‘We don’t have the money’: Finances still an issue at Arctic Anglican churches

Collis Machoko turns a purple donation bag upside down. A few $10 and $20 bills fall out, along with some change.

“Not much,” says Machoko, the pastor at Kugluktuk’s St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, after a relatively busy Sunday service with about a dozen people in attendance and baptism for a teenage girl.

Collis Machoko, Kugluktuk’s sole pastor, says financial struggles impact his daily work. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

He counts a total of $126.45 in cash. Then he opens a sealed envelope from one of the longtime members of the church — it holds a cheque for $300.

“If it wasn’t for her, this would have been a nothing day,” Machoko says.

For the past four years, he has been Kugluktuk’s sole pastor but prefers to call himself the “chaplain” for the community.

“When you work in a community, you are not different from a military chaplain or a police chaplain,” he said.

“When there is a death, you are the first person to be called. When there is a suicide, you are the first person to be called.”

It’s not an easy job, he said, but one thing makes it particularly hard — money. Or the lack of it.

It’s an “embarrassment” when he has to hitch a ride with the grieving family to the cemetery located outside of town after a funeral because the church doesn’t have means to transport him there, he said.

Financial woes at the Anglican Diocese of the Arctic are not new.

“Back in 2021-22, we were always talking about how we were on the verge of bankruptcy,” said newly elected diocesan Bishop Alexander Pryor.

That was partly because of a sharp decrease in donations during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, but also a more than 90 per cent cut in contributions from the national Anglican Church to the Arctic diocese.

Back in 1970, annual funding coming from the Anglican Church in the south was more than $2 million, equal to roughly $18 million today. In the past few decades, though, that amount has gone down to under $500,000 yearly.

Throw in the $10-million-plus cost of rebuilding the Iqaluit cathedral lost to a fire in 2005, and the diocese was left deep in the red and in a state of “desperation,” Pryor said.

“It sounds harsh, but our God-given task is NOT to keep the lights on in a church, or pay the oil bill, or pay ministers each month,” Pryor wrote in his August edition of the Arctic diocese’s newsletter.

He said local minsters’ main priority should be doing their work as clergy, not worrying about finances.

But the financial side might be picking up, he said in an interview.

In its latest financial statements, the diocese reported an operating surplus of $172,549 in 2024, compared to an operating deficit of $765,368 in 2023.

It’s due to a 68 per cent increase in donations from local churchgoers and international Anglican organizations, Pryor said.

If the upward trend continues, the diocese will be able to “undo” its debt of $956,443 accumulated over the years.

Also, the Arctic diocese is set to become a property developer in the region.

In May at their latest Synod meeting — a regular gathering of the clergy to discuss matters concerning diocese — the Arctic Anglicans voted to create an Arctic Anglican Development Corp.

They hope to tap into federal or territorial funding through Nunavut 3000, the government’s plan to build 3,000 housing units by 2030, to construct rental housing units which would be an extra source of income for the church.

St. Simon’s church in Apex is set to be demolished to make way for a new church with 12 rental housing units attached. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

The diocese has several projects on the go across Nunavut, including a $9-million plan to rebuild St. Simon’s church in Apex and include 12 rental units. In Pangnirtung, the diocese is planning an 18-unit housing development on the grounds of the recently demolished Arthur Turner Training School building.

“We are working toward being self-supporting and self-sustaining financially,” Pryor said.

As for Machoko, the struggles at the Kugluktuk church are still visible, and he said they’re impacting his ability to do his work.

Currently, nine of the 18 windows at the church are broken, and he is the one who has to patch them up with plywood in the building that has no insurance.  The faulty furnace occasionally disrupts services, and for months the church has been sitting without a cross on top because it blew away in a storm last winter.

“We are struggling to put it up,” Machoko said.

“We don’t have the money.”

As he was putting away the donations for the day, a woman approached him asking if she could keep the pink prayer book in Inuktitut that they used during the service. Those cost $5.

She said she didn’t have the money to pay and she would bring it next time.

Machoko agreed.

“You see, people have no money either,” he said.