Reform, as a grass roots movement, envisages action coming from members who have thought, studied, discussed and agreed. Discussion papers such as this one are written by individual members for the council of Reform and the wider church. The author alone is responsible for the paper. This paper may be copied freely.
Parish Quota - A Third Way
The following is taken from a Reform Newsletter and is written by Charles Dobbie, minister of Holy Trinity Lyonsdown
Regarding money there is a third way to supplement the GAP and Forward in Faith options. This third approach has the benefit of having been field-tested and proved to work - by Holy Trinity Lyonsdown when we suspended our entire quota on 11 May 2004, following the appointment of Jeffrey John as Dean of St Albans Abbey.
John Richardson’s paper on GAP (Giving as Partners) said that cutting quota hit the good as well as the bad, backfired locally, placed a burden on other local churches and created local disaffection. But thoses notions didn’t reflect our own experience. When our quota was suspended we made it clear at the same time that, for the sake of honour and public credibility, we wouldn’t receive financial benefit of any kind from the Diocese. All our expenses were met from a trust in to which our quota was paid. These costs included my stipend, pension, repairs to parsonage, insurance and so on. The last bit of tidying up was the Diocese releasing me from the Deed of Assignment I had signed regarding my fees. Given our refusal to take any money from them, they could see it was utterly reasonable for me to be excused this commitment.
In this way, therefore, the Diocese is not put to a penny of expense on our account. And we also continue to give generously to the cause of Anglican training - but we do it directly. We also gave all the ‘change’ from our first year’s quota suspension (a not inconsiderable amount) to the True Freedom Trust.