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were already giving as much as could reasonably be expected; but that intimations of support which sounded substantial had been received from the local business community and service groups (although some of those offers may be specific - for particular portions of the work in which the donors were interested). He was about to launch a public appeal ("for the whole restoration, not just for Phase One"), utilising local media, including radio and television. In all of this he was obviously playing to the wider civil community, yet he was unhappy handling questions about the tourist trade, emphasising that he sought restoration of St. James' primarily because it was his parish church, and only secondarily because it was an historic building - although very much aware of the importance of that historicity ("of which, incidentally, there is very little elsewhere in Bradford"). This dichotomy of thought - in this case a willingness to use business methods, yet reluctance to recognise them as such - pervades much of church financial management and is particularly difficult for an out- side researcher to handle. In the case of St. James' it went as far as recognising that the restored building would need a constant level of heating throughout the week if the hatchments, etc. were to be kept in good condition; making an approach to a university expert to ascer- tain whether solar heating might be more economical than fuel (the expert's response suggested that it would not); yet failing to keep any statistics (even if only by using sampling methods) of the number of visitors to the church and therefore not knowing the potential in- come to be derived therefrom. These are points which an outsider must accept rather than criticise, but they do tend to obfuscate an analy- tical approach. (The Incumbent did though later suggest that "the number of people that come to Tong at the weekend can vary from 100 to 300", most of whom could be expected to visit the church, and that |
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