Deal with Anglican diocese was that parish could rent the church for 5 years and then at the end of that time buy it for $1.65 million or depart. They started a fund-raising campaign for the down payment---for a commercial mortgage probably at least 20% of the purchase price---originally with a six-year time frame which didn't make a whole lot of sense. It was rather desultory at first. Eventually they tightened up the time frame and got serious. Things were nip and tuck until a single donor pledged $300,000.But of course, having a down payment is only the first step: your income has to sustain the monthly payments as well. It looks as if St John the Evangelist was almost immediately aware that it couldn't continue with full-time clergy and meet its payments too.
The issue to my mind is whether the parish ever had adequate resources to continue as a stable group -- coetus fidelium stabiliter existens is the term used in Summorum Pontificum, and it seems as if it should apply just as much to Anglicanorum coetibus. "We'll pretend we have a building until our lease runs out, and then we'll come up with a new plan or something" isn't really a strategy. The bottom line is that after five years, the parish could afford to buy its building, or it could afford to pay clergy, but it couldn't do both.
We're in "continuing Anglican" territory here, with unrealistic planning and slapdash attempts to cover up a declining enterprise. I've got to think there was expertise in nearly any US or Canadian diocese that could provide financial guidance that could allow SJE or any other parish to plan its future more realistically. The question for me is why Houston seems not to have provided better supervision to the parish throughout its history and instead seems to have enabled what's taking place now.
In addition, my correspondent referred me to this 2014 post at the Anglican Expats blog, incongruously entitled "some encouraging news":
Recently, there has also been a problem with meeting the operating budget of $5000 weekly. In the same issue of‘ ‘Notices’, Fr Lee Kenyon stated that “the [accumulated operating] bleed is now at over $12,000 (…) We need to stop the bleed, and keep it stopped, sooner, rather than later.”As far as I can see, the parish had been aware for some years that it wouldn't be able to meet a higher mortgage payment if it was struggling to meet the lower rent payment it had. But let's also recognize that Houston has been remarkably indulgent over similar situations in Scranton and Bridgeport -- none of this reflects well on Bp Lopes, frankly.
