Over the week-end I have been away at conference attended by a number of clergy. Most of them were retired and we did our usual ‘it wasn’t like that in our day’ patter. More interesting for me was to hear from lay people present who told stories about their parishes and especially their vicars. None of these lay people was entirely happy with their local churches. It was not just to do with boring sermons or failures in the pastoral care. The issue that stood out from my conversations was that many of the clergy that were talked about were showing strong signs of insecurity. It seemed that several of them felt themselves to be in a permanent state of mild warfare with their congregations.
In one of the comments in response to my recent piece about Church teams was a telling anecdote. This declared that during an Anglican interregnum a ministry team had flourished, discussing the community, national issues and theological ideas. All this came to an end when the new vicar arrived. Then the nearest thing to a group discussion was to talk about rotas. I heard two similar stories from lay individuals at my conference. Priests had been appointed to their parishes straight out of curacies or parishes where only a single style of worship or functioning had been found. This narrow range of experience meant that the new vicars had only one choice before them; they had to try and transpose the patterns of their training parish on to their new situation. The problem for these new young vicars was that there was no plan B when the transplant of ideas to the new place failed to work with the existing congregation. Typically, the old congregation voted with their feet to be replaced by other Christians from the area who wanted the trendy style of worship on offer. The process of replacing one congregation with another group of people was accomplished through what I would regard as coercive techniques. Leadership often became authoritarian in style, at least till the uncomprehending members had finally departed or moved to a quiet corner at the very back of the church.
In an ideal world it should be possible to combine the old and the new in a single parish. It should be possible to merge the old values of the Anglican pattern – pastoral care, dignified reverent worship and good intelligent preaching – with new experimental patterns of church life. The reason that this so often does not happen is quite simply that many of the clergy who are coming into the system today do not know anything about the old styles and rhythms of parochial life in the Church of England. The popularity of the new wineskins of contemporary music and ministry styles has had the result that, for many clergy today, these models of church life are all they have ever known. Trying to impose the patterns of St Helen’s Bishopsgate or Holy Trinity Brompton on the twenty strong congregation of Much-Binding-in the-Marsh is likely to cause unhappiness on all sides. The vicar feels frustrated that the congregation are ‘stick in the muds’ and the congregation seem unable to flourish with these new styles of church life. ‘Slow church’ and ‘frenetic church’ do not easily mix. This clash of styles will result either in the vicar giving up in frustration and moving on, or the original congregation being driven away by an increasingly coercive style of authoritarian leadership.
In the Church of England today are many individuals who have been brought to faith in the context of a large successful preaching/charismatic church in the middle of London or one of the large cities. Many of these churches have developed styles of theology or worship practice which have become increasingly divorced from traditional Anglican practice. It is not for me to critique at this point the theology or worship style of centres like HTB or St Helen’s Bishopsgate but they are far from being typical of the wider scene of Anglicanism in this country. These larger churches produce a disproportionate number of ordinands. On the face of it that is a source of congratulation. But it is also a cause of numerous problems for the future. Some of the lucky ones are appointed to serve at a church which is a total fit with the church which sponsored them. The rest, the majority of these newly minted clergy, have to be deployed in ‘ordinary’ parishes where it is impossible for them to spread their wings without causing conflict and unhappiness. But these enthusiastic clergy know nothing else, so in one way we cannot blame them for the common pattern of grief and sadness that descends on the churches that they arrive to ‘take over’.
Overseeing this increasing but hidden problem in many C of E parishes are the bishops. Many of them recognise that the parochial system is under increasing strain. It is no longer possible, particularly in the North, to find sufficient clergy to man all the posts that are viable. All over the country there are unfilled posts because no one wants to apply for them. Appointing a young inexperienced charismatic clergyman or woman to a parish which has no desire to become a mini HTB will still be a potential disaster for all concerned. Somehow from the bishop’s perspective, it is better to have the post filled than empty. History will perhaps judge differently. Allowing the large number of clergy to be trained from one dominant tradition which has little understanding of the wider Anglican perspective, is a recipe for not only disaster but also much unhappiness. Whenever a parish has accommodated the culture and style of one priest, trained in the shadow of a mighty charismatic or evangelical ministry elsewhere, we know or suspect that the ‘takeover’ has been achieved at some considerable cost in terms of lives and loyalties turned upside down.
In the cases you describe, surely there has been a lack in the training of these clergy? Theological colleges and courses should ensure that all their ordinands take placements in parishes very different from the parish and tradition they are from. When I was on a diocesan selection panel this is what we used to advise. We also used sometimes to suggest a theological college of a different tradition to the one the student hailed from.
When I went to my own selection conference, in 1984, this was what they suggested too. During my training I not only took a year’s placement in a middle of the road group of rural parishes, I also attended churches across the range of churchmanship in Oxford.
Those training clergy should see that ordinands know and understand what the various traditions in the Church are, so that they can fit in and adequately lead the churches they go to.
I suspect part of the problem is the increasingly prescriptive methods of training, including in-service training, which dioceses seem to encourage nowadays. It’s part of the frenzy to ‘lead your church into growth’ – i.e. fill the pews. It’s more than 30 years since I was ordained. In that time I have often found the most effective means of mission was the provision of pastoral care, and to the parish as well as the congregation. It’s God’s love in action. That’s what we’re called to.
Like most retired clergy I know, I’m very thankful I don’t have to work in the Church of England of today.
I think one of the things to be thought about is why are some Churches supplying a large number of ordinands whereas others are not.
Of course the answer to this doesn’t solve the training issue of these ordinands but it does raise a valid question the Church has to answer.
Grooming? I’m very cynical about this, but I don’t really buy that these are the only parishes “noticing” when ppl are called. I think the incumbent chooses certain ppl. So they may very well not notice at all! If I’d had half the care and attention that a colleague of mine had, I’d be Archbishop of Canterbury by now!
No, I think you are being too cynical EA. It would be like saying that the only reason for Churches not producing ordinands was that they weren’t grooming enough or if only the Churches producing ordinands would stop grooming we could get back to our nice failing C of E. “Managing decline gracefully” was a phrase I heard recently.
I really think you are being a bit unfair – or a frustrated Archbishop of Canterbury??
😀 not for all the tea in China. And I’d be terrible! But I honestly have seen good people ignored and some, shall we say, very strange choices pushed hard. Bankrupts, at least one on their fourth live in partner, people who aren’t very bright… And like Stephen, I’ve seen clergy who aren’t very bright, and/or very well educated. Someone chooses them over others much more qualified. I’ve also met terrific clergy, sure, many, probably most. But favouritism happens, I promise you.
Janet. The old pattern of making sure that ordinands are sent off to a different tradition seems to happen less. One reason for this is that courses are getting shorter and shorter. The other is that in some conservative diocese there is little respect for ‘slow church’ as I call it. I have tried hard to emphasise the problem, not by attacking the existence of these conservative traditions but by pointing out that they do not represent the bulk of Anglicans in the pews, certainly few over 35. Some dioceses are producing in-house training which seems to suggest that the conservative style of training to ‘convert the lost’ is the only pattern that should be considered.
Yes. We used to complain that evangelicals were always told to go off and worship or work in a parish of a different churchmanship for a while, while broad and high church people weren’t. Now it seems it’s the evangelicals who aren’t told they should experience something else. But really every ordinand ought to try parishes of both different churchmanship and different social/geographical background to their own. It really helps when you’re in ministry, and it’s a useful thing to do even. if you aren’t going into ordained ministry. It broadens the mind and the spirit.
If training isn’t doing that nowadays, it’s failing in that respect, and that isn’t helping the Church.
its a pity if prospective ordinands aren’t exposed to different arguments and backgrounds to their own – that applies to all backgrounds. I know theological training is done differently down here to the Church of Scotland where the traditional four Universities of Aberdeen, St Andrews, Edinburgh and Glasgow (now supplemented by the University of the Highlands and Islands) had Divinity faculties where students were taught. The theological flavour of these often varied through the years but the systematic department in my Edinburgh faculty led by Prof T.F. Torrance, a Presbyterian, also contained an Anglican, an Eastern Orthodox and a Roman Catholic.
Church placements were often varied. I must add however not that it has made much difference to the decline of that Church much like the C of E.
At the risk of being controversial I wonder sometimes about the ordination of women debate. (I am actually completely in favour of women priests and bishops and can’t believe the debate has carried on for so long). But while there is major disagreement between both sides, there seems to be an implicit assumption that ordination and the priesthood are incredibly special. (Ordination is so special that it ought to be open to women as well as men/ordination is so special that it should just be kept for men as tradition etc demands.) The debate has dominated church politics for over 40 years, and it could be hard for clergy to get away from the idea that they are incredibly special and that the laity aren’t. From my perspective this distorts the pattern which is that we are all incredibly special to God, but called to respond in different ways. We cannot limit God by deciding for him who he is going to talk to.
Sarah – You are right in highlighting this. Priesthood is something that belongs to the Old Testament, we don’t find it mentioned in the New Testament Church. Some Jewish Priests became believers in the Christian sense but they were not seen as carrying over their priestliness into the Church rather Christ was the final and great High Priest whose offering once and for all brought salvation to his people. There could be no priest after him. It is unfortunate that the word re-appeared in the post apostolic age thereby muddying leadership and bringing a kind of hierarchical agenda into the Church – hierarchy of course comes from the Greek word ‘hiereus’ for priest.
The Reformers saw this and also its entanglement with secular power from Constantine onwards. Andrew Melville had his famous bust-up with King James the Vl & l, apparently grasping the King’s sleeve, and calling him “God’s sillie vassal”. He told him “There is Christ Jesus the King, and his Kingdom the Church, whose subject King James the sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is neither a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member”. In England of course the Sovereign still is the Head of the Church of England though most priests today realise that history has moved on from that form of words but perhaps priests and bishops haven’t yet reformed their ideas of their position, role and authority in the Church today.
Good points both. Very interesting.
Stephen,
Very quickly: what is the conference you were at? Very interesting that you had clergy and lay people, too often they are kept in segregated camps. Best wishes, Anne
Anne: I did not mention the nature of the conference in Bournemouth as it might been a distraction to the points I wanted to make. It was in fact a meeting of the Churches’ Fellowship for Psychical and and Spiritual Studies. We are mostly Anglican but with a few Quakers (ex-Anglicans!). It is the one place that I can talk about slightly strange things like healing, shamanism and psychic experiences. I used to be an advisor on the paranormal for the Gloucester diocese. I still network a little with others in the north where I live, though I am not active in this area now. The people who attend are mostly older but they too attend to be able to discuss the ‘weird’ without being looked at strangely.
I can see how this happens although I don’t think it is a very common problem. Working in a Diocesan office I have contact with parishes of all traditions. The breadth of the C of E is its strength, which I also experienced training as a Reader and I would hope that ordinands also realise that.
It depends on the Diocese, I think. I know of at least two where clergy had to be evangelical, Readers too, or they weren’t acceptable. Not appointed, not put forward, sidelined if already in post. I like the way you’re not catechised at the door, but it doesn’t mean everyone is accepting of difference.
Yes, dioceses vary enormously. There are bishops who openly favour and prefer (in both senses) evangelicals, and bishops who openly favour and prefer Anglo-Catholics.
I know a priest who was forced into a parish he didn’t feel called to, on threat of being blacklisted (this was some years ago, it would probably be more subtle now). And I know bishops who force clergy of their own persuasion on parishes who’ve expressed a preference for something very different. They’re told ‘if you don’t take this one, you won’t get another’.
Parishes of vastly different churchmanship and socio-economic situation are also combined into ‘teams’. They’re hardly likely to understand one another, and few clergy have the range to minister effectively to both in one patch.
Then there are the parishes opposed to women’s ministry which are in a team with those very much in favour. I was in one ‘team’ where one of the churches refused to allow the female priests in the team to robe or be on the platform when joint services were held there.
On this subject one of the things we have to learn in the Church is that there is a difference between fellow believers and kindred spirits. I am happy to discuss and debate across wide theological backgrounds (indeed it is healthy to do this) but if I was in some work situation I would prefer having kindred spirits alongside me because it would make for better work harmony. Life is too short to spend time wrangling and upsetting each other.
On Church polity this is where rule by Bishops is a problem because if they do not have a conciliar approach they still have power unchecked by the people they are meant to be shepherding. Sheep do have a right to bleat but a crook can become a stick to beat them with.
You make a good point. There is a difference between debating with someone and having to work with them. But I think I would express it differently. If both, or all, parties are trying to do the same things, eg in a church context, help people to grow, show God, show God’s love, and including wanting to get along, then you can work together, even evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics! But if some or one has agendas like, “everyone has to like the hymns I like”, and doesn’t want to try to get along, because obviously, they’re right and you’re wrong, then you have problems.
But from a clergy point of view, it’s a rather unusual priest who is equally happy leading happy classy worship and preaching lengthy expository sermons, and genuflecting to the altar and conducting the exposition of the blessed sacrament. OK, I exaggerate a little, but when churches of vastly different churchmanship are put together the vicar is going to have more sympathy with one than the other – and that can cause tensions. It’s equally true when you have one church which is very traditional and likes to keep things as they are, and another which wants to do innovative outreach.
My other point is about churches in parishes which are very different socially. I’ve known more than one very challenging parish with high crime levels put in a united benefice with an ancient and posh village church. Culturally they’re very different. It can work, but it’s not easy. And again, clergy who are at home in one might not be in the other.
Yes EA, I agree with you there. Maybe you heard about the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland telling the Archbishop of Canterbury “Well we both worship God, you in your way and I in His”!!! Or the true story of Oliver Cromwell who told the Scots once “I beg you in the bowels of Christ to think you may be wrong”. Let’s try to love God, listen to His Word, and be humble in all our ways. Blessings.
A major factor is finance. If parishes are having to pay for the greater part of the costs of a stipendiary minister they will be less tolerant of attempts by any such minister to either avoid pastoral work or else to foist upon the congregation patterns of worship that might grate. The problem with this resistance is that traditional modes of worship have relatively little appeal to many below the age of about 75 (I dislike ‘contemporary’ modes of worship, but will gladly accommodate myself to them if the church has a ‘healthy’ demographic spread). Having been exposed to Bishopsgate and HTB and their satellites/plants, I can well understand why the great majority of churchgoers, and those within the orbit of the Church, might find the products of those particular stables ‘problematic’, but I can also understand why they have their enthusiastic adherents.
I have attended services at nearly 4,500 churches over the last 10 or so years as part of a pilgrimage I have been undertaking across much of the British isles. The situation is, almost everywhere, terminally and irreversibly catastrophic. Only about 1% of churches are demographically ‘viable’ (statistics published last week indicate that the Church now commands the nominal allegiance of only 2% of the cohort aged 18-24 – the crucial period in life when patterns of thought are set). The main objective should now be to secure the preservation of the stock of churches for future public benefit, lest they be privatised as part of a fire-sale. My view is that the Church should be disendowed, with DCMS taking about £5bn of the current £8.3bn of the Commissioners’ assets to form a permanent repairing fund managed by a religious buildings agency (effectively a merger of the CCT/FFC/ChurchCare), which would take title of the entire stock of pre-1829 foundations and certain Grade I and II* buildings erected after that date, with the Church gaining a perpetual free right of use in return. Clergy and PCCs would therefore be relieved of the burden of maintenance, and clergy would cease to have to waste time acting as the adjuncts to the conservation sector (for which they are not trained).
The vertiginous rate of decline might be slowed IF clergy do some basic things: (i) do a LOT MORE bread and butter pastoral work, especially visiting (you indicated on one of your recent threads that there are clergy who simply don’t ‘do pastoral’ any more, and my experience is that most have devoted only a limited amount of effort to this for a long time); and (ii) hold all age services at times where ‘church’ has relatively little competition from other activities – this means not on Sunday mornings (which are not convenient for practically everyone born after 1950) and it does mean between 4 PM (when the supermarkets close) and 6 PM when families are readying for the week ahead. I have worshipped at practically every parish between the north Norfolk coast and the Sussex coast, and can count the number of churches holding all age services in that slot on little more than one hand. The failure to adjust to modern weekend timetables over the last generation has made me question the intelligence of the clergy: it is a huge own goal.
As to funding, can anyone explain why the 2017-18 report of the Central Stipends Authority states that the Commissioners are providing £188m and the dioceses only £23m, whilst the 2016-17 report states that the Commissioners provided £43m and the dioceses £165m? Is this a mistake or has there been some sudden and unreported transformation in the funding of clergy pay and rations? Many thanks.
Hi there. I can’t answer your last question properly, but I do know that the commissioners used to pay clergy pensions, and now are either close to doing so no longer, or have now stopped. So the commissioners’ money now goes elsewhere. And Dioceses pay pensions.
Many thanks for this. I was aware of the Pensions Measure 1997, meaning that the dioceses became liable for accruals from 1 January 1998. This is part of the problem: the dioceses had the liability imposed upon them by Synod at or near the apex of the dotcom bubble and during the pomp of ‘new era’ economics. Synod meekly agreed to proposals that the Commissioners slough off their responsibility because Colman and his colleagues could argue that there should be no repeat of the Lovelock years, when the Commissioners over-extended themselves because Harris had been directed to make promises that proved to be unaffordable and the Commissioners could only meet them by abandoning their old prudential investment strategy.
The dioceses assumed the liability with only modest reserves. Eighteen months after the Measure was passed there was a slump in equities and we have since had the longest period of actual or near net negative interest rates in the three thousand or so years of interest rate records – which look set to continue. This has robbed the dioceses of compounding on any liquid assets they might have had. The burden of accruals increases with every passing year. Without the responsibility for future accruals, the Commissioners’ fortunes have waxed as those of the dioceses have waned. Pensions are a relatively small, but growing, part of the burden: the Commissioners have also reduced their contributions to pay and rations, with the dioceses bearing much the greater part of the burden (the Commissioners’ subventions often amount to little more than 10% of diocesan incomes).
These factors mean that it is increasingly imperative that the dioceses raise cash via the parish share and sell whatever they can under the Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976 (which allows them to expropriate parochial assets) – meaning that remaining glebe must be sold for development where possible or the freehold of parsonage houses must also be sold wherever it is plausible to do so. This parish share system is wholly unsustainable when the number of regular attendees is in freefall, and it is why bishops are so anxious to increase attendance by whatever means (the bums-on-seats at all costs strategy). My understanding is that the parish share accounts for between 70% and 80% of diocesan income. The system is acutely regresssive: it transfers capital from the bottom (the parishes, where it is needed the most) to the top (the Commissioners).
Essentially the system is slowly devouring itself. It helps explain the increasing antagonism between clergy and laity in many places (which Mr Parsons describes so well) and it indicates that the interests of the clergy and the laity are at an increasing risk of becoming mutually exclusive to a material extent for the first time since tithe commutation. Would most people rather have their church or their clergy? I think most of us know the answer to that, yet the Church is intent on increasing the number of ordinands to offset the increasing number of retirees in the hopelessly misguided belief that having more stipendiaries will stop the decline. It won’t. All it will do is hasten the impending financial cataclysm.
This is why it is essential to bring the stock of church buildings into the control of the state, since (for all the goodwill often found at a local level) the Church cannot be trusted with this patrimony as its base disappears. Only central government will have the means and economies of scale to manage the stock – which is the patrimony of the people – hard-pressed local government cannot, and tired and ageing PCCs cannot. Yet in the current financial and political climate the only way of making the state tolerate the burden is if there is meaningful disendowment of the Commissioners. About £1.7bn of the Commissioners’ £8.3bn is ring-fenced for pre-1998 pension accruals (though there is a bit of a deficit), meaning that the Commissioners ought to be able to tolerate a significant measure of disendowment. By vesting £5bn or so in DCMS (again ring-fenced as a repair fund) the act of disendowment would effectively be returning to the localities the capital the Commissioners have effectively drawn from the parishes by free-riding on the dioceses over the last generation. I would also make any religious buildings agency non-denominational and disestablish the Church as cover for this act of disendowment (since the local Church would benefit from not having the ongoing drain of wealth to support the maintenance of the buildings).
Apologies for the length.
Respect! You’re very well up on this. The Church Commissioners surely hold the money for something. What is the something? What are they supposed to be spending on?
Many thanks! The Commissioners have increased the rate of subventions over the last two or so years since Whittam Smith said that there was no point in simply accruing capital for the Church if there ended up being no Church to support (partly because of the lack of investment from the top). So they have been funding a number of local missional projects. However, this is only by way of dribs and drabs and is still quite paltry relative to the enormity of the challenge. As such this ‘investment’ will probably fail in many instances, and what is the point of it if it simply masks the systemic problem I have described?
My view is that the Commissioners and their advisers genuinely believe that they have ‘beaten the market’ because they are uniquely talented investors; as such, they should hold onto what they have gained, and reinvest the fund for the long term. However, in the long term we are all dead, and the Church will be dead in >90% places in the short term (i.e., 5-10 years) and in about 98% of places in the medium term (i.e., c. 20 years), based on the congregations I have seen. So funding local projects is already far too late in the day. Moreover, are they really that able? After all, what fund could possibly have failed in a long property bubble and with ten years of QE, especially when its exposure to pension liabilities has been reducing year-on-year since 1998?
The Commissioners are unlikely to increase their current rate of subventions, even under pressure from the evangelical lobby within Synod and the Archbishops’ Council. When we have figures like the Bishop of Manchester (the leading money-man on the bench) telling us that the Commissioners are spending all that they can responsibly spend, we can be assured that they will resist moves to increase subventions [Manchester, incidentally, has been arguably the most ruthless diocese in sloughing off its stock of church buildings]. They resist because of the ‘what-we-have-we-hold’ mentality; it is the same mentality that made Archbishop Davidson lobby against bringing church buildings under the supervision of the Office of Works in 1912-13 (which would have saved the Church an awful lot of angst); the bishops then feared a French or Welsh-style disendowment. As Karl Marx once remarked, an English bishop is more likely to throw over the XXXIX Articles than he is to yield a penny of the Church’s capital.
In fairness it is also possible that they know that some very rainy days await the Church and that it would be best to husband capital now, and to let the dioceses be run down financially as a line of first defence, before stepping in and spending what they have accrued.
The Taylor Report on the future of parish churches was released/buried just before last Christmas; it was really commissioned by the Osborne Treasury to find ways of reducing state support to parish churches (note also that HLF funding has been reduced from about £21m last year to £13m this year). It advocated additional bureaucracy and parallel uses for churches, prescriptions that are wholly useless for the thousands of churches that are remote from any population centres. However, it did indicate that ‘some’ parish churches will have to close. By ‘some’ I think they must have meant >90%.
I have asked the Commissioners what their plans are, and – as yet – have been met with the customary wall of silence. That either indicates they think that their current ad hoccery constitutes a meaningful plan and that it will work (which means that they really are deluded and irresponsible), or that they have a master plan that they think is too controversial to reveal to the public, or that they are currently working on something, or (more likely) that they simply have no idea what to do.
Just on the news. Frank Field has suggested a CofE led buy-out of Wonga. And they’re thinking about it!
Ah, getting the Church involved in the short-term unsecured ultra high interest credit market.
Obviously distressed debtors (i.e., the entirety of the Wonga customer base) will want to use this as an excuse to repudiate their liabilities and then challenge the Church to send in the bailiffs.
What could possibly go wrong?
And all because Welby didn’t seem to check that the Commissioners had a substantial stake in Amazon before condemning ‘gig’ employers at the TUC. Like he didn’t check the indirect stake the Commissioners had in Wonga when he fulminated against the payday loan market five years ago.
Unless Field meant this as a deeply ironic joke, there is a [hopefully small] risk that the Church might end up becoming involved in this market out of Welby’s social embarrassment, which puts me a little in mind of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeAEiSSDPNA
Perhaps we might try and bring the discussion away from the financial issues to the unhappiness caused by changing styles of worship and ministry. That is perhaps the most pressing side of the complaining.
Many apologies for having gone over the top on the issue of finance. I brought it up only because I think that it is of integral importance to the issues you have raised in your excellent piece. As I see it changes in the funding of clergy have, perhaps unwittingly, pushed the Church in the direction of congregationalism.
Those who now pay the piper (the laity) feel entitled to call the tune; when a different tune to the one called is played, the result is friction. You have posted many pieces about the problems caused by clericalism and deference; yet attempts by the clergy to dictate forms of liturgy are acutely problematic when the clergy are not living off their glebes/tithes or off handouts from the Commissioners (which create the economic space to demand deference), but from contributions from the laity/audience who expect the type of worship for which they believe they are paying. This problem is compounded when the clergy pushing these changes lack much of a rapport with their laity; far too many clergy lack the social skills/affability to make them effective: a couple of weeks ago I was speaking to someone on a bishop’s council in a south-western diocese who told me that the problem she had with the clergy was that so many of them are socially inept, are introverts, and have failed to build much/any social capital in the communities they purport to serve.
Many of us will recall the problems the clergy faced in introducing Series 2, Series 3 and the ASB in a largely vain attempt to make the Church more ‘relevant’. Some churches became BCP redoubts, and were seen by many in authority as rebels (Mark Santer, as bishop of Birmingham, boasted that “there are no Prayer Book recidivists in my diocese”). However, most congregations acquiesced – often grudgingly – because the then pattern of clergy finance allowed the clergy to dictate the terms of worship (and the laity frequently had to submit to a monoculture of often tedious eucharistic worship). This state of affairs no longer holds: clergy schooled in HTB, Bishopsgate the charismatic movement or who are otherwise attuned to contemporary popular culture believe that they have to make worship more relevant in order to give the Church some sort of future, but they cannot dictate terms nearly so easily to laity whose habits of mind and worship were formed in the 1940s and 1950s and who are, most importantly, paying said clergy.
I saw this myself before I became peripatetic: “How dare *he* [the resident priest] tell us that worship has to be exactly as he wishes it to be, and refuses to take account of any suggestions we make, it when it is *we* who are paying his bills.”
Practically the only churches – and I mean the only churches – I have encountered that have a critical mass of younger people (i.e., a healthy demographic spread) are the HTB and Bishopsgate plants and evangelical churches in affluent dormitory suburbs or university towns. Bishops presumably fear that their dioceses will implode economically if this model is not repeated elsewhere, and they may very well be right. There are some parishes that have squared the circle by having services that cater to older people, and services that cater to younger people in the same place on the same day, but this cannot be sustained in many places on account of a lack of resources. However, in my experience, these parishes only account for a relatively small proportion of the total.
The dilemma is therefore intractable: those layfolk cleaving to older patterns of worship will only stop being a problem to clergy promoting liturgical innovations when enough of those layfolk are dead. However, when they are dead (over the next decade) there will be almost no one left in about 99% of churches.
Froghole et al, a characteristically perceptive and – it must be said – amusing exchange. My parishes together pay for about a third of me (stipend and all the other bits and pieces), and they contribute about a half of the diocesan share asked of them. If the diocese were to close two of my three churches, the biggest and most beautiful in town, it would be seen as abandoning the town centre and a UPA. Own goal. The situation we’re in is a result of stupid decisions made 20 years ago by the diocese – and they expect shrivelling and ageing congregations in an increasingly Muslim area to bear the brunt. Talk about idiocy. I’ve told the diocese, and my congregations, that I was not ordained to be a fundraiser or a money manager, so I don’t do either of those things. I’m preparing the people for the next interregnum – and they are responding. Meanwhile, the share “arrears” (how can there be arrears on a voluntary contribution?) mount up, and there is no chance whatsoever that they will ever be paid. There are too many CoE churches in this town: 8 in Lichfield diocese and 3 in Derby (the river is the diocesan boundary) – and I guess that in 10 years’ time only 5 at most will be open for weekly Sunday services. Close churches. I suppose, given the remarks above about pensions, I’d better retire PDQ while there is some chance of one.
You might not have been ordained to be a fundraiser but I sincerely hope you preach about money and giving.
Becoming congregational, Froghole, is in full swing. Seems to me that mission officers and the like come from the evo stable and cater only for that constituency. They and their initiatives are irrelevant to the likes of me (a mixture of central, BCP, CW, catholic) in churches that lack a critical mass of people with time and energy to spare. When such advisers visit, they talk rather than listen. Congregationalism seems desirable. I’m at the age when I could go, but I fear for the sanity of those with decades of ministry in front of them. To illustrate one of Stephen Parsons’ points, I listened to a curate at an urban evangelical church at the recent diocesan conference telling me that all he wanted to do was to tell people about Jesus. I see that he has now been appointed incumbent of a market town. I hope he has (unlike me) administrators and willing hands to free him to do what he said he wanted to. Wasn’t it Mike Hampson (Last Rites of the C of E) who wrote that most of his contemporaries stuck parochial ministry for less than 10 years. I know some who gave up after half that.
Very many thanks, Dr Monkhouse, and I hope you are well! I get the impression that evangelical diocesan ‘advisers’ tend to discount the missional efforts made by those who are not of their tradition. In other words, there has been one formula which appears to have generated success, and that is the only formula that must be followed. Well, one of the most successful parishes I have encountered was in the Soke, and the incumbent (who, having retired to Shaftesbury, has come back into regular work as an area dean in the ‘challenging’ Norfolk Breckland) achieved this success by being hail-fellow-well-met, by lots of visiting, by being actively involved in schools and all community events, by being affable and approachable, and by means of a basic, honest, decent ministry. He is AC/centre There is no single formula that is likely to guarantee success.
However, it cannot be denied that social and economic conditions in much of the country absolutely preclude that sort of ministry.
The ‘most pressing’ issue is not really about styles of worship (though that is pastorally important, in a way), but the preservation of critical mass, because we are practically at the end of the line, almost everywhere. What I am asking is that the Church maintains its presence in every community so that it can remain a Church OF rather than IN England. I have come to the bitter conclusion that it can only do so if it divests most of its buildings to the state with a suitable douceur. If a large proportion of the buildings remain public trusts for the benefit of the public, the Church will at least have the ability to proclaim the Word in most places and in locations in which the community has a collective stake, even as its presence otherwise fades to the point of invisibility.
As to your comments about pensions, it does make me wonder whether the Commissioners are hoarding capital because – and if – the clergy pension scheme is, at least as far as the dioceses go, a PAYG scheme. Once the dioceses are cleaned out, or become insolvent, or are wound up, the Commissioners may well have to step in and cover much of the post-1998 accruals. Whilst I usually rejoice when people feel a call to orders, it would seem more prudent to go into non-stipendiary ministry if the funding basis for ministry is at the point of collapse. If people really want to risk stipendiary ministry they would do well to have other means (which is, itself, another serious problem).
Very best wishes, James
PS – I must apologise to Mr Parsons again for having strayed from the main issue of this thread.
I knew a Reader -in-training who used to say things like that. He refused to do any essays saying that he didn’t need any of that theology nonsense!!
I am worried that terms like, “Stick in the mud” are being normalised in the mind of modern priests?
It seems to be going the same way as, “Homophobic?”
Opposite opinions held in good conscience have no place in this smiled contempt?
I had my seventh birthday the other day; thank God I will not be around to see the dead man’s dump of professed, ‘Christianity,’ that is coming nighty miles an hour down a dead end street.
As an 82 year old ‘lay person’ I am delighted to read this excellent debate between clergy. Bring it on! Lay representations to the Church Commissioners, bishops, and others holding power, in my experience are totally ignored. We are treated as children who must be ‘good and quiet’, yet who pays the local piper?
‘The failure to adjust to modern weekend timetables over the last generation has made me question the intelligence of the clergy: it is a huge own goal.’
It isn’t just the intelligence of the clergy you need to question here. Clergy also have to persuade busy sidespersons, musicians, wardens, etc to turn out for yet another service, and at a time when they they are usually thinking about their own dinner. I know, because I have tried to introduce children’s/young people’s/family services in the 4-6 slot in 2 parishes. Persuading the PCC was difficult in the extreme. One solution is to make this a quarterly or occasional event rather than weekly or monthly, but too many PCC members are fixated on the wants and needs of themselves and their friends. They don’t see the need to do things differently. And to be fair, most of them are hard-pressed themselves and have little time to think outside the box. They’re too busy fundraising to meet the parish share and pay for repairs.
As for 18-24 year olds not going to church, that’s worrying but not desperate. That’s an age when youngsters are preoccupied with getting an education, starting a career and (if they can) setting up a home. All this means tearing up roots and making a series of new starts. When I was a uni chaplain I found that the youngsters who’d grown up in church were the ones who never came near the chaplaincy – and if their vicar had written me a letter of introduction I was absolutely never going to meet them. The ones who were interested were the ones to whom Christianity was a novelty.
I don’t despair of 18-24 year olds who never darken the door of a church. They may turn to God later in their lives. And by then the Church may take a very different form than it does now.
The parish system has been in desperate straits for decades – as John Tiller pointed out in 1984 (A Strategy for the Church’s Ministry). Like most prophets, he was unheeded.
Anything more than a small-scale rate of reversion to Christianity after age 24 would be virtually unprecedented.
Janet, spot on. It takes me and my small flocks all our time and energy to do what we do: regular services, occasional offices, community building events, winter homeless shelter, meetings, etc. There is no more slack. If people want extra services – fine by me, but they must run them themselves. 18-24 year olds have many better things to do than go to church, and some of them should involve biology, thanks be to God. I look back on my own adolescent obsession with church and I could kick myself!
Rolling on the floor emoji! I know the subject is unhappiness in parishes, but just to say, cathedrals are often full. And where people are unhappy, they at least sometimes go elsewhere, rather than nowhere. Some cathedrals keep the superannuated choristers, many never see them again after they are valedicted. But we’re all different. Both my sons still attend.
Parish life nowadays is like being on a hamster wheel. It’s so frantic that important things are left undone all the time. So to do anything extra means to stop doing a current activity, or two – and people are often reluctant to do that.
Those not involved find it difficult to understand just how intense the pressure is – and diocesan initiatives just keep adding to it. A Unite rep working with clergy told me that most bishops have no idea what life is currently like in parishes; by the time they’ve been out of incumbency for 2 years they’ve forgotten what it was like. And some bishops have never worked in a parish without an administrator or secretary or a curate. Many have not been an incumbent for years. A few have never been an incumbent at all. So, instead of lifting the pressure from parish clergy. and laity, they just keep adding to it.
This extreme pressure on resources of time, energy, and finance increases the tension between clergy and laity in parishes. When some vital tasks have to be left undone, it’s rare to find agreement on which have priority.
Dumping more on people is bad personnel management as much as anything. Training should be in this direction, imho.
As a DDO can I clarify that it is still standard policy to ensure that ordinands experience church traditions other than their own as part of the discernment process? The selection conferences too expect this. And as someone who has taught at theological college and courses it is simply not true to claim this is not part of the formation process there. I know a number of ordinands now in ministry who have been highly enriched by this beyond the tradition that shaped them. Furthermore ‘going straight to incumbency from curacy’ was happening even 35 years ago when I was ordained. That is what curacies are for isn’t it?
I agree there are real sensitivities in respecting and working with different traditions while seeking change and fresh vision. But in some congregations there is very little time to turn things around. I also know clergy who have had their vision drained out of them by deeply entrenched ageing congregations who simply will not allow change. So I find this article rather one sided – and at times factually misleading .
It probably depends to a large degree on the individual. I have seen many examples of people coming away from a course with exactly what they went in with. I also have an ordained friend who went into a high, Anglo-Catholic, slightly stodgy but lovely parish which was another planet as far as his low church, happy clappy, evangelical home church. The incumbent, another friend, was really worried. He loved it, and they loved him, which is what it’s all about. I also know a curate, rescued from a dreadful situation and placed elsewhere as a place of safety, who hated his new placement, and made no secret of it. Let’s say, tactfully, the outcome was not as happy.
Hi David
That’s good to hear. I’m glad ordination candidates are still expected to experience other traditions. Are t hey also expected to experience different socio-geographic situations from what they are used to?
When I was ordained in 1987, the norm was to serve two curacies and to aim for some variety in them. Later some dioceses were expecting clergy to serve only one curacy before going on to incumbency – and, in Chester at least, that one curacy was often only 2 years. That meant that a good chunk of the second year was spent looking at prospective parishes. I’m sure this differs between dioceses, but it doesn’t seem to me a good model.
What strikes me ever more forcefully after 12 years in orders is just how out of touch church apparatchiks are with daily life as a priest serving multiple parishes and lacking any kind of administrative support. Janet Fife has articulated this well. I suspect that bishops have little or no idea of the “demands” that their staff dump upon parish clergy – at least I hope so, for if it is deliberate they are guilty of abuse. Every email from diocesan officials, lay or ordained, and every thick envelope dropping through the post box from HQ, elicits in me a stress response. Lichfield is not so bad, but Derby a decade ago was dreadful. Lay advisers have no idea what parish clergy life is like, and in my experience they don’t care. When reality is pointed out to them, some regard it as threatening – and complain. I’m long enough in the tooth to cope with this – just – but I know how it affects many of my colleagues.
As for cathedrals, Athena, they ought to be doing very well indeed given the funds at their disposal. They, after all, are doing what the CoE does best – niche entertainment for the middle class that can’t afford to go to the opera. And the heritage industry of course.
Ouch! I am currently enjoying the first church I have ever been in where the teaching and preaching is superb. In the various parish churches I have been in, it was largely rubbish, or only OK. The music is sublime, but I am musical, and it costs a fortune. If you’re not, it wouldn’t do anything for you. I know one cathedral where the congregation halves at best when the choir is on holiday, but I know another where it doesn’t. Not least because of a huge ministry to visitors. And having been a cathedral verger, I have seen people come in simply because it’s open, and find God there. I was moving chairs one day when a tired and shabby woman approached and said, “Excuse me. Can you teach me how to pray?” We lit a candle together , and I showed her the prayer card. Whereupon she admitted she couldn’t read. I read her the prayer, and suggested the Lord’s Prayer, which it turned out she did know. She told me a little about her problem, and I offered to write her prayer request on a card. I explained the priest would pray for her at morning prayer. She ended up in tears. No parish church can provide that.
I don’t think cathedrals are perfect, believe me. They are terrible at using lay ministry, for a start. But they have their place. It’s a matter of working together. And with God.
Oh, and most cathedrals are horrendously short of money. It costs £2000 a month for the gas bill. If you’re open all the time you need people on duty. The roof that needs repairing is bigger. You should ask to see Lichfield’s accounts if you think they’re rolling in it. I bet they’re not.
What a lovely and blessed story. Church ministry at its best. Thanks Athena.
I should have said, Athena, resources. Paid staff, access to all sorts of things that parish churches don’t have. All the stuff you list we do too, just less of it. Anyway, no point going over well trodden ground. Cathedral music brought me in, as it were. Both sons were cathedral choristers. Now I can hardly bear to enter them: intrusive welcomes, demands for money, trying too hard to be relevant, tourist focused, and at Evensong adult singers poncing around with degree hoods (rightly banned when I was in a cathedral choir) shouting look at me. And hardly ever a local accent to be heard. Ignore me, I’m just a grumpy old git. But I enjoy provoking people.
I used to wear my hood when verging Evensong! I got fed up of clergy addressing me in the voice usually reserved for children and animals! Cathedrals need the clergy to keep the offices through the week. They don’t need them to sit in their stalls on a Sunday. I also think all the great things they do for boys should be extended to girls! Change is necessary. The cathedral should not be the enemy of your ministry. I really do know it’s not perfect! God bless, bro!