Organisers are facing a budget shortfall of up to £2 million. The funding crisis is so severe that even in sky-high temperatures organisers have been unable to pay for air conditioning inside the sweltering conditions of the large blue circus-style tent in which plenary sessions are being held.
An emergency meeting of the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners has been called as soon as the conference ends next month. The Commissioners who have the funds to bail out the conference are not allowed by their charitable trust deeds to fund any except Church of England bishops.
Ironically, the one church that has the funds to bail out the conference is The Episcopal Church of the US. One senior source told The Times: “At the moment we just cannot pay for it.”
Of course the TEc can’t pay for it, all their money is involved in suits against orthodox who wish to keep the churches they and their ancestors paid for, not the diocese or the national church.
God willing, this reply of TEC will open the eyes and ears of all. In any number of ways.
[i]An emergency meeting of the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners has been called as soon as the conference ends next month. The Commissioners who have the funds to bail out the conference are not allowed by their charitable trust deeds to fund any except Church of England bishops.[/i]
As a Brit, this makes me mad. For many years the Church Commissioners had an awful track record of investing Church funds, yet ordinary churchmen had little say in what they did. And now, it seems, the mother church is not even permitted to help its poorer brethren.
Roll on disestablishment, say I!
I thought we were only talking a few chicken dinners.
When all is said and done, it really comes down to cold, hard cash, doesn’t it? The Anglican Communion can carry on without Scripture, without Tradition, and, as Bishop Andrus of California proves every day, without Reason– but it has got to have cash in the end. And that is why lay people need to look to their own back pockets, or purses, rather than to their bishops, if they want to see any real change.
It looks like TEC’s deep pockets may not be so deep after all, doesn’t it?
Actually I think this is a serious issue. If the ABC is having to call upon the TEC to bail him out then of course his ability to stand up to them will be reduced.
I think the conservatives need to rally the money card — in return for the same “consideration” that the TEC has managed to get with its funds for so many years.