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"the longer an organisation exists the harder it is to know why it

exists...and though they may have original aims, those aims over the

years do in fact change"
(C7)
and losing its inward drive and sense of

purpose "the Church is severely limited in her work by lack of

financial income. It may well be argued that...this is not a financial

bankruptcy but a spiritual one"
(C1)
; but on the whole seems to be

content that it should be so. The situation is being at least vaguely

acknowledged ("We're polishing the bell while the ship goes down"
(C7)
)

and there are exceptions. Some parishes are positively booming

(this was an aspect not closely studied but there may be correlation

between type of incumbent and size of congregation); "a small marketing

research project"
(P4)
was carried out by a Methodist church in Horsham,

although in even this, the authors conceded "we were really looking at

our 'loyal customers' rather than the 'non_buyers'"
(P4)
; and one real

attempt at market analysis was uncovered by this study
(T1)
; but they

only seem to prove the rule. Not only is the number of clergy declining,

but so is that proportion of their time (see Appendix B) allocated to

secular activity "the wider pastoral care which a clergyman gave at

one time is not done now"
(C7)
or if it is done it is by other agencies,

notably the State.


3.5.4.3
Ambivalent thinking


         There was some curiously ambivalent thinking. Whilst there is

evidence "that support for the Church is...higher...where there is a

high ratio of clergy to population"
(P7)
, reduction in clergy numbers

was felt to be not entirely a bad thing, "the fewer vicars we have to

pay the less it costs us"
(C4)
. The economic contradiction thus

portrayed apparently arises because the concept of increasing investment

to increase rate of return until the law of Diminishing Returns sets

in is also something alien to Church thinking. And whilst to regular

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