Who Will Count the Cost?

It was Dean, the Treasurer, on the other end of the phone. First, he wanted to ask some details about the ecumenical service we're hosting tomorrow for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and how to manage the collection. Dean has a stammer, and when he said he had something else to mention and his stammer got noticeably worse, an angel whispered in my ear what he was going to say before he said it. He would quite like to stop being Treasurer, if that was all right.

Dean has been Treasurer for more than ten years: he moved across from being Churchwarden not long after I arrived in Swanvale Halt, and has been brilliant as the role has gradually expanded, grappling with budgeting (we didn't even have a notional budget to measure ourselves against at one time) and the ever-changing requirements of HMRC. He is a gentle and Christian soul who I know would always do anything I asked him to, so I was careful not to ask too often. Ten years and more is enough for anyone.

Now of course people very rarely want to do any role in church and usually take a lot of persuading, but of all those reluctant tasks Treasurer is the one they seem to want least, and once you get someone willing to take it on you tend to grip them as tight as you can. It isn't only churches where this is true: the rule applies to every voluntary organisation I've ever been anywhere near. When I was in the Liberal Democrats at Oxford there was only one occasion when an officer served more than one term, and that was a very special case when we were undergoing a particular episode of chaos - but the exception was the Treasurer's role. Both then, and after I left, there were three Treasurers who served a year each, and Oxford time being different from everywhere else's, even a term can seem an eternity. It wasn't as though being Treasurer of the Oxford University Lib Dems was a very onerous task, as incoming and outgoing funds hardly amounted to a king's ransom. It was the title that scared students off - the worry, perhaps, that they might get something wrong that would have actual consequences, rather than just get up the noses of students like the other officers. 

It isn't as though Dean has any special financial expertise: he's a computer programmer. I suppose you might argue he is the possessor of a tidy mind, but that's really his only qualification aside from being a Good Egg. So I shall be looking through the box to find another one, and trying to persuade them that's what they are.