From here:

MONTREAL-Despite efforts to balance its budget the national synod of the Anglican Church of Canada was running about $900,000 in the red at the end of the second quarter of 2012, the primate of the church, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, says.

He told representatives of eastern Canada dioceses Friday that the shortfall was due mainly to revenues lower than anticipated from dioceses. This was despite impressive efforts by some diocese to grapple with their own financial challenges and the decision of some diocese able to do so to voluntarily increase their contributions to the national church.

“The General Synod is struggling financially and if the truth be known we have been on this trajectory for a long time,” he told the synod of the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada, made up of seven dioceses in Atlantic Canada and Quebec. After slipping into “a dangerous tendency of deficit budgeting” it had been seeking to balance its budget through austerities including a 25 per cent reduction in national staff in the last three years, while at the same time seeking to re-focus its activities on mission.

Archbishop Claude Miller of Fredericton seems to have cottoned on to the idea that the financial plight of the Anglican Church of Canada is a result of following false gods. I think he has missed the mark on which false gods and who is following them, though. In his view, they are governments, money, possessions, knowledge, industry, commerce, even entertainment and sports. But they are the false gods of the unsaved; there is no real surprise in that. While it’s hard to keep up with the ever broadening plethora of false gods that the church has taken into its bosom, it seems clear that an, admittedly, non-exhaustive list would include: utopianism, socialism, homosexuality, gender ambiguity, inclusion, temporality rather than transcendence, diversity, eco-religion, aboriginal superstition and general new-age mumbo-jumbo.

 “We have put our faith in other gods for our security and salvation: governments, money, possessions, knowledge, industry, commerce, even entertainment and sports. Witness the Sabbath day and the parking lots of churches versus the parking lots of the shopping malls. Where our treasure is, we find our hearts.”

Fortunately, Primate Fred Hiltz has the situation under control and has issued a memo to calm nervous staff: apparently, the remedy for the church’s financial embarrassment is enshrined in “pruning” and “Vision 2019”.

I want to assure you that in my remarks I said nothing about cuts to programs or staff. I simply made reference to our obligation for careful attention to “pruning” that may need to be considered. In reality we find ourselves in a deficit position and the worry that comes with it at this time each year.

In my remarks I also said that by 2016 the structures of the General Synod will look “very different”. That friends is not breaking news! The need to do this work is enshrined in Vision 2019 (practice #1-Creating Structures that work now for God’s mission) General Synod Resolution A111, the resolution of the November 2011 meeting of CoGS and the focus of conversations at the Spring 2012 meeting of CoGS and those we will have at the upcoming meeting in November.