- 58 -
at some stage beyond ordination, on the lines of those provided in
business colleges"
(T9)
. To some extent this is done - post-ordination
training of curates now includes a question and answer session with
the Diocesan Secretary, on financial management and related themes -
but there is still a long way to go.
3.4
Role of Chairman
It will be useful at this point to jump to consider the role of
the Chairman of the Diocesan Board of Finance. To one accustomed to
local government it was expected that this role would be comparable to
that of the chairman of a local authority finance committee. But the
office of diocesan chairman has a much more dignified, mayoral-like
concept to it, the neutral stance of a consultant rather than the
forcefulness of an executive. Indeed there is apparently no-one at
diocesan level exercising quite the same degree of executive authority -
perhaps a reflection of the fact that the legal authority is largely
non-existent - and insofar as it is exercised at parochial level it is
by the incumbent not by the parish treasurer. The concept of a strong
layman, taking responsibility for, and with the effective power to
enforce, financial policy, is, apparently, alien to the Church of
England. A diocesan board of finance itself "is not to be regarded
as a policy-making body. It should be an enabling rather than a
determining body"
(B12)
and this lacuna in the organisational structure,
whilst it may encourage short-term operational placidity, is doing so
at the expense of long-term strategic planning. Lester, after opining
that the Church "is struggling to come to grips with modern social
and economic conditions; its marketing, planning and personnel
management is weak:
(P6)
and that "Church and industry...are not quite
as far apart as some might think"
(P6)
regretfully concludes that
"if they do not or cannot change themselves, the pressure of events
