Parish churches must be alert to the dangers of apparent financial windfalls in a climate of opportunism and illusory virtual investment offers, says a national scrutiny body.
An investigation has been carried out by the Strategic Micro-Management of Undertakings Group (SMMUG) into a series of events leading to a major crisis in the parish of St Agnant, Skraggend-on-Sea, with both financial and psychotropic consequences.
Alterations to a 1960s bicycle shed as part the church’s reordering project revealed a large monochrome mural depicting the apparent dismissal from clerical duties of a clergyman.
Following expert scrutiny to confirm the identity of the artist, the shed wall was sold to the Galleria Calcestruzzo Rinforzato in Florence, Italy, for an undisclosed sum believed to run into millions.
The SMMUG investigation hinged on discussions via a secure messaging app between churchwardens, the PCC secretary and treasurer, with incumbent the Revd Jayden Prance.
Inadvertent inclusion in the group of Editor of the Skraggend Declaimer, Colum Hackett, led to revelations about the process of deciding to invest the mural sale proceeds in dried fruit:
Churchwarden A: “What assets can we leverage?”
Prance: “We have an enormous crypt with nothing much in it but rising damp.”
Churchwarden B: “What use is a crypt?”
Secretary: “Depends what’s in it, I suppose.”
Treasurer: “I was listening to Elon Musk last week and I think he was up for investing in Crypto-Currants…”
Prance: “If you think we should do it let’s go. Fill the crypt with dried black Corinth grapes – there must be something in the Epistles about those – and we’ll ride the market until there’s a squeeze on dried fruit, and make mincemeat of our critics. Let’s just make sure our messaging is tight here.”
SMMUG’s call for improved financial acuity follows a collapse in worldwide dried fruit prices, the disintegration of the sanitary and rainwater goods at St Agnant’s, and the near-permanent intoxication of congregants attending services above the now-fermenting Crypto-Currants.
At the same time the Galleria Calcestruzzo Rinforzato has begun legal proceedings under intellectual property law against St Agnant’s former curate, Archdeacon Emeritus of Gridlington the Ven Armitage Shanks CBE, for fraud and attempted passing-off of his sixty-year-old graffito as a modern artwork.
Shanks claimed the mural was a near-forgotten youthful expression of his views about his training incumbent, the Revd Canon Twyford Doulton.
“I think someone may have mistaken my ‘Shanksy’ tag for someone else’s,” speculated Shanks, 83.
“There are some real fruitcakes out there.”
