That the church was not expected to last long did not stop the church making quite radical changes in structure in the area of ministerial deployment and finance. In classic
Congregationalism the ability of a church to call a minister depended on its ability to pay a stipend, although the constraints of this were mitigated by the creation of the Church Aid and Home Missionary Society at the Leicester Assembly of 1877. Later the ministry in weaker churches was supported by the Maintenance of the Ministry Fund, from which churches who could not meet the minimum stipend could apply for help. In the Presbyterian Church of England, with its relatively large congregations and its rule that normally when a church dropped below fifty members it would close, it was found possible for all churches to be ministered to and for ministers to be centrally paid.
The URC adopted something close to the Presbyterian system, with agreed
deployment of ministers and a commitment to provide ministry for all churches, though it did not adopt the Presbyterian provision for closing smaller declining churches. In the very different context of the United Reformed Church this removed from smaller churches the incentive to increase their income in the hope of being able to call their own minister, spread ministry more thinly over the churches, and imposed serious financial burdens on the larger churches (indeed gave them an incentive not to increase their membership any further). As Michael Hopkins comments: “The economic problem of the URC is that too many people are being subsidised by too few”. Former General Secretary Tony Burnham is equally critical:
44 I thought we lost a lot by opting for the Presbyterian pattern of paying for ministry. The Congregational way encouraged the local church to be self-supporting, with the richer pastorates helping the poorer and perhaps by spreading our ministers over so many churches, we have also discouraged the development of the learned ministry (Burnham, interview, p.8).
The problem accentuated with the years. In 1973 the URC had 2080 churches with an average membership of 92. In 2012 its 1529 churches had an average membership of 41. In such circumstances it became increasingly hard for ministry to be focused and effective. Another financial decision taken at the beginning which was, as we shall see, to prove extremely significant for the kind of church the URC was to become was the decision to place most trust funds with the synod. This was hugely consequential but no-one involved saw or intended the consequences. Norman Pooler, who represented the Presbyterians and would have preferred the funds to be held nationally, as they had been with the Presbyterians, argues a number of factors were involved.
1) An accident of history had left the greater part of the funds in the trusteeship of County Unions for application within restricted geographical areas of benefit.
2) Practical politics required extensive negotiation with the legal committee of the Congregational Church and the County Unions.
3) The need to provide for the allocation by the Charity Commissioners of most
Congregational funds - other than local church property - between the URC and non-uniting Congregational churches (Pooler, interview, p.3).
One may note that none of these reasons included theological criteria or judgements as to how the decision would affect the missiological nature of the new Church. Presbyterian concerns as to the role of the Moderators were met by sincere assurances that Congregational Moderators were essentially pastoral and worked with minimal office support. No-one envisaged the kind of staffing levels that the trust funds would enable Synods to develop or how this would contribute to changes in the role of the Moderator or to the relationship between the Synod and both the national and local church. In this sense the United Reformed Church went into its future blind.
There was another, even stranger, blindness in the structure and ecclesiology of the new Church. The United Reformed Church’s overriding purpose was to facilitate an
ecumenical breakthrough and become part of a wider union. Surely therefore the new Church would be designed to ease the path into that union? Arthur Macarthur saw this clearly,
There are two possibilities. One is that that there is a real possibility of a united church. If this is the case the United Reformed Church needs to be organised to
45 facilitate this. The other is that there will be a continuing United Reformed Church in which case there are identity questions (Macarthur papers, Westminster archives). There is however little evidence that either of these possibilities was seriously addressed. This is apparent from the composition of the committee itself. The Anglican-
Presbyterian committee had logically included consultant/observers from the Methodist and Congregational Churches. If the URC was hoping soon itself to be part of an ecumenical union one would have expected this precedent to have been followed by including observers from potential ecumenical partners. No such proposal was made. There were observers from the Churches of Christ. “The Joint Committee has already greatly profited from the
“Observations” made by the Churches of Christ observers now attending its main meetings and some of its groups; their advice was particularly helpful in the redrafting of the section on Baptism” (Report to Assembly 1969, p.5). On the same principle Anglican or Methodist advice would surely have been helpful in the sections on episcope and lay leadership. The minutes do not record that anyone proposed this. As to the United Reformed Church being “organised to facilitate” the possibility of a united church there is little evidence for this. The challenges that such a union would face should have been clear to all. Presbyterians had already been involved in lengthy unity negotiations with Anglicans and knew exactly what the problems were.