiple bank accounts, instead they are managed using a single financial management system that allow for multiple cost centres or funds. Within such systems (for us it will be MyFundAccounting.Online) each church will have its own fund (its own pot if you like). That fund will detail all its income and expenditure.

In terms of income you will be able to see, broken down into different lines, the income from all your church’s different forms of giving (PGS, plate, standing orders, ad hoc etc) as well as from funerals and rentals etc. In terms of expenditure, you will be able to see everything that has been spent against its line budget. Some of those expenditure lines will relate to employees. The cost of a Youth Worker would be shown in one of those expenditure lines. And the general principle will be that each worshipping community should fund itself.

So the answer to the ring-fenced question is: your church will budget for a Youth Worker, both in terms of income (how you will bring in the money to pay for them) and expenditure. And what is budgeted for and agreed by the PCC finance sub-committee (each church will have a rep on that) will then be put in to practice.

St Helens Shadow PCC have agreed a protocol document, which is an agreement between PCC and the people of the churches as to how they will operate. The exact wording of this will be up to you to work out in your Shadow PCC when the time comes, but it details principles that they will follow in terms of fiscal rules and management of finance. Such a
document helps everyone feel confident about finance as you move forward together. What cohort 1 experience tells us is that when the Shadow PCC starts meeting people realise that it is not a distant body that will be ‘doing something to us’. Instead, it is ‘us’ making sensible decisions about the larger ‘we’, valuing what we already have but looking
to grow and make that sustainable.

With regards to how do we stop people just giving just to their church, generosity is a gift of the Spirit. It will come as people engage in a wider context and feel that they want to freely give to the work of His church. There may need to be on-going teaching about how the mutuality of the body of Christ is expressed in the new structures. But we should be clear that no one wants a flourishing church to be robbed to prop up a non-flourishing one where no change is taking place. However, the opportunity before us is to galvanise good leadership and best practice across a wider geography so that together we can grow. Currently our parish boundaries prevent such collaboration.

Q: Will income remain with our church, or could it be taken for other uses?

A: The PCC will not ‘take’ the funds from any individual church. It will only be through consent and the budget process that money could be used to support mission or support services beyond the individual church.

Q: How are the central support services going to be funded post the 12-month start-up grant?

A: During the 2 year ‘acting as if’ period a local team will be formed to work on what Support Services should look like in the larger parish and how it will be funded (volunteers can also be incorporated into Support Services if that makes sense in your area). You should not view Support Services as just increased cost – the aim is to get admin done at admin
rates, instead of clergy doing it at £70k per annum. By doing this we will do admin more cheaply and better, while giving clergy extra time to devote to mission and ministry, what they were trained for. So the deanery will get back clergy time (it will be like having more clergy).

Using St Helens as an example, they intend to fund their Support Services from: insurance savings, other potential purchasing savings, DMGF, a payment from each parish, admin fee on funerals, spreading the FfM allocation across first couple of years. How other deaneries will finance Support Services will be different of course, but there is time to work that out in the 2 year period.