Back in 1985, a fresh-faced Jonathan Hill joined the Lichfield Diocesan Board of Finance (the legal body that looks after diocesan business and serves the parishes and schools) in the finance department.
He has loyally served there ever since, completing four decades and developing his portfolio of financial skills and deep knowledge of the parishes and people in the diocese. Initially working on the Board of Education accounts, in 2003 he became Director of Finance.
Jean Overton joined the diocesan staff straight from school just a couple of years later: "We were the youngest members of staff by some margin back then. For his first task, his boss, Roy Edwards, gave him a phone book and made him add up numbers from it - in his head!"
"I just remember him as a fresh-faced youngster" adds Mithra Tonking, diocesan archivist and mapping guru who had already been with the diocese for three years when Jonathan started.
"When I started with the diocese as a clerk in the DAC in around 1995," says Katie Brown "I was in at a desk in what is now the Reeve Room and then was the offices for the Board of Education, the DAC and a couple of others. Jonathan was in the next cubby hole as he was then looking after the Diocesan Board of Education accounts."
In 2012 he is recorded in notes as a conference speaker as someone who had 'overseen the financial implementation of the Diocesan strategy that has seen the growth of the Diocesan investment portfolio to underpin mission and ministry.
'A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Managements Accountants, a member of the Charities Finance Directors Group and the Charity Trustees Investment Association, he has been a committed Christian for 30 years and ‘served his time’ on the PCC, as well as being treasurer at a church in his home county of Worcestershire.'
"Where mission and ministry flourish, finance surely follows."
Canon Julie Jones, Diocesan CEO for sixteen years up to the end of 2024 describes Jonathan as "a phenomenally loyal and hard-working colleague without whom I couldn't have done my job through some difficult situations. He has been absolutely integral to the success of of the diocese in recent decades."
And Julie's successor, Sam Rushton has seen enough to echo that: "Although I haven't been in post for long, Jonathan has already proved himself to be a terrific colleague - knowledgeable, supportive and incredibly hardworking. I couldn't have asked for a better finance director to help lead us through the next phase of implementing our Seeking the Kingdom vision."
Finance is a perennial challenge even in organisations built on faith, but many a time the man with what might be the most stressful job in the diocese - which includes having to manage cashflow so that hundreds of clergy and the diocesan staff receive their stipends each month, and responsiblity for the assets (clergy houses, church schools, glebe land and investments) - repeats the faithful phrase: "Where mission and ministry flourish, finance surely follows."
Staff gathered to mark the occasion at which current CEO, Sam Rushton presented him with the traditional engraved decanter - plus something to fill it! - thanking him for his support to the Diocese over 40 years.
Twenty percent of his time with the diocese has been spent with Bishop Michael as diocesan bishop. "Jonathan understands the complexities, conundrums and challenges of Lichfield diocesan finance better than anybody on earth, and he works incessantly to elucidate the first, to enjoy the second, and to overcome the third. Above all, though, he knows that money is a means of serving mission and ministry, and has to follow where they lead. For four decades he has engaged wholeheartedly with people and parishes, priests and prelates across the diocese and beyond to ensure that our churches can be sustained and can flourish; we are all in his debt."
