Soo.. what’s the significance of the New Capital project winding up? Worth a thread? I was surprised last year when the results were apparently 3-5% of what was estimated. What does it say about Sydney?

I was disappointed by that too Luke. Rodney Dredge’s report is listed in the Synod papers, and it gives a good overview of the issues. Seems to me that it comes down to 2 things -

1. Our real estate assets are worth less than we thought

2. We aren’t generous

Regarding #2, we wouldn’t even need a New Capital Project if people were giving generously. Look at the pentecostal churches - they had none of the “head start” that Anglicans got with government grants of land. But they have still managed to resource their ministries - purely through member generosity.

If every Christian in the diocese was giving as they should, we would have more money than we could spend.

That is a bit harsh Craig.
There are very very many generous Christians in the Anglican churches. The NCP was always predicated upon the fact that targeted parishes (those underutilized) should be willing to give, but not compelled to give.

My pastoral heart instead says why not target those parishes with love, care, support, prayer & help to encourage them to grow, not rip them off (sorry, ask them to be generous).

Raising finances is always a concern. Local people raise the finances to buy and build. They have to put the title into the Property Trust, who hold it in trust for the local church. Not all property was a government grant. Responsible stewardship includes considering future parishioners too.

I’m gunna kick the New Capital stuff into a new thread, 2 secs..

...and here it is.

edit: thanks Craig!

I too have known very generous Anglicans, but they appear to be in the minority.

I’ve heard that the average giving figure across Sydney is $15/week. I don’t have a solid reference for that, but I’ve heard the figure from a couple of different sources.

No matter how you square it, that is not a generous figure. Compare it to the average Sydney mortgage figure of $330/week. (SMH Feb/2005)

Regarding the tiny dying congregations meeting in cavernous buildings - well, I’m glad the archbishop has indicated he is no longer willing to send young enthusiastic men into these situations to have the life sucked out of them. He put it more politely than that, but that was the essence of it.

Concerning average giving, I think there is a problem when people see that the NT doesn’t teach tithing, but generosity and then make a decision to be much less generous than to give 10%!

Can you imagine a newly converted Jew deciding to give God less, now he doesn’t have to follow the Old Covenant ceremonies?

According to Joseph Tkach, this is what happened when the Worldwide Church of God went from being legalist cult to a gospel church: they lost a lot of members and a lot of money, and proportionately people who stayed decided to give a lot less. I suppose a 23% tithe is pretty steep, but.

You are exactly right David - it seems that people either give 10% or about 1%.

When we had teaching on giving last year, the preacher did not endorse a legalistic tithe, however he said “I cannot accept that New Testament saints, with all the blessings of the gospel, should be less generous than Old Testament saints.”

I was greatly inspired by reading Craig Blomberg’s testimony in the last pages of Neither Poverty Nor Riches [a great book which is well worth reading] where he said he had been inspired by 2 ministers who gave a substantial portion of their money to God’s work.

As a student he began by giving 10%, which was not easy, but by God’s grace he has continually increased this, until today he is able to give over 30% away. He admits that the system makes it easier for ministers in America to do this, as giving ot the church is tax deductible, and ministers also have other benefits that enable them to do this.

I’ve tried to follow his model, and for a few years have increased the proportion I give each year, and paradoxically we have also increased the amount of money we have in our savings. I’m not doing this in a Prosperity Gospel way, and while I attribute everything to God as a believer in his sovereignty over all things, I think part of the reason that giving promotes our own bottom line is that we are doing things in a planned way.

Preaching that tithing is not a NT concept can be counterproductive if it is not properly explained I think. It would be horrible if it were interpreted as “Relax. You don’t have to give God much at all! He’s happy with what you have left over...”

... and then to avoid legalism further no one wants to discuss whether or not tithes should be pre or post tax.

[Major caveat - I’m currently at college and don’t have an income or mortgage. This will no doubt cloud my post and your understanding of it.]

Surely we earn our gross income, not net. If we give to Caesar what is Caesars, we pay our taxes. From our gross income.

To argue that after tax income is what we should use to calculate our ‘base tithe’ of 10% is to hinder our generosity, not to mention what it reflects about giving to God what is Gods, after paying other dues first.

I’m all for giving out of my net pay - I figure I never see the gross pay anyway, it never even touches my account…

But that being said - why should it matter if it is gross or net? We aren’t locked into a percentage.

If everyone started giving 10% of their net income, the church wouldn’t know what to do with all the money coming in (but I’m sure we’d figure it out soon enough...).

Most giving I have seen is in one of three forms.
It’s either:
1 - give %10+ of income or
2 - give $20 or
3 - give whatever change is in my pocket/wallet.

I read that section of the Blomberg book as well. I’ve also been very challenged by his system of “graduated tithing”.

As Ian said, if everyone even tithed out of their net income, we would have enough money to do just about every project we could think of.

And if everyone who said they are a Catholic or Anglican on the census forms turned up at church on Sunday, you would need crowd control officers and rosters for services from daily to dusk and afterwards to cope with the sudden influx.

Just bringing this back to the New Captial Project (NCP), Craig helpfully mentioned that the final report is available, which you can read here.

The report goes through the lessons learned from the project, and it sounds like a number of interesting things were learned, however to my mind they read as things you would kind of want to find out before launching a pilot project.. ? Do others agree? Was there much controversy over this? I’m out of the loop so forgive me if its old news.

From having a look through the news stories, the process seems to have been…

* Standing Committee approved an allocation of $1million for ‘Stage 1’ this time two years ago, with an apparent need in the diocese $100m - $500m to build new churches

* Last year it was reported that likely only $8m-$14m of $300m needed would be available through the NCP, which is ~3 to 5% of the desired amount, or put another way 95-97% below the desired amount (!).

* And this year the project was wound up, having spent $833k to discover that our buildings actually aren’t worth that much and are in some cases a liability, people wouldn’t really want to do it anyway, and it would cost a lot to do anything with them if they were to sell.

Does that sound about right?

Again, forgive me if this was all discussed initially, but did it really require $833,576 to work this out?

There was a question in Synod regarding the breakdown in costs for the $800k. I imagine the answer will be published at some point.

[quote author="Craig Schwarze"]There was a question in Synod regarding the breakdown in costs for the $800k. I imagine the answer will be published at some point.

My good mate David Clarke asked this question. Perhaps he would be kind enough to post the figures. Staff costs were the biggest proportion from memory.

Yours in Christ,
Mark

I seem to recall a question hoping that all the research wouldn’t be totally wasted…

I wonder what the answer will be on Monday.