- 55 -
benefactors, and a much greater proportion from direct giving ("the
living church"
(C1)
. In other words there is coming to be a greater
correlation between the quality/quantity of the commodity purveyed and
the financial recompense received.
We can also point an analogy between the Church's position and
that of many organisations in the public sector - the National Health
Service, Local Government, Universities - who similarly operate with
revenue sources which are largely dissociated from the services they
provide, but where concepts such as efficiency and effectiveness are
still regarded as important. The Church is not alone in its predic-
ament and there is a prima facie case for the adoption of rational
management techniques notwithstanding the fact that the Church's
principal product may be not capable of being packaged and priced in
an orthodox marketeer's way.
This is the basic premise from which this chapter develops and
whilst it will be covert rather than overt, since too biased a stance
would all too easily lead to blind spots in our observations, it is
perhaps as well to make it known at the outset. It became evident
during research that there was a wide divergence of opinion within
the Church as to the propriety ("country areas suspect anything
sophisticated"
(C9)
) - and even the technical possibility - of adopting
anything akin to rational management techniques within the Diocese,
and it was felt desirable that this study, rather than vacillating up
and down the scale, should take a stance in the interest of providing
a consistent, albeit somewhat biased, point of view.
3.2
Representation Without Taxation
The question of technical possibility may not be too difficult
to settle. It will be suggested in Section 3.5 - especially as regards
certain financial techniques - that some rational management principles,
