Category: Memorials to Conference

The Peterborough Circuit Meeting 18/01/17 (Present 36, Voting 29, For 26, Against 0) welcomes the transparency with which the Methodist Church lays out the eligibility criteria that projects must meet to access its various streams of grant funding. However, we note the difference between criteria and assessment, and having examined the application forms for all funding streams, call upon conference to commission a review of how, in its allocation of grant funding, the Church balances missional need, perceived risk, and potential reward. In our view, the requirement that new projects forecast the growth and scope of their ministry over five years (as would be required for stationing) may well, in some cases, be unrealistic.

Whilst we recognise the need for prayerful planning, we are concerned that the request for a ‘work plan’ (which requires projects to present a schedule of ‘activities, targeted beneficiaries, beneficiary-numbers, and measurable anticipated outcomes’ for each year of funding), as well as a five-year financial forecast, is impractical for new and innovative projects where the primary focus includes (separately or as one), serving the poor, community development, and/or ecclesial formation. Crucially, whilst practitioners are required to predict the participation, scope, and scale of their projects, the criteria fail to acknowledge how success in new ventures requires flexibility and an openness to opportunities as they arise. We therefore ask Conference, within its review, to scrutinise how the grant application process balances questions of sustainability with an openness to holiness, risk, and sacrificial giving.

The Peterborough Circuit Meeting 18/01/17 (Present 36, Voting 29, For 26, Against 0) requests that Conference reviews the proportion of local (or externally sourced funding) that churches and circuits must raise in order to qualify for connexional grants. At present, there is considerable inequity; a Methodist Action on Poverty and Justice (formerly Mission Alongside the Poor) application requires local churches or circuits to source at least a 1/2 of total project costs themselves. A Chaplaincy application requires a 1/3^rd. However, no such condition applies in the case of Mission and Ministry, including Heritage, or Property.

The fact that MAPJ applications require the highest proportion of local funding seems incoherent. Whilst the Mission and Ministry including Heritage fund acknowledges that some circuits are faced with ‘impossible or overwhelmingly difficult’ situations, and face ‘unreasonable financial burdens’, no such acknowledgement is made in the case of MAPJ. We hold that the requirement for projects to source half of their funding locally, potentially discriminates against those churches and circuits who have limited resources but still sense God’s calling to serve the poor and campaign for justice. We therefore call upon Conference to remove the MAPJ qualifier, and to also reconsider the contribution required to qualify for Chaplaincy grants.

In light of Fresh Expressions, the Peterborough Methodist Circuit Meeting 18/01/17 (Present 36, Voting 29, For 25, Against 0) calls upon Conference to review its standing orders relating to ecclesial formation; namely S.O. 605 (new churches may only be formed when twelve Methodist members unite), S.O. 612 (the minimum membership of established churches is six), and S.O. 051 (an exception to the ‘one member, one society’ principle).

Whilst we wish to affirm the broad recommendations made within Fresh Expressions in the Mission of the Church, we urge Conference to consider the critique offered by the Church Army Research Unit in 2013 (Report on Strand 3b). This suggests that our understanding of ‘church’ is underpinned by a practice rather than a relational approach, which is unhelpful and even unrealistic for fresh expressions. Whilst we recognise that Fresh originates from a joint Anglican-Methodist perspective, we find considerable merit in the Church Army’s argument. For a Methodist fresh expression to constitute itself properly as a new church, those who are already members of a local Methodist Church (and who may well serve a vital role in both), are forced to leave one for the other. Moreover, whilst the Church is encouraging fresh expressions to configure themselves in ways that are appropriate to local context, it seems incongruous that they should be expected to adhere to the twelve-member rule, especially when established churches retain their legal status until they have less than six.

The Statistics Office has reported to us that out of over 2,700 fresh expressions, only one has constituted itself as a church, and that in the main, new churches are formed through the amalgamation of declining churches, or through local ecumenical partnerships. We therefore request that conference reduce the qualifier under S.O 605 to six, and to extend the provisions of S.O. 051 to allow dual-Methodist membership in local contexts.