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worship services admission is free, specific fees are charged for
services such as weddings and funerals. Marketing at last one would
think - supplying a measured amount of a commodity and asking a
specific price therefore, but diocesan opinion was "we're not levying
a charge, it's levied by Act of Parliament"
(C7)
" which is a bit like
suggesting that bus fares are charged not by the operating authority
but by the Traffic Commissioners. Again that feeling of unease at
handling money. Something not quite proper, not quite clean. "Clergy
feel that asking for money is going round with a begging bowl"
(C7)
.
And yet the practice of paying pew rents was once widespread and may
not yet have died out completely
(C1)
. Lurking down there somewhere
is still the possibility that the value of religion can be measured in
monetary terms, but it will need a lot more spadework to dig it out.
Surely it should be axiomatic that anyone who has accepted all the
personal opportunity cost involved in becoming a clergyman should
have a deep conviction of the benefit he has to offer to the community
at large? And if so that it should be perfectly normal - normal to
the extent of being accepted rather than expected - that money or its
equivalent should flow the other way? (For practical purposes we can
probably restrict ourselves to money, since that is our central
problem, and giving in kind appears now to be very limited.) Even
the Archdeacon of Bradford happily conceded that people will pay "for
something which they want"
(C7)
but when pressed to develop his own
logic, did not consider the corollary but opined that the "services
of a parson are very lowly regarded by society
(C7)
" and "whether anybody's
thought of marketing I honestly don't know"
(C7)
. What services? Why
lowly regarded? And if diocesan management can answer those questions
(and at least the first probably can be answered only from internal
analysis) then do we not face fair and square a marketing problem,
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