Motivation and Mission

What assumptions are being made?

Discussion at national level about how we use money appears to make assumptions about both motivation and mission that seem questionable from both organisational and ecclesiological perspectives. Different assumptions also shape the conversation between ‘centre’ and parishes so that one cannot really hear the other. We need to get all this out into the open and recognise that it is a problem with identity at its heart.

This blog reflects on things said at and about the discussion of a proposal to use 1% of Church Commissioner funds to subsidise diocesan stipend funds made to General Synod in July. The proposal was defeated. That already feels like a while ago. But the issues raised for me are still relevant and likely to remain so. I am not commenting on whether the proposal or the decision against it were right or wrong, though, in general terms I do not care for the current grant making system as the only means by which the Commissioners distribute money to parishes. I was more interested in what was said against it.

According to the report in the Church Times the Bishop of Blackburn said that ‘a “no-strings subsidy” would “encourage torpor and disincentivise missional imagination”.’[1] Ian Paul said that such a grant might be made ‘assuming that across the dioceses we would reach the point where we were all equally sharing a passionate and disciplined commitment to mission and growth’, but that we were not yet in that position. These were not the only voices of course but I found them striking and suspect (I could be wrong) that they represent a widely held view, especially at the higher levels of the church.

I am particularly interested in the assumptions that lie behind these remarks and I am, of course, as usual, approaching them from organisational and ecclesiological frames of reference. The first assumption I note is that parish churches require financial incentives to do the right thing. The second assumption is that it is perfectly clear what the right thing is. It is mission and growth.

Let me address the question of incentivisation first. Another way of putting it is to talk about motivation. This has been the subject of a great deal of research and theorising within organisation and management studies. As long ago as 1960 McGregor was comparing ‘Theory X’ and ‘Theory Y’ views of motivation.[2] Theory X views were based on the belief that people cannot be trusted and that without control they will pursue their own goals, which will be contrary to those of the organisation. Theory Y approaches are based on the belief that people are fundamentally moral and responsible people who will strive for the good of the organisation if they are treated as such. With which of these does the Church of England wish to identify?

The consensus of opinion in the literature now is that intrinsic rewards are far more powerful than extrinsic rewards, especially in contexts where people are in any case motivated by a sense of vocation. In other words, people are much more motivated by believing in and enjoying what they are doing, and seeing its fruit, than by gaining prizes or being starved of resources. The Body of Christ exists to continue the work of Christ this side of the eschaton. If we want more motivation we should focus on a developing a practical ecclesiology that has both theological and emotional appeal and is better set up to provide intrinsic satisfaction. My own experience is that people in parishes are less unmotivated than wearied by toiling away with few resources and endless money worries.

One of the models which we used a great deal at Telos Partners (where I learned and first practised my consultancy) argued that high performance resulted where there was leadership energy directed at generating clarity of purpose alongside engagement with those in the organisation, that, is mutual respect and recognition and real participation in decision-making. Can we say that these conditions are in place in the Church of England today?

The notion of ‘clarity of purpose’ leads me to the second assumption, that the right thing is a passionate focus on mission and growth. At one level who could disagree? But these simple phrases assume a great deal that is less self-evidently apposite. They also obscure some deeper questions, namely; what is the role of the local church? What does success look like? Who decides?

If we take a subject like growth it is, on the one hand, obvious that we want and need it. Every vicar I know wants more people in church. On the other hand it is far from clear to me that we should be seeing it so much as something we consciously set out to achieve as seeing it as an outcome, as something that results from doing other things right. I am not arguing against deliberate action to preach the gospel or attract individuals but suggesting that if we make growth the primary object of everything then we risk compromising the essential nature and identity of the church. The compromising effects on organisations of a focus on ‘targets’ has been noted often enough. The case of Chris Brain and the Nine o’clock Service is an extreme example, and, one hopes, we are wiser now, but it demonstrates the point with clarity.

As for the essential identity of the church, I take it to be, in the language of the Second Vatican Council, to exist as a ‘sign, foretaste and instrument’ of the Kingdom of God.[3] This is a larger purpose than getting bigger and it is essential to keep it all in sight if the church is to fulfil its calling and be somewhere to which people are attracted and where people want to stay. In any case, analysis of the ‘Quiet Revival’ (see my last blog on that subject) suggests that growth is to a large extent dependent on factors outside our control.

I also suggest that mission is a slippery term. In organisation studies it means something like ‘purpose’, or, at least, ‘what we do to fulfil our purpose’. I prefer to use the term similarly in the church. It describes all the things we do to be the church, and therefore includes worship, pastoral care, community action, outreach, evangelism and so forth. The church must be seen as a whole, as a sign of the Kingdom, as the offer of an encounter with Christ, if it is to have any meaning. In the church the term mission is so often reduced to evangelism or activity designed to allow evangelism. This is a gross distortion.

I suggest that, whether the distinctions are well articulated or not, many church members at local level are anxious about retaining aspects of the church’s identity they regard as fundamental and are therefore resistant to strategies that seem to them alien or partial and which feel thrust upon them by somebody further up the church chain of authority. I do not blame them. At the same time I am not arguing that the centre is wrong and the parishes right. I am fully aware, from personal experience, how ‘parochial’ and partial local understanding can be.

This leads me to a further issue, the sense of a kind of mismatch or conversation at cross purposes. Parish churches inhabit, still, a more traditional organisational culture with strong concepts around geography, tradition, family. The national church is a bureaucracy, seemingly (as bureaucracies are) drawn to modernist, rational approaches and initiatives. In making this distinction I am following Peter Rudge who identified it as long ago as the 1960s.[4] It is not so clear cut now as it was then but still real I suggest. These organisational models or cultures are different and operate on different assumptions. It is not that either is exactly wrong or exactly right. But both could legitimately be seen as somewhat out of date and unlikely to be adequate in today’s culture. A good starting point would be to recognise the fact and nature of the misunderstanding. The danger of not doing so is that differences of organisational model and culture are interpreted as differences of theology, as differences of identity.

In other words, we need to re-set the discussion, and make it one far more rooted in awareness of the organisational and ecclesiological factors at work. In particular we need to get a grip on the question of identity. Unless we can disentangle Anglican and Christian fundamentals (and it needs to be both) from secondary layers of practice, assumption, organisational model and so forth, our debates will be distorted by conflicting views of identity, of what is really important. We need a narrative that outlines a future for the CofE, one that takes the context seriously and tells us how we will address it and retain the core elements of our identity. The development of this narrative needs to involve participation of and engagement with parishes. Without this we will depend forever on initiatives that are contested, likely inadequate and strongly resisted as well as being rooted in quite inadequate understandings of both church and organisation.

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[1] All the references in this paragraph are from ‘Synod votes against redistributing funds’, The Church Times 18 July 2025, p2.

[2] McGregor, Douglas, The Human Side of Enterprise. (New York: McGraw-Hill 1960).

[3] Second Vatican Council, "Lumen Gentium: The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church," in Vatican II: The Essential Texts, eds. Tanner and Norman (New York: Image, 2012).

[4] Peter F. Rudge, Ministry and Management: The Study of Ecclesiastical Administration (London: Tavistock, 1968) p113.