Changed Methods Of Raising Church Funds

Press, Volume C, Issue 29634, 3 October 1961, Page 10

Changed Methods Of Raising Church Funds

“We have left behind us the day of the bazaar and the sale of work as the one primary means of balancing the parochial budget,” said the Dean and Vicar-General of Christchurdh (the Very Rev. M. Sullivan) in his address to the Anglican Synod of the Diocese of Christchurch yesterday afternoon.

Dean Sullivan is presiding at the synod in the place of the Bishop of Christchurch (the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren), who is recovering <rom an operation. "Over the years both the diocese and parishes have embarked on fund-raising canvasses. The result has been seen in an air of financial buoyancy,” Dean Sullivan said. “We are concerned in this endeavour with far more than finance. The advances along the whole front have been partly won, and we must not now slip back into old and lethargic ways.

"A parish is challenged by a canvass. It is compelled to

go out constantly to seek and to meet its people,” said Dean Sullivan.

‘•The church has developed an uneasy conscience about money, due in part, to the

attitude of those who do not want to face up to the responsibility of helping it If we do not think we need hard cash, then let us do without it altogether, but if it is necessary, then let us ask for it openly as we ask for prayer and service, F and let us use it as faithful stewards,” he said. Dean Sullivan said some church people and some non-church people alike were frankly hypocritical on that score.

“If the Church asks its people for finance it is making the preliminary demand for a fuller commitment, and if men’s hearts are lodged in their pockets they will resist the call to the bitter end,” he said. When someone was outside the Church, and perhaps was remaining there because he was ill-informed, prejudiced, or even apathetic,

he might enter the gateway if the appeal was made to him to do so on reasonable grounds. “We have special endowments in this diocese for which we ought to be humbly thankful. The income from them guarantees the Bishopric, the Cathedral and sends us on our way with a spur of £lO,OOO a year for general purposes. We may best use these gifts as a challenge from generation to generation and never as a cushion to rest up,” Dean Sullivan said. s