- 64 -
"the longer an organisation exists the harder it is to know why it
exists...and though they may have original aims, those aims over the
years do in fact change"
(C7)
and losing its inward drive and sense of
purpose "the Church is severely limited in her work by lack of
financial income. It may well be argued that...this is not a financial
bankruptcy but a spiritual one"
(C1)
; but on the whole seems to be
content that it should be so. The situation is being at least vaguely
acknowledged ("We're polishing the bell while the ship goes down"
(C7)
)
and there are exceptions. Some parishes are positively booming
(this was an aspect not closely studied but there may be correlation
between type of incumbent and size of congregation); "a small marketing
research project"
(P4)
was carried out by a Methodist church in Horsham,
although in even this, the authors conceded "we were really looking at
our 'loyal customers' rather than the 'non_buyers'"
(P4)
; and one real
attempt at market analysis was uncovered by this study
(T1)
; but they
only seem to prove the rule. Not only is the number of clergy declining,
but so is that proportion of their time (see Appendix B) allocated to
secular activity "the wider pastoral care which a clergyman gave at
one time is not done now"
(C7)
or if it is done it is by other agencies,
notably the State.
3.5.4.3
Ambivalent thinking
There was some curiously ambivalent thinking. Whilst there is
evidence "that support for the Church is...higher...where there is a
high ratio of clergy to population"
(P7)
, reduction in clergy numbers
was felt to be not entirely a bad thing, "the fewer vicars we have to
pay the less it costs us"
(C4)
. The economic contradiction thus
portrayed apparently arises because the concept of increasing investment
to increase rate of return until the law of Diminishing Returns sets
in is also something alien to Church thinking. And whilst to regular
