The arrival of 2022 makes us very conscious of the future and what it will bring. There is one part of the Church of England facing definite changes with the imminent retirement of its Bishop: the Diocese of Winchester. I was considering what these changes might involve when I spotted an item on the American website, Anglican Ink. It was about a senior appointment being made in the Diocese. Dr Amy Roche, who already works in ministerial training in the Diocese, has been appointed Dean of Licensed Ministry training across the Diocese of Winchester. The announcement of this appointment tells us that Dr Roche will be responsible for ‘the delivery of mission focused training … through the School of Mission’. Further, ‘she will develop the ministry training programme that helps grow the number of lay and ordained ministers in the Diocese.’
The announcement was delivered to the public and the American website through the agency of Luther Pendragon (LP), the reputation management company. Given the fact that this firm has achieved a certain notoriety in the Church of England for assisting the malcontent dons in their vicious persecution of the Dean of Christ Church Oxford, I sensed that something was not straightforward. I some time ago discovered that this communications firm, which is expert in crisis management, seems to be the go-to firm for the Church of England at a national level and the Diocese of London. A close relationship with the Diocese of Winchester was also apparently developed when the Diocese was having to deal with a deteriorating relationship with the Channel Islands parishes, which were then part of the Diocese. Without attempting to describe the details of that affair, professional communications advice would have been required to deal with the unwelcome press publicity at the time. Since that point, the services of LP seem to have been found useful and the firm is now a permanent feature of the diocesan structure. The name of Ben Frankel, a senior LP partner, appears as the diocesan Director of Communications and all press enquiries are directed through him. The need to employ such a pricey London professional for the mundane tasks of writing uncontroversial press releases is suggestive of one of two things. The first is that the Winchester diocese has found the services of LP so excellent that the senior staff prefer, unlike most other dioceses, to outsource this aspect of diocesan administration. The second possibility is less flattering. This is to suggest that senior staff in the Winchester diocese have found all their dealings with the press in the past so fraught and stressful that they prefer to have permanent access to one of the most prestigious damage limitation firms in the country. The diocese certainly appears to be tied to LP through some sort of contract agreement. Why else would LP’s name appear in something as innocuous at +Debbie’s recent Christmas message? In all fairness, the crises in the diocese that have come into the public domain, particularly over the past six months, perhaps justify this expensive recourse to the skills of LP.
We return to the appointment of Dr Amy Roche as Dean of Licensed Ministry Training (LMT). I have had a look at some of the records of the Winchester School of Mission since it was founded at the instigation of +Dakin early in his episcopal ministry. LMT is one part of the work of the school and it is very close to the heart of the Bishop’s vision for the diocese. The Church of England Ministry Council produced an External Review Report in May 2019, and it is clear that this local home-grown scheme for training ministers, lay and ordained, is working well. The inspectors had a few minor recommendations to make, but they seemed to approve of the standards of training being offered. From the Council report, I was unable to discern how many are enrolled for ordination courses and how many are seeking to enter a licensed lay ministry. The figure of seventy was mentioned in the course of the report and that presumably covers the total number of the students then under training.
There are two points of caution to be noted at this point. The first is that the Council inspectors observed in 2019 that the emphasis on mission was an episcopally-led impulse. In other words, the ‘culture’ of the whole School of Mission was strongly tuned into the Bishop’s own priority for mission/evangelism. This in turn would be linked back to his own early Christian ministry of teaching and evangelism which took place in the missionary setting of Kenya. The imminent retirement of the Bishop in February next will leave a gap, and the impetus set by him for prioritising mission and evangelism will no doubt be affected. The second point to be drawn is the mention of numbers in the recent LP press release. It mentions that there are currently 42 students in training. This is 28 fewer than in 2019 when the Ministry Council report was written.
The numbers of individuals enrolled on a training scheme would not normally matter. Cohorts of students coming forward for training will vary in size and one year’s shrinkage is made up in another year when there is an expansion. But the situation at the moment is critical. With the current bishop about to retire and the prospect of another bishop being swiftly appointed somewhat remote, the state of health of all +Dakin’s initiatives is a matter of concern. Although the Winchester School of Mission’s schemes have achieved success in several areas, this initiative for mission is bound to lose momentum now that the Bishop can no longer offer his leadership and vision to energise the programmes and initiatives. The main issue is money. There are at least ten individuals named on the diocesan website as having responsibilities within the School of Mission. This represents a huge human/financial investment which a future bishop may wish to modify. In short, the question is this: Can the Winchester diocese really afford all the institutions and initiatives of the soon to be former bishop? As a further exercise I counted the people directly employed by the Diocese. These amount to 72. Not all will be full-time, but this number still represents a massive deployment of finite resources. Will all these posts survive the arrival of a new broom?
Dr Roche seems a thoroughly decent and honourable person but even she must feel the icy winds that swirl round the future activities of the Winchester diocese. Looking at the appointment from afar, the question arises, who was responsible for promoting her within the School of Mission structure? She was already working as an assistant in the department, and many of the tasks she will be taking on could have been undertaken by her within her existing job description. Meanwhile the final departure of +Dakin hangs over the whole diocese like a very dark cloud. Questions like the availability of a decent episcopal candidate for the post in the future remain. In the context of the acute financial woes apparently being experienced by the Diocese, does it make any sense at all to announce a senior appointment of this kind? Surely everyone can see that a pruning knife is hanging over so many of what could be regarded as bloated structures within the diocese.
Two final thoughts. Is the timing of the appointment announcement so near Christmas aimed at attracting the least possible notice? There must be many among the parochial clergy in the diocese who know someone who has lost paid employment and are acutely aware of what appear to be over-staffed structures at the centre. Also, has anyone else noticed the irony of paying top rates to a London based communications director to announce the appointment of someone to head up a part of the School for Ministry? It is likely that the Diocese of Winchester will have to retrench in a variety of ways in order to break even in the future. One more senior appointment made now will make that process just a little more difficult for a future bishop. I am reminded of a story when a Labour minister left a note for his Tory successor after a general election. The note said something to the effect, there is no money left, we have spent it all! Is such a message being sent by one bishop of Winchester to another? In spite of the cessation of +Dakin from all duties in the diocese, are we witnessing his hand in a final exercise of episcopal patronage? After all the sums expended on the Channel Islands shenanigans, the rumoured redundancies and accompanying NDAs, together with the hugely expensive setting up of all the mission initiatives, what is one small appointment in the scheme of things?
I believe the message left in the treasury was a repost to all the extravagant promises being made by the incoming regime. To be translated “You won’t be able to do all this any more than we could.” That message, that budgets are limited whatever your political persuasion, or churchmanship, is definitely one for an incoming Bishop. I have also heard that Runcie made many appointments just before Rowan Williams took over, even in the final couple of weeks. This must always be a cause for suspicion. Space should be left for the new person to choose working companions who complement weaknesses and balance the various tastes and flavours that the church always has, and that they feel they can work peaceably with. The kinds of appointments that do need to be kept up to date are secretaries and cleaners! The people you really can’t do without! It’s surprising how easily large organisations manage without the “boss”. But presumably it is +Debbie who has made this appointment, and who has chosen to continue using Luther Pendragon. Perhaps the next Diocesan is not going to be long delayed.
We understand that Bp Richard Frith (retired from Hereford in 2019) will be supporting the Diocese and +Debbie pro tem. An advert for a volunteer Interim Chair of the DBF was published just before Christmas.
Yes, I saw the note in the Church Times about Richard Frith.
The advert for interim Chair of DBF is because the newly elected Chair was then elected as Lay Chair of Winchester Diocesan Synod. Quite reasonably, he decided he could not be chair of both. Unlike the retiring bishop, who found no conflict in being Chair of DBF and Diocesan Bishop.
Athena, Robert Runcie was succeeded by George Carey, and George Carey by Rowan Williams.
My first job was as PA to the then chair of Kingsway Publications. On my first day my new boss asked me, ”How much of the work is done by the boss, and how much by the secretary?’ Apparently the answer was 20/80; I immediately concluded that the pay ratio was seriously wrong!
But the first person to be missed in any organisation is the person who makes the teas and coffees.
Sorry. Carey was reputed to have done all those last minute appointments. Totally my bad.
“I am reminded of a story when a Labour minister left a note for his Tory successor after a general election. The note said something to the effect, there is no money left, we have spent it all!”
It was the outgoing chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, to his short-lived successor, David Laws. However, Byrne was simply repeating, almost verbatim, what Reggie Maudling told Jim Callaghan in 1964.
I basically finished attending services around the Winchester diocese about 7 years’ ago, so my knowledge of it is now somewhat moth-eaten, but I was struck by the extensive units which had been formed in many places. For example, the North Hampshire Downs Benefice, which comprises Greywell, Herriard (with Winslade, which has been converted to residential use), Long Sutton, Mapledurwell, Nateley Scures, Newnham, Odiham, South Warnborough, Tunworth, Up Nateley, Upton Grey and Weston Patrick. This unit bisects the M3. It has two clergy. Some of the parishes are tiny, but some are not insignificant, and Odiham (which has seen quite a bit of new building when I drove through earlier this year) is one of the largest units in the county by area. When I attended services there in 2012 I was told that the grouping, which had been formed 4 years’ earlier, was working tolerably, but was also subject to ‘diminishing returns’.
The NHDB abuts another large unit, the Northanger benefice: Chawton (Jane Austen’s parish), Colemore (CCT), East Tisted, East Worldham, Farringdon, Hartley Mauditt (occasional use), Kingsley (the old church is a monument used only at Remembrance; the ‘new’ church is very poorly attended), Newton Valence, Oakhanger (a ‘new’ church), Selborne (Gilbert White’s parish) and West Worldham. Much the same pattern was in evidence there too.
A couple of the clergy I spoke to seemed exhausted. Of course, things may be different now (and some churches, like Herriard, had come back from the brink). Sometimes a unit can get rather too large.
That said, this is as nothing compared with some of the mammoth units I have encountered in other dioceses.
A diocesan administration of 72 (*if* true), even if not all full time and shared partly with Portsmouth, seems amazing when compared with the units I have described, even if clergy are apportioned based on population. The local clergy have to function as ‘salespersons’, drumming up parish share subventions that fund these 72.
If the entire diocesan administration were to be abolished and consolidated in the Church Commissioners, with the parish share capital retained by the parishes, would the cause of Anglican Christianity be advanced in Hampshire? I rather think that it would.
Officials tend to make for for each other and beget additional officials. Very soon the administration becomes a growth upon the body which it purports to serve. No doubt they are all doing their best, but they may be draining the organism on which they depend and for which they exist.
The phenomenon of a proliferation of pointless bureaucrats is brilliantly explored in a secular context, but equally applicable to the Church, in “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” (2018), by the late David Graeber. The Amazon blurb is a decent summary:
Be honest: if your job didn’t exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered why not? Up to 40% of us secretly believe our jobs probably aren’t necessary. In other words: they are bullshit jobs. This book shows why, and what we can do about it.
In the early twentieth century, people prophesied that technology would see us all working fifteen-hour weeks and driving flying cars. Instead, something curious happened. Not only have the flying cars not materialised, but average working hours have increased rather than decreased. And now, across the developed world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services, finance or admin: jobs that don’t seem to contribute anything to society.
In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber explores how this phenomenon – one more associated with the Soviet Union, but which capitalism was supposed to eliminate – has happened. In doing so, he looks at how, rather than producing anything, work has become an end in itself; the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and, finally, how we can get out of it.
This book is for anyone whose heart has sunk at the sight of a whiteboard, who believes ‘workshops’ should only be for making things, or who just suspects that there might be a better way to run our world.
‘Spectacular and terrifyingly true’ Owen Jones
‘Explosive’ John McDonnell, New Statesman, Books of the Year
‘Thought-provoking and funny’ The Times
And, indeed, “Parkinson’s Law” by C Northcote Parkinson, first published as long ago as 1942.
Absolutely true. We’re working longer and longer hours, while more and more people aren’t having their needs met. It isn’t just the Church but the Church is following the trend instead of setting a better example.
Some years ago I was involved with a trust that served an Urban Priority Area. Every year the social workers produced a glossy booklet detailing the work they had done. They had to do this in order to satisfy their donors, and also to back up their next year’s applications. They had done some very good work, but the social workers were beginning to complain that they were spending all of their time on reports, and none on the people they were supposed to be helping.
https://cofewinchester.contentfiles.net/media/documents/document/2021/02/Diocesan_Staff_Overview_updated_February_2021_EXTERNAL.pdf Just adding the pdf from which I extracted the number 72. It is worth checking my counting skills. I was quite surprised at the total.
And also note the roles listed as having been ‘discontinued’, under budgetary pressures? Some of those listed have subsequently left and no (yet) been replaced.
Some posts will also be SDF-funded, I think.
When making inter-diocesan comparisons regarding ministerial training, note that few Winchester ordinands incur invoices from the TEIs.
Many thanks for that. I noted that sheet. However, I also note that there are other parts of the diocesan website which state that certain teams, such as Education and Finance, are shared with Portsmouth. The email addresses for Education are all Portsmouth, but not for Finance (except in a couple of instances). I also understand that the registry is shared with Salisbury. Then there are the posts which are job shares, and the extent to which posts are part time (and precisely how part time they are). There are also other posts which are extant but are vacant: should they be counted or not? Are they likely to be suppressed? We don’t yet know.
With these issues in mind, it becomes rather hard to determine whether there is a definite number of officials, and to what extent the burden is borne between the dioceses.
However, that is just a minor issue. The main point is that, however many people are allocated to administration, it is still a significant overhead relative to the funding bases for both dioceses, as you note.
The early 20th century model was for many small dioceses. Thanks to the creation of Guildford and Portsmouth, Hampshire has relatively small dioceses. The issue is not so much the populations of the respective jurisdictions as the church attendance (and, therefore, cash-flow). Frankly, given that Hampshire ought to be optimal Church territory, in view of its demographics and relative affluence, I was really surprised by how poor attendance was, almost everywhere. No doubt things have worsened with the demographic run-off since I travelled around every parish in the county.
The small dioceses model has proven to be a millstone, especially when combined with the proliferation of officials since the 1960s.
I know that I am becoming a broken record, and am getting rather bored with making the point (as, no doubt, you are with reading it), but it seems to me that there either ought to be a drastic rationalisation of dioceses and/or the total abolition of diocesan bureaucracies and their transfer to the centre. The Church Commissioners might chafe at that and state that their capital is reserved for bishops and chapters. My riposte to that would be that their capital is only as large as it is because of the implicit subsidy provided to them via the parish share system; therefore, they have moral obligations to bishops, chapters and dioceses [i.e., parishes] alike.
The main ‘abuse’ with the current burden imposed by this expanding officialdom is of the resources, energies and goodwill of the parishes who must fund it, often with the implicit threat that if they do not provide sufficient parish share subventions they risk the loss of pastoral provision and/or church closures. That, then, is to add insult to injury.
Save the Parish, incidentally, has campaigned for reductions in the numbers of senior hierarchs, but it has had strangely little to say about the future of diocesan bureaucracies.
I should add, in fairness to Save the Parish, that there is this recent comment from the IOW: https://savetheparish.com/2021/12/17/diocesan-office-lies-whippingham-portsmouth-diocese/ (services at St Mildred’s are at 11:15, and are well done). In my experience attendance in the IOW is much the same as on the mainland.
Again, the question is to what extent sharing between the two dioceses confuses things.
Of course, cynics might note that it may be to the advantage to certain of those in authority that there should be a degree of confusion…!
I made it 51 based in Winchester – in fairness, some of those are essential core posts – others being shared in specific roles such as Legal, Education and Finance with adjacent dioceses, plus the outside LP person already mentioned. But I did notice these significant footnotes:
“The following roles have been discontinued. Some business critical work from these roles has been reallocated to other members of staff:
“Archdeacon for Mission Development
Archdeacon of Bournemouth
PA to the Archdeacons
Head of Resource Development
Digital Content Creator
Receptionist
Parish Support Team Assistant
Diocesan Environment Officer
Property Manager
Clerical Registry Coordinator
Youth Discipleship Enabler
Assistant Diocesan DDO & IME Phase 2 Adviser
PA to the Canon Principal
Fellow of Mission”
The theological colleges I’ve seen data for are in the same situation this year. For whatever reason – my guesses are tighter personal finances and a feeling that online teaching doesn’t provide the same value – student numbers are down.I wouldn’t draw any conclusion between the number of students the year before the pandemic and the number now.
Yes, I was going to say the same. All ministerial training courses have had lower numbers since the start of the pandemic. This seems to be linked to uncertainty over how the training will be delivered and worry that if over zoom etc it will be less valuable or just less fun than in person; and concern over how placements and contextual training will be managed if there are lockdowns or other constraints on group activities or on who can work in, say, hospitals or prisons. Given that for most people the choice over when to start train, whether full or part time, is highly discretionary, I can see why many would decide to put it on hold for a year or two.
Well not entirely – the TEI I work for (ERMC) has seen student numbers (especially ordinands) increase in the 2021 intake but our guess is they will be lower this coming August. We think the numbers in vocational discernment are lower as the pandemic has progressed – and yes there may well be people waiting to see how training develops. (Though in fact I am certain we will go back to face to face teaching very quickly unless there are further lockdowns – most TEIs are back to (near) normal in tefms of delivery this year.
The question about this appointment is whether the diocese is better off running its own TEI or whether it should partner up with a regional course like STETS or St Augustine’s. But the Winchester School of Mission was +Tim’s pet project….
Indeed, as is the Bishop’s Commission for Mission pathway (https://www.winchester.anglican.org/bcm/). My OP pointed to that fact that these various streams require people funded at Diocesan level, as well as other volunteers, to run them.
Yes – periodically I am asked how much it costs to train our LLMs in partnership with ERMC. The answer is that it is cheaper than doing it all in house. (As you would need more staff…)
Some leaders have retirement “thrust upon them”.
We often make the assumption that retirement means a swift exit stage left, and no further influence. But of course we know from our own experiences that this is rarely the case. Many go on professionally (paid or otherwise) to exert great influence.
I recall a senior partner of a firm who “retired” according to the firm’s precepts but somehow seemed to retain a significant influence over things. In this example, a relationship with (over) the new female senior partner appeared to have been a factor.
Moreover as the clock runs down on less controversial careers, the desire to leave a legacy becomes increasingly strong. We want to be sure all that work we did doesn’t just fade away. We want it to mean something.
When a powerful personality is on the way out, the infrastructure of people left behind is often an assembly of yes-men and women, often highly capable, but used to doing the bidding of the other and not themselves taking the reigns. His legacy, even when he is gone, is the structure he left in place to do his work. Often the industrious appointees are bereft without his drive and vision and simply carry on with the plan he set. Having lost the main driver for their work has never stopped people looking busy.
It will take considerable energy to change the momentum of the existing set up. Shrinking financial resources tend to affect the periphery of an organisation first, with the wealth-centric middle saved until the end stage.
Parkinson’s Law was mentioned earlier. Do not forget the Peter Principle!