National study finds diocese at 'crisis point'
Offers key recommendations and support for interventions
By Ana Watts
A brutal, honest assessment … tough but encouraging. That is how Archdeacon Geoffrey Hall described the planning study report of our 
diocese recently prepared by consultants from General Synod. He presented the report to Diocesan Council in Fredericton on Saturday, Jan. 17. The study found our diocesan family “mired in a complex set of problems.” It described the current situation as a “crisis point” and said “planned intervention was essential to the diocese’s sustainability.”
That planned intervention includes the provision of a tried and proven stewardship initiative for the diocesan Stewardship and Financial Development Team to implement in the near future.
“The consultants said our diocese is more complex than other dioceses … with all the problems and potential that entails,” said Archdeacon Hall, the bishop’s executive assistant and Secretary of Synod.
The study is part of the Letting Down the Nets (LDTN) initiative of 
General Synod and is intended to provide the kind of objective information needed by diocesan leaders in order to move forward with the first program component, the Shared Ministry Plan. Ours, completed and approved by Diocesan Council in 2006, is based on the realities that “sharing is caring” and that ministry planned, owned and performed at a regional, local, grassroots level will be the most effective in furthering the mission of our diocese — To Proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the making of disciples.
According to the survey, however, many people in the diocese see the Shared Ministry Plan as a way to cut back on clergy and amalgamate parishes. This is not the case. In fact the study authors — Canon Geoff Jackson, Senior Development Officer for the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Rev. Rob Waller, a LDTN project consultant — said there was a general lack of understanding in the diocese of the goals of the Shared Ministry Plan, and insufficient “buy in” within parish leadership to make the plan viable.
A diocesan culture that avoids teaching parishes about holistic stewardship has fostered an unhealthy focus on fundraising, and the fact that parishes are able to “get away” without paying their fair share to the diocese without any consequences, are two other key findings of the report.
“A lack of trust is at the root of this,” said Archdeacon Hall.
This lack of trust was also identified as the cause of recent confrontational synods. This causes “a level of distrust that inhibits the genuine sense of partnership between parish and diocesan leaders,” says the report.
Other key findings include the belief that “the diocese keeps asking for more money from the parishes through the current assessment and apportionment system. In fact, this is not true, in that the parishes are retaining more of the income raised at the parish level.”
The planning study was not all bad news, however. On the positive side of the ledger the consultants were surprised and impressed with the sizeable gatherings of youth and children in a large number of parishes, but were concerned that many of the 60 New Brunswick Anglicans they interviewed were unaware of the existence of diocesan staff members (Youth Action Director George Porter and Christian Education Director Liz Harding) who organize, encourage and support this area of ministry.
The consultants were also pleased to find the diocese has “a number of very respected leaders with acknowledged expertise” who will be vital to the success of the Shared Ministry Plan and the proposed stewardship initiative. They also found there is a huge, untapped potential of financial resources within some segments of the diocese for funding parish, diocesan and national ministries. This is good news indeed, since 80 per cent of those interviewed indicated that a proposed stewardship initiative is very important to the future of their own parishes.
In addition to implementing the stewardship program, other key recommendations of the report call for the establishment of a new group, The Sharing Ministry Task Group, with a mandate to coordinate and implement current and significant diocesan initiatives as recommended by the budget support, and the rural and/or struggling parishes task forces. The Sharing Ministry Task Group will then oversee the presentation of these initiatives to Synod 2009 so they all work together in support of the overall diocesan plan. Diocesan Council, in its wisdom, struck such a group last September, even before it received the planning report recommendation.
Other recommendations include: a wholesale review of diocesan governance structures and systems in order to develop more efficient and effective structures; a reduction in the size of synod; development of a fair, equitable and mandatory system of seeking funds from parishes; the establishment of a communications plan to promote the Shared Ministry Plan; and the appointment of a full-time staff person, knowledgeable in stewardship and congregational development, to support a diocesan stewardship initiative.
