Your basket
Basket
Your basket
0 items - £0.00

Personal tools

Home News Understanding Fairer Share

Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Understanding Fairer Share

by Michael Ford last modified 24 Sep, 2021 11:18 PM

Our 'Guide to Fairer Share' is available on our Diocesan website, and feedback continues to be positive, from Diocesan Synod members to parishes.

Access it here.

When it comes to funding the Diocese, Fairer Share makes up 74 pence in every £1 received, with the rest made up by Diocesan incomes, and this enables God’s ministry and mission in our Diocese.

86 pence of every £1 gathered through Fairer Share is returned to our parishes, not only paying for parish ministry but also our work with children, young people, families and schools.

The remaining 14 pence of every £1 covers our support services, administration and finance, and contributions towards the National Church and overseas mission.

Although we have the fourth-highest attendance, and the second-highest numbers of clergy of any Church of England diocese, we are 36th-highest when it comes to giving against income.

This means our outgoings far exceed our income, and so it is vital that we create a sufficient level of giving to allow us to continue to pay all these costs - otherwise our financial crisis will continue.

We average £10 per week in giving per person, but to break even, we need to increase that to at least £12 per person.

Without this increase in giving across the board, our clergy could not be paid and supported, our mission would be underfunded, along with our support of collaborative lay ministry. and with it, our vision.

But if our giving went to £15 per person per week, just think what we could do!

As our Bishops Karen and Andrew say:

"This Guide to Fairer Share comes with a huge thank you for your extraordinary and continuing contributions during 2020 and 2021. Every contribution is sincerely valued.

"Our overarching vision is to provide a thriving Christian presence across this Diocese, but to do this we need to be financially stable."

Wiltshire PCC member and lay minister Ros Leverett, from Ludgershall, says:

"This Guide is really helpful because it gives an easy to follow description of how our financial offering in church is spent. It is good to be extremely clear that the Share we send monthly to the Diocese then pays for our clergy, our outreach in schools to children, and ministry to our place.

"This has, historically, often been hard to explain because of jargon that gets in the way, but our giving directly pays the salaries of those who work full time in God’s service in our community.

"Our giving is a spiritual act as Christians; we are not all called to be ordained, or work full time for the church, but this is how we support those who do have that calling, and make it possible for our clergy to afford to work each day on the ground, for God’s glory. It is how we put food on their tables.

"I’m excited to see how God kindles our response during this period of prayerful planning for the future, because there is so much to do in our Diocese of Salisbury. As the Guide makes clear, we can’t go on spending in deficit, but must seek out and respond to God’s generosity to us, as He blesses us over and over."

To find out more about what Fairer Share is and how it is calculated, as well as more on why it matters, click here to view the Guide.

Document Actions