By Archdeacon Pryor
Every year, each diocese that receives support from the Council of The North is asked to give an account to the “Grants Allocation Committee” of how the money was spent. This “GAC Report” (certainly an unfortunate-sounding name!) includes a number of questions as we show our stewardship of a shrinking amount of support from General Synod for Northern ministry. In the 70s it was $3-million, worth $18.6-million in today’s money. Today it’s just $571,500. That’s a 97% reduction, and we’ve been told to expect another cut.
Remaining faithful and trusting God’s to provide through His people for the provision of Gospel ministry is the key!
We thought you might be encouraged to read our answer to this question on the GAC report:
Describe any progress your diocese has made toward greater financial self reliance.
We believe God will provide all that we need when we’re engaged solely and fully in the work He’s given us to do. We’ve re-committed ourselves to test everything against our mission statement: to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and enable all Christians for ministry. This has been hard, as it means we need to say no to all the possible distractions.
In our synod office you will see a sign posted above every workstation:
We’ve committed that not a single letter, email, phone call, or hour of our time should be spent unless it checks those boxes. If it’s not about ministry, and if it isn’t stewarding human, financial, or physical resources, don’t do it!
This sort of discipline has had great effects on our work towards financial self-reliance. It keeps us focused, helps us weigh the value of possible distractions, and helps us re-phrase things so that parishes understand what we’re saying and why it matters.
Our networking efforts are just beginning to pay off, as we’re no longer burying our money in the ground with a conservation or self-preservation mentality, but investing it boldly. Our new tradeshow booth makes quite a splash, whether in a church hall, the narthex of a big southern church, or a convention centre. It will get many miles from fundraising dinners in Texas, to recruitment events in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, to spreading the good news about what God is doing in the Arctic with our brothers and sisters at the Evangelical conferences in the UK and Ireland. We call on the other CON dioceses to be bolder about telling your story in a hope-filled way.
Every step taken in faith has borne fruit. We pray earnestly that we’ll never have enough money to stop trusting in God, but we also pray in real faith when, like last month, a stack of cheques were laid on the altar at Morning Prayer, trusting God to fill the PO Box with enough so the cheques going out wouldn’t bounce. We just invested $6000 mailing an appeal to pay off our line of credit; the initial investment was paid back on the first day of the campaign, and we received cheques from 9 first-time donors by the end of the first week!
God will provide for fruitful, faithful, Gospel-focused Arctic ministry even after the Council of the North dries up.[1] We call on all the other CON dioceses to learn to speak boldly and unequivocally about the hope, healing, and new life only offered in Jesus Christ, and to trust in His overabundant provision!
[1] This sounds harsh, but “drying up” is a statement of fact. In the 1970s, the Diocese of The Arctic received $3-million from the Council of The North. Adjusted for inflation, that is $18.6-million in today’s dollars. That’s a 97% reduction over 50 years.