{"id":137741,"date":"2025-06-12T17:19:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137741"},"modified":"2025-06-12T18:21:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T22:21:30","slug":"church-times-shrink-grants-in-favour-of-funding-parish-clergy-bishop-of-hereford-urges-church-commissioners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137741","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) Shrink grants in favour of funding parish clergy, Bishop of Hereford urges Church Commissioners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Distributing large sums of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/church-commissioners\">Church Commissioners\u2019<\/a>\u00a0funds to dioceses through the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/strategic-mission-and-ministry-investment-smmi\">\u00a0Strategic Investment in Mission and Ministry Board<\/a>\u00a0(SMMIB) is a mistake, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/bishop-of-hereford\">Bishop of Hereford<\/a>, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, said this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bishops would prefer to have sufficient funds to prevent further cuts to stipendiary clergy posts and pastoral reorganisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen I talk to my colleagues, I think the reality is that a number of them are applying for grants from SMMIB for projects they are not that convinced are going to make a huge difference to the life of their diocese,\u201d he said on Wednesday. \u201cWhat they would really like is, \u2018Just give me some more money so I can keep my stipendiary head-count up.\u2019 There is very clear evidence that maintaining levels of stipendiary clergy leads to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/church-growth\">church growth<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2025\/13-june\/news\/uk\/shrink-grants-in-favour-of-funding-parish-clergy-bishop-of-hereford-urges-church-commissioners\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u2018What will stabilise things is a well-motivated clergy workforce which is well-supported and well-financed\u2019. My interview with Bishop of Hereford who\u2019s calling for less of Commissioners\u2019 money to be allocated through grants &amp; more to prevent clergy cuts <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/bt9dSr4rRH\">https:\/\/t.co\/bt9dSr4rRH<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MadsDavies\/status\/1933140055175966768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 12, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Distributing large sums of the\u00a0Church Commissioners\u2019\u00a0funds to dioceses through the\u00a0Strategic Investment in Mission and Ministry Board\u00a0(SMMIB) is a mistake, the\u00a0Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, said this week. Bishops would prefer to have sufficient funds to prevent further<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=137741\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[389,635,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-of-england-coe","category-coe-bishops","category-stewardship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137741"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137745,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137741\/revisions\/137745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}