Heritage Buildings and Community Development - Good Stewards of church buildings
HBCDO - Good stewards of church buildings - pdf
In The Church of England the local Church members, particularly the PCC, are the stewards of the local church building. The Anglican church building is there for all the people of the Parish. It is not the private premises of a private members club. The local Church is, on behalf of the wider community, the steward of a community building. The members of the local Church are the 'unsung heroes' who look after over 12,000 listed buildings in England.
This situation needs to be both celebrated and applauded. The extent and commitment of the volunteers who look after a considerable proportion of our nations building heritage deserves serious acknowledgement and gratitude.
The church buildings in the Diocese of Worcester are sustained and maintained by an often invisible army of volunteers some of whom, at times, are given sleepless nights by the task with which they are entrusted. My job is to support the volunteers in their work and ensure they are equipped and enabled to do the job. So if managing the church building is a bit daunting and the associated costs difficult to find then please seek help and advice.
The place to begin is to address the problem and not to put off tackling the issues that need to be faced. The Church Wardens and PCC need to take control of the building and not allow the building to control the life of the church. The way to achieve this is to be properly informed about how to manage an old and / or large public building.
How to save your Church as much as £100,000 over ten years!
Preventative maintenance is essential and hugely cost effective. When it comes to church buildings, the saying 'a stitch in time saves nine' is quite often 'nine thousand times nine'. It is the best way to save our Church considerable amounts of money.
- The absolute priority in protecting the built assets is to ensure the building has a 'dry hat and boots'. All buildings are water soluble, but old buildings dissolve more quickly than ones made of concrete. All buildings are seriously at risk if water gets in at the wrong place.
- Rainwater goods, gutters and gullies need to be inspected at least twice a year (four times is best) and cleaned out. In towns, where there may be fewer leaves, there are more plastic carrier bags or footballs which do just as much damage by blocking gutters and hopper heads.
- In built up areas, pigeons can cause all manner of problems with their guano damaging stonework and their feathers, nesting material and dead bodies blocking rainwater goods. It is essential not to let them get out of control. Be very pro-active in preventing them from nesting and roosting on the church, but be careful to act within the law which protects all wild birds, their nests and eggs - even pigeons. If necessary engage a vermin control contractor to provide specialist and humane preventative measures.
There is loads of information available about what to do and how best to get things done. The first place to look is either the Church Care website (www.churchcare.co.uk) or the SPAB website (www.spabfim.org.uk) and their DVD called Faith in Maintenance which has been circulated to all the parishes in the diocese.
Knowing what needs to be done is one thing. Getting round to finding out what needs to be done and doing something about it does take time, energy and money. Taking action and putting the work in hand is all part of our Christian stewardship and if it is to happen, it does require the commitment and support of the PCC and Church in general. It is not a responsibility to be dumped on some unfortunate person who wasn't swift enough to say 'no'. The good stewardship of our church buildings is the legal responsibility of the Priest, Churchwardens and PCC. The responsibility needs to be shared by everyone and those who actually do the work deserve the help, support and encouragement of the whole Church community.
Inevitably, when funds are limited, there will be some conflicting priorities in terms of what should be done first. A PCC can only make sensible decisions once its members are being fully informed of the facts and have accurate data about the situation facing them on behalf of the Church. It is easy to be tempted or pressured into making decisions without all the facts with a consequence that the wrong decision is made or we live to regret what was decided and done.
It is up to us as members of the local church to demonstrate our good stewardship of what we have received from previous generations. We need to be properly informed of the facts and make sure that we run our church assets in a sensible and business like way.
Being business-like is very much part of our Christian tradition and needs to happen in any Church fellowship. There is nothing un-Christian about being business-like, after all a translation of the Greek word 'Koinonia' (usually translated as fellowship) is enterprise or business. Koinonia is a partnership which can include the ecumenical dimension of working with other denominations. So we have every reason to seek business solutions for tricky times and ensure our investigations include our partner Churches.
