Jesus Saves - With Our Two for One Deals...

So the Church of England is worried that it won't be able to afford to maintain many of its magnificent cathedrals. You'd think the Almighty would provide for them, wouldn't you? But no, they instead have to resort to those bloody collections for the church roof fund and organise endless bring and buy sales. Now, it seems, they are looking for handouts of public money - who do they think they are, eh? Banks? But really, they just aren't being imaginative enough when it comes to fund-raising. They should be looking as to how they could maximise the income generated by their primes assets - their churches and cathedrals. For a start, a lot of those cathedrals are situated in their own extensive grounds - how about turning them into pay and display car parks? Most of them are in prime city centre locations where parking is at a premium. Or how about letting out commercial franchises in the cathedrals? They could have Tie Rack and Dunkin' Donuts in the choir stalls, perhaps. Or maybe Starbucks in the cloisters. If they didn't want to go that far, they could just settle for commercial endorsements, selling 'naming rights' to places of worship - The E-Sure Canterbury Cathedral, or Katie Price's Church of the Virgin Mary.

Of course, the most obvious thing they could be doing is hiring out their cathedrals as event venues. After all, they aren't being used all the time for religious purposes, are they? I mean, they only have two or three actual services day, at most. The rest of the time they could lease them out for conferences - paranormal societies spring to mind as obvious customers - and art exhibitions - a few nudes tastefully displayed between the flying buttresses, perhaps. Live performances of dramas or modern dance are other obvious uses. Maybe they could even hold a 'rave in the nave' - vicars could hand out ecstasy at the door ("This'll take you to paradise"), and supply bottles of Holy water to stop the ravers from getting dehydrated. Ultimately, if these old Gothic piles are proving too expensive to keep going, they should think about selling them off as building land. Pull down the ramshackle old monstrosities and flog the land off to a supermarket chain to put up a superstore (with lots of parking). They'd have to include a proviso that each store included facilities for worship. Think of the slogans they could use - 'Jesus Saves - But Not As Much As If He'd Shopped at Tesco' or 'Buy Six Loaves and Get Five Fishes Free'. Now, I know the objections people will bring up - that business of Jesus throwing the money lenders out of the temple. But the way I see it, as long as the new supermarkets don't display any of those offers for low-interest loans, it'll be perfectly alright.