Lambeth Conference was a financial disaster

IT appears that the Anglican Church’s festival of feuding bishops, better known as the 2008 Lambeth Conference, was a financial as well as an ecclesiastical disaster.

"Oh bugger", said Rowan Williams, "not another bloody cock-up!"

According to this report, organisers of the conference managed to overspend by up to  a possible £2-million  – and the the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners want to know how the hell it happened.

So they have launched an investigation into the finances of the 2008 event, marked by a titantic clash between the liberal and conservative wings of the Anglican Church – mainly over the issue of the ordination of women and gay priests. It was a most unedifying spectacle – but a source of great fun to the more rational among us who regard such churchly shenanigans as a load of old codswallop.

John Ormerod, a former senior partner of Deloitt, will chair the inquiry into the estimated £1 to £2 million deficit run up by the July 16 to Aug 3 gathering of 617 Anglican bishops in Canterbury.

The committee’s brief will be to investigate how the Conference came to be so dramatically over budget, and to examine ways of eliminating the debt.

Perhaps they should visit the C of E website, where they might find an appropriate prayer for dealing with budgetary cock-ups.

Two representatives of the Archbishops’ Council, the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens, and Christina Baxter will be on the inquiry board along with Third Church Estates Commissioner Timothy Walker. A report is expected within nine months.

The total deficit for the Conference has yet to be made public by the organizing committee. Conference spokesman Archbishop Phillip Aspinall told the media at Lambeth that he had been informed by the organising committee that the budget would be made public after the books were closed in mid-August. So far no official accounting has been released.

On Aug 7, the officers of the Lambeth Conference Company, who include ACC Secretary General Kenneth Kearon and Lambeth Chief of Staff Chris Smith met with the Archbishops’ Council to brief them of the Conference’s inability to pay its debts as they came due.

Following an Aug 11 meeting with the Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners, the Church of England agreed to extend a temporary interest free £600,000 loan to the Lambeth Conference Corporation while it attempted to cover the shortfall through a fund-raising campaign.

According to a January 2008 internal conference document the budget for the Lambeth Conference was £4.4 million and the Lambeth Spouses’ Conference was £1.2 million, excluding the costs of travel to the conference.

Asked how on Aug 3 how the costs would be covered the Archbishop of Cant, Dr Rowan (“Dumbledore” Williams said:

We are looking at various routes to meet what looks like a shortfall at this stage. We knew this would be difficult. I don’t think I can go into details because I don’t have the direct management of that question.

Dr Williams added:

It’s just that’s not my particular responsibility at the moment, although I’m rather concerned about it.

In a statement released on Aug 8, Canon Kearon said:

The projection of a deficit in the immediate period following the Conference was always recognized … the shortfall in funding is unclear as bills come in to be settled, but it is likely to be approaching £1 million. The shortfall is being addressed as agreed by the continuing fund raising programme.