+ Richard outlines his survival strategy

That is, a survival  strategy for the six diocesan bishops of the Church in Wales (CinW) whose membership can't stretch to 1% of the population of Wales and continues to shrink based on the CinW's own figures. 

From the 2013 Membership and Finances Report quoted in Highlights:
"The trend is down across the board. There is no set of figures which indicate a rise in physical numbers in any single category. There are no positive indicators—every field shows decline compared with previous years, and in some cases that decline is significant. Our core membership continues to fall year on year."

In senior manager positions implementing strategies for growth in a declining market the bishops are far more secure than they would be if considering the continuing need for six dioceses with six Bishops and an Ass Bishop, six Deans, numerous Archdeacons, etc, etc. Clearly top heavy but in management terms spot-on in mirroring society today which has become the primary aim of liberal Anglicanism

Bishop Pain explains that "as time has gone on we need to be more focused": There's lots of changes happening in the Church and in society and there are challenges which we are facing and I think any organisation needs to have a clear understanding about where it is going. The key message is to harness our resources...to develop ministry in new and exciting ways.

And here is the crunch, "but you need to have a plan for that. You need organisation. And you need resources for that. There are tensions I think between what parishes want and sometimes what the diocese needs and you need to hold all those together and that is what the plan is trying to do."

Without any hint of irony the bishop says that he would be very surprised if you didn't have any organisation which was working well that didn't have focused leadership. [My emphasis - Ed.]  Working well doesn't sit comfortably with the bishop of Bangor's comments when he introduced the Finance and Membership Report. He said, More money today is being spent on ministry than at any other time in the history of the Church in Wales. That means less on buildings, more on people. For a Church that wants to orientate itself towards mission, that is very, very good news. The bad news comes with membership.   

According to the bishop of Monmouth, because of the economic stringencies we are facing at the moment, we have to have a clear understanding of how we manage the money, so that we can have the right resources in the right place. This will mean cutting the number of clergy down but hopefully having good teams which will enable us to go forward in the future. 'Hopefully' being the operative word.

The Diocese of Monmouth's new strategy is headed: "Monmouth 2020: Becoming the people God calls us to be. The bishop says that the roots of the Church go back "hundreds and hundreds of years" but "plants go in different directions at times". He claims that the diocese is "going back to the roots of what the Church is about". But what "the Church is about" is not what the Church in Wales is about, or the Church of England for that matter. Plants which go off in different directions are often regarded as weeds to be plucked out or left to wilt after hoeing, a process already in evidence in England and Wales having spread from the US.

How much more deluded can our career focused bishops become? The "people God calls us to be" are those Anglicans who have remained true to the Catholic faith along with our brothers and sisters in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. 

What the Church in Wales fails to realise is that in departing from the Catholic faith they have set themselves apart from the Apostolic Church. The roots are in the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Any survival strategy which ignores that will protect only its senior strategy managers at the expense of their flock.

All that is wrong with the Church in Wales

"Radical re-thinking for the Church in Wales" is the main headline in Highlights of the Church in Wales Governing Body September 2012. The highlights can be read here. Described on the Church in Wales website as a 'full round up of news from the Governing Body meeting', it appears to be more of a rubber stamping of the Archbishop's decision making process with only positive comments allowed. I note the absence of any opposition to Dr Morgan's plans under 'Women in the Episcopate'; simply a rehash of the proposals and a dismissive: "After debate, GB agreed through a majority vote for legislation to be drawn up in this way". Just what the doctor ordered!

Introducing the Church in Wales Review Report Lord Harries, the Review Chairman, said:  “The parish system is no longer sustainable—we have to radically rethink the way we look at our ministry, and begin with the concept of an area ministry”. I doubt that the average person in the pew has fully grasped the significance of the loss, not just of the parish priest but of the whole concept of the parish system, something that has stood the test of time, as has the traditional concept of priesthood within the church. Wanting the best of both worlds, the bishops have become very adept at insisting that the church should become more relevant to society but where is that relevance when the overseers (managers) take no responsibility for the mess they have created? Further on in Highlights some interesting facts could not be hidden:

+ There is a continuing decline of between 2 and 4% in attendance on Sundays and the major festivals.

+ Total income and expenditure have fallen on 2010 levels, and the Long-term Trends 1990 to 2011.

+ Easter communicants and average Sunday attendance has fallen by close to 50% in the last twenty years. In fact the Easter communicant figure for 2011 was lower than the average Sunday attendance figure in 1990.

+ There is also a steep decline in the number of baptisms and confirmations over the twenty year period. 

Presenting the Membership and Finance Report from which these quotes are taken, Canon Mike Starkey said, "The membership statistics show that we are doing what we have always done with diminishing returns. How can we move forward? “We have a visionary and radical new Report which charts a way forward. But while restructuring is a good thing, that alone will not get us to the core of our problem. We need to ensure that we are renewing the Church, not just re-engineering it.” Concluding his report he pointed to Russell T Davies as a Welsh role model—he renewed a tired classic in Dr Who to make it fresh for new generations, proving it is possible to both satisfy the guardians of tradition and engage with a new constituency.

Secure in their bishoprics there has been no apology for the mess the bishops have created with their 'half-baked initiatives - “So often in the Church we move from one half-baked initiative to another, often at great financial cost with little or no thought at measuring outcomes and the difference we make, and learning lessons for future strategy and work.” - Highlights September 2011. Concluding his Presidential Address, Dr Morgan preceded a self-congratulatory poem with this quote:

"Cardinal Carlo Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan, and said to be the best Pope the Roman Catholic Church never had, in his last interview before his death this month said of his own church, “The church is 200 years behind the times. Why doesn’t it stir? How can we liberate the embers from the ash to reinvigorate the fires of love? Are we afraid? Faith is the foundation of the church – faith, trust, courage”."

But the Archbishop failed to quote Cardinal Martini's solution:

"Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our rituals and our cassocks are pompous," the Cardinal said. "The Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops."

The message is clear.