Church building funds - wouldn't we be better selling the damn building and meeting in a pub?

[morningpaper]

I belong to a local Church of England parish church which attracts about 50 people a week from a potential parish of 12,000 people.

We have nearly £1 million of building work required to keep the church over the next few years.

The existing parishioners are generally old and gradually dying off. But we keep being asked for more and more time and money to maintain the fabric of the building for 'future generations' (I've no idea where they expect these people to rise up from because I am the only woman of childbearing age and am therefore solely responsible for re-populating the congregation and I've only managed 2 so far)

When I suggest that our heritage is too much for us, people are grossly offended. But what can I say? I don't want to keep wasting time and money on a building that will only be in the hands of the church for a limited amount of time. Frankly I think it would be better if we did just sell it to NatWest.

Anyone else in a similar position?

bloss don't forget the Rainbows, Brownies, Guides, Beavers, Cubs Scouts, Whist Drive (actually might like that one), "Leapfrog" (afterschool service where we have over 100 rowdy children and their parents), and lets not forget the hosting of the two local schools christmas, easter, end of term etc etc services -as they have no halls big enough to allow parents in as well as pupils.......

Our church runs a preschool - can't imagine many hotels would put up with that!

Sorry to resurrect this thread over 1 month since it was last posted on.

However I found out a very interesting piece of information (at an otherwise extremely boring workshop) yesterday -

Did you know that the CoE looks after over 1/3 the UK's Grade 1 Listed Buildings - and has to spend £120 million a year on their upkeep - £26 million of that comes from "State" funding (Heritage Grants, Lottery Funding etc etc) - but that still means that they HAVE to spend £100 million on the upkeep of buildings which have been granted Listed Status by a NON religious organisation.......

OK, the preschool shoots big holes in my hotel idea.

But I still think school buildings should be used for this sort of stuff. It's a damn shame that hugely expensive facilities spent more than 50% of their time idle.
So what's wrong with hiring a school hall, with preschool et al in classrooms ?

Whilst our church is being built, we DO meet in school with creche in school library & Junior church in classrooms. But, the weekly meetings are all farmed out (old people, toddler groups, evening meetings etc) & the Youth clubs have been cancelled. It is only now that I realise just how much our church does provide for community access in the week, & we can do soo much more with the purpose built building that we wioll have by end of year (having outgrown existing building - unable to get everyone in on a Sunday morning)

And no hotel will guarantee use at nominal cost to a church group on a Sunday morning if they have a wedding booked in the day before after which they'll have to clean before another booking can come in.

And if they can let the room to anyone else, they will.

Been there, done that. Not long-term workable.

Schools are actually pretty good. Although, the times when churches want to be the most available to people tend to be Christmas and Easter when Bank Holidays make schools generally unavailable.

School halls are generally depressing places...

Well, yes some schools are very depressing buildings.
But I wonder if the same applies to many churches ?

Inspirational architecture has a basis in what you think actually inspires people, and the way you do that in a mostly secular modern society may be quite different from a few hundred years ago when many churches were built.
What is "peaceful" to a commited Christian might be cold and unwelcoming to someone on the edge of those beliefs.

oh and DC - I wonder what you think to the article on Watchdog last night - the Church Commisioners HAVE been selling off some of their 'vast' property empire in London - which they have been used for low cost keyworker accomdation - in areas of London where they've already done this the rents have gone up by 12% over 2 years.

These 'proerty empires' were left in trust to the CoE by people wanting poor people to have decent accomdation 100yrs ago or so. Now they're (well the Church Commisioners) are selling them off to the DETRIMENT of the people that live there.........still sound like a good idea???

(and why can't I see what I'm typing properly??? What I'm typing here ATM looks like when you print something out and the black ink is nearly finished - faint and bits missing.......)

the Church Commisioners HAVE been selling off some of their 'vast' property empire in London
As a hard line economist, I see two parts to this.
Firstly agency theiry, the aspect of economics that tries to model the difference between what you pay people to do and what they actually do.
One classical result is that where executive pay is capped, the quality of acommodation for senior staff goes up. Not unlike the CoE, which has some very nice places which aren't being sold.

It is also the case that the vast bulk of chruch wealth is loot from nicking funds for "local needy" over about 400 years, so this is not a departure from policy.

I don't like the idea of low cost acommodation for key workers. For a start it's grossly inefficient. Many KW's live with others who may not require this subsidy. Others have reasons not to live the designated area, yet get depressed wages as a result.

Also this is a BBC documentary, which although more realisitc that (say) Star Trek, isn't quite honest. They're not all key workers.
Many people who live in subsidised acommodation are really well off, certainly at the point when I earned more than both my parents I lived in some for a while.

Before I sound too hard hearted, I am 100% behind the idea of paying key workers more. If you had 10 million quid (say) to make an area better, acommodation subsidy just wouldn't be the way to do it. You'd pay people living wages, and let them work out where they want to be. Maybe local, maybe not, the idea of the Coe Deciding who should live there is just horrible.

These 'proerty empires' were left in trust to the CoE by people wanting poor people to have decent accomdation 100yrs ago or so.
A friend of mine is creating a major trust fund to last a serious amount of time. No church gets anywhere near it.

Again however this is predicted by standard economics. If the recipients of a benefit are not the same as those who control it, they will get what others think is best for them, not what really is.
You want poor people not to be poor, you enable them to demand good wages. If you had a few million to fix the problem of key workers in London, you'd run a strike for more money. Not one of those piss poor screwups we saw in socialism's death throes in the 70s and early 80s but water supplies ceasing until good wages were paid. With a few million you can do strike pay and fight the legal battles.

so essentially what you're saying is that it doesn't matter if the Church Commisioners (which is NOT the CoE) decide to sell off property which means that people who have been living in that area for 50+yrs have to move - it doesn't matter.......

It's quite possible that the process itself is not being done with compassion, and that's bad.

But I'm saying that if your objective is to do the most good with a fixed budget, owning such property is wasteful.
My ethical base is that to knowingly waste big money when you are supposed to be doing charitable work is a pretty bad thing.
And it is big money, revenues in the millions, and church owned property in the UK must be well over a billion quid, maybe two.

By selling off property that does relatively small amounts of good whilst using huge resources, the CoE is doing the right thing.

I would do eactly that myself if I were running a charity. I work in financial markets, yet some of the hardest nosed people I know are charity types. Some seem to take the position that starving kids/disabled need looking after, and anyone who gets in the way of this is a very bad person.
I know some people who used to rent transport planes to the CIA who remarked that they were respectful and polite in the rather formal American way, but the charities who used them for aid argued viciously all the time.

Of course a big hole in my argument is the assumption thar the CoE is going to do "good" works. Of course their definition of "good" being Christians is rather different to mine, but I fear the BBC was lazy in not following where the money was going.

A good bit of investigative reporting, rather than a sloppy bit of emoting, would be the finances of the CoE.
I hear lots of views on this, and to be honest I don't know which is true.

But one that seems to ring true, is that a combination of property maintenance, lawsuits, and huge pensions holes mean that it is desparately short of cash flow.
A corollary of this model is that the steady state of the CoE financially may well be that it has to create a set of managed funds from it's assets merely to stay intact, but actually doing things almost withered away.

I'd also like to know, what exactly the CoE is legally ?
It's not a company, and although it has charities under it's wing, I don't think it is a charity itself.
I susepct that because of it's history it may even be technically a part of the British government.
Can it go bankrupt ?
I don't just mean can it run out of money, but bankruptcy, winding up et al are legal processes with defined rights and responsibilities.
Who owns St. Pauls cathedral ?
If one part of the CoE goes very wrong financially, can the rest of it walk away from the debts ?

This is what's happenning in the USA where medical bills for priests with AIDS, and far more compensation for raped kids have made them try to claim that the diocese are actually separate legal entities, and this is being tested in court since they really resent paying out to all those money grabbing parents and their kids who wanted it really.

but I fear the BBC was lazy in not following where the money was going.

Perhaps some of it's going towards the £100 million a YEAR they HAVE to spend to keep the 1/3 of the Grade Listed Buildings in this country........

Perhaps some of it's going towards the £100 million a YEAR they HAVE to spend to keep the 1/3 of the Grade Listed Buildings in this country

If they feel this burden is greater than it would be to have newer purpose built structures, then they they at perfect liberty to sell them.

In any case, some of the most expensive buildings are housing for their senior staff.

Although not a Christian, I am reminded of the notion that "evil sows the seeds of it's own destruction". Many of these buildings are the result of various kinds of theft and fraud carried out by the CoE and the bodies which formed it.

But whatever the rights and wrongs, I see the CoE as basically living on borrowed time financially.
There is the capacity to serve the spiritual needs of an entire nation, but a supporter base about that of Southampton FC.

A listed church building isn't worth much on the open market, because a purchaser would be able to do very little to it. It would basically have to be used as a meeting space, and even the artwork would likely have to stay intact.

The square footage does not have the same market value as that of nearby commercial buildings.

The church I go to, which is a large building - can seat about 700 - is worth about half of the value of my house.

A church is purpose built, and you could not rehouse us in a modern purpose built building and save money.

HRH - they don't HAVE to spend it - listing a building does not prevent you from selling it.

Incidentally I believe there was quite a vigourous campaign by tsections of the Church in the past to actually get these buildings listed, to protect them from the advances of a secular society. So although the decision on listing is made as you say by a non-religious body we may find that the request to consider the building for listing was actually made by the Church in the first instance. Or so I was told yesterday when discussing this yesterday with a knowledgable friend.

Sorry Scienceteacher I thought I had finished reading the thread and obvioulsy hadn't.

What can and can't be done with a building depends on the category of listing and indeed sometimes the indivudal details of what is and isn't listed. SO what may apply for your church is not necessarily vaild acorss the whole church estate.

If you look at whole-of-life cost I really don't understand how - even if you give the building away and use the money current required for upkeep and upgrading to service loan funds to build a new facility plus of course the much lower associated running costs it isn't a viable proposition. Unless of course your running costs are low - in which case this argument is a moot point for your particuular church.

I find myself agreeing with those who assert that the listing system is an iniquitous transfer of wealth. It imposes costs on those who happen to own certain buildings for the benefit of others who look at them sometimes.

However, it is not the case that nothing can be done with such buildings. In most cases they can be converted into homes. Not a dozen yuppie flats of course, but reducing the costs of an asset is often worth doing even if you can't replace it with the cash flow from the sale of the asset.

Of course, many churches aren't assets in that sense. They are liabilities, consuming more cash than their parishoners donate.
Thus the Church keeps thme going due a combination of a desire to carry out it's mission even if it's not profitable, and the inevitable decay of any organisation from a pursuing a worthy cause to being obsessed with it's trappings such as nice buildings.
Nice buildings have a certain PR value, but the fact they are mostly old buildings of a limited range of styles, often in the wrong places hurts the goals of the church. The City of London has rather churchnes more than parishoners, but the cash flow of a few wealthy Christians who work nearby mean it's better served than poorer newer areas.
Not the way to reach the lost is it ?

When visiting Lincoln it said the Cathedral takes 50k a week to run, did I read right?

What are your views on the paintings the CofEown worth thousands?

Sounds plausible, though I suspect the figure includes accountancy notions like spreading the cost of big repair jobs over 10 years.
These places were built when the cost of labour was far lower and most weren't designed to be heated, as we think of it now.
Also they were built when the church was popular and rich. The term here is hubris.

Clearly we should just abandon all buildings/things of beauty and all meet in ugly purpose built rooms, probably made of glass if local architects are anything to go by. I mean, why should our society want anything aesthetically beautiful any more if it costs money to maintain.

Even in a secular society, people can appreciate beauty. Our church is always open and has a steady stream of people - Christians, tourists, schools, and just locals wanting a quiet beautiful environment to sit and contemplate things.

Or perhaps the whole town should be demolished and replaced with anonymous glass boxes.

Rant over.

Valid points, but why do they have to be owned by the CoE ?
Should we subsidise McDonalds to produce less ugly burger bars ?
My aesthetic has never included gothic pastiche, but some people like such things and I've no problem with them spending money on them. But I don't see why any organisation should receive subsidy for this when there are so many more important things underfunded.
osts.

My solution is a hypothecated part of income tax.
Each good cause like church refurb or aid for screwed up countries or whatever gets allocated a code. You put that number on your tax form, and (say) 1% of your income goes to it.

What are your views on the paintings the CofEown worth thousands?

Would you rather they were sold and went overseas never to be seen by anyone in this country (unless they happen to be able to afford to go to America, Japan or Australia??)

"My aesthetic has never included gothic pastiche, but some people like such things and I've no problem with them spending money on them. But I don't see why any organisation should receive subsidy for this when there are so many more important things underfunded. "

So English Heritage, National Gallery, other Musuems, National Trust, CoE shouldn't get ANY money towards the upkeep of our historic buildings???

That makes perfect sense doesn't it. Of the large numbers of tourists that visit the UK year, a large number of those come here to 'admire' our historic buildins, architecture and art and scenery (not much else is there ). If we tell the people that 'own' these places that they have to look after the buildings COMPLETELY on their own, many will fall into dis-repair - and I doubt the tourists would go visiting them then! Drive tourists away by destroying part of what they come for and the whole economy of some areas would suffer