Overview
The Parish Offering system is a new way in which to organise the financing of the work of the Church.Originally, clergy were supported financially by earnings from land given to the Parish - this was called Glebe. However, there were huge inequalities between different parishes, and newer parishes in newly built-up areas had no endowments at all.
So a system was introduced, in which all of this parish income was centralised, and clergy were paid centrally. But the income from these endowments was never enough to support all the clergy adequately - and so parishes had to contribute from current funds as well.
At the start, the amounts were not so large - but as they grew, methods of calculating the Parish Share were based on the capacity of the Parish to pay - calculated from size of income, size of congregation etc. An unintended consequence of this system has been that there is no incentive to grow, and the Share feels like a tax.
So, in this Diocese we are now moving to a system where each parish makes an offer which should be both realistic and generous - meaning it should take into account the cost of clergy, the ability of the parish to pay etc - and then go beyond these to offer more in order to support those parishes whose ability to pay is much smaller.
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16 Jan 2008
