Throughout my time of ministry in the Anglican Church (1970 -2010) I have been aware of the idea of team ministries. Back in the 70s, the role of a team vicar, working collaboratively with others in a large multi-cantered parish, seemed a considerable improvement on being a lowly assistant curate. My own second post, after two years back at university, was somewhere between a team vicar position and a curacy. How the division of labour worked out in practice is not important here, but I was given enough independent responsibility to be able to lead and build up two small congregations on the edge of the main town parish with minimal interference from the centre. This allowed me to feel that I was on my way towards a post of complete independence as a ‘proper’ vicar. This ambition was realised when I took over the charge of a cluster of villages in Herefordshire in 1979.
Looking back over my ministry, I think that I can truthfully say that no clergyperson I have met has ever tried to convince me that working in a team of clergy was a desirable long-term career option. The assumption that was built into our college training in the 60s was that we were all destined to become independent incumbents in charge of a parish. Some specially gifted individuals might possibly be aiming for an archdeaconry or a post in a cathedral. The junior team ministry posts that were available might form a staging post in the early part of a clerical career. The then legal time limit of five years for team vicar posts was an indication that that would be the maximum time to serve in such a role.
Working in a clerical team did have certain things going for it on paper. There could be the opportunity to specialise in the areas where one felt gifted or had some special skill. Then there was the assumption of receiving spiritual or practical support from one or more colleagues and being able to say the daily offices with others. Being part of a staff team would surely overcome any sense of ministerial loneliness that individual clergy might feel.
The positives that were held out for team working were often outweighed by the drawbacks of this style of operation. The five-year rule for team vicars (now abolished) meant that there was seldom any proper continuity in clergy teams. People were always on the move; someone was always on the point of leaving or settling in. The only person in the team with any sort of employment security was the Team Rector. When one person in the team, the leader, had an employment security denied to the junior members of the team it made for instability. Such teams operated in a distinctly hierarchical fashion and it is hard to use the word team to describe the power dynamics normally at work. For all practical purposes the so-called team ministries of the past operated as large parishes with a rector exercising considerable power over several curates/team vicars. It is hard to claim that these junior vicars were not acting and feeling like traditional curates of old. Most curates/team vicars, if my experience was anything like typical, could not wait to be given their own distinct area of responsibility and become fully fledged freehold incumbents.
I have to confess that I have not been close to any team ministry situation over the past twenty-five years, so it is possible that Church of England team ministries are flourishing in the 2020s. What I have been sketching out about the clergy applies to the 80s and 90s, but the literature I have encountered on the dynamics of parishes does not suggest that the old team ministry structure is now held up anywhere as a model of good parish functioning. One major factor, which was true in my generation of clergy was that, speaking generally, the clergy were neither by training nor temperament good team players. There were a number of reasons for this. The first of these is that, thanks to the vagaries of background and training, each clergyperson emerged from theological college with a distinctive brand of churchmanship. Alongside the evangelical clergy there were the catholic and liberal wings. These latter used to be far more dominant in the 70s and 80s. The broad labels of churchmanship hid beneath them a large number of subcategories of theological preference. From a practical point of view, it was easier to allow a distinct churchmanship to be worked out in the setting of a single parish by one clergyperson in charge. The alternative was having a convinced conservative evangelical working alongside an individual taking his/her guidance from a battered copy of the Anglo-Catholic Ritual Notes and this did not make for an easy or harmonious working environment. Tastes in the styles of music deemed suitable for Sunday worship could also create serious tensions. But it was not just the variety of theological outlook that made groups of clergy suspicious and slightly tense in each other’s company. Another real tension in the clergy of the past, and no doubt today, was the awareness of the avenues of promotion. Many clergy of my acquaintance spent a lot of time trying to move in the right circles where they might be spotted and marked for preferment to a cathedral or even a bishopric. Ambition in the Church of England was, and no doubt is, a strong factor which spills out to create an atmosphere of tension in clergy gatherings.
Why do my reflections and last century memories of the institution of team ministries come to be discussed in 2023? The reason for this is that two English dioceses, Truro and Leicester, seem in my opinion, to be re-inventing and promoting a brand-new version of the old team ministry model. This model called Mission Community or something similar, intends over a period to place every clergyperson, stipendiary and non, to work in what looks very much like one of the team ministries of the past. The main difference today is that these Mission Communities will be responsible for large groupings of 20- 30 existing parishes and perhaps up to 35 church buildings. The similarity is in the way that all the clergy will be required to work collaboratively. Most of these Mission Communities will be overseen by an experienced stipendiary leader. He or she will preside over the other clergy (paid and unpaid) and lay people working in large teams. The Leicester diocese are bringing in this pattern fairly imminently, and the pattern will evolve over a number of years as the posts of currently serving clergy become vacant. The very first of these mission communities is to be based the parish of Launde and will be known as the Launde Minster Community. The Community will eventually be responsible for 35 churches and 24 parishes.
Having only worked with a quite different pattern of parish life, I look at these new patterns of ministry with concern. The lay people in the pew will no longer have an identified individual clergyperson with whom to bond. The person taking a service on a particular Sunday will depend on the allocation/rota made in the administrator’s office and overseen by the senior stipendiary provided for the minster group. It goes without saying that, for lay people, this will be experienced as a backward development. If each member of the team only appears at one particular church every three months or so, this will make it hard for substantial pastoral bonds ever to be formed between the clergy and individual members of the congregation.
I have looked at all the financial and practical reasons for the decision of Truro and Leicester dioceses to go down this minster model of management of the clergy and parishes. This is the only arrangement that is currently affordable with the available financial resources. My reflection here is not trying to suggest that these practical issues can be ignored, but simply to make the point that this model of working the system is unlikely to be attractive to the clergy for similar reasons to their old lack of enthusiasm for the team ministry concept. If I am right, older clergy still aspire to being pastorally independent in their working environment. The thought of being part of a minster group is not professionally attractive. Many of the stipendiary clergy who have been trained in ways that I am familiar with, will still see home visiting and the pastoral care of individuals to be at the very heart of what they were trained for and want to do on a daily basis. Organising immensely complicated rotas is an activity and skill set that has very little appeal, even with the help of professional secretarial staff. Whatever is true about the future of the clerical calling, I cannot see that it has become more attractive or rewarding through these current patterns that are being organised for the future. There may be some who welcome the brave new world of teams and Minster Communities but clearly there are many, both clerical and lay, who are seriously worried about a failure of morale if this pattern becomes more general. The old traditional pattern of a vicar labouring within a community so that he/she becomes a fixed feature of community life, will no longer be found. What seems to be on offer appears to fail everyone, congregation, clergy and the communities themselves.
Nostalgia for a past, where pastoral care rather than management was at the top of a parish priest’s agenda, is probably a futile indulgence. My understanding of human nature would suggest that there are many who look back to the days before Mission Communities when the emphasis was on parish care, and the non-church goers and their needs were, when possible, treated with equal respect with those who attended services. The care of the ancient buildings fell on the obligation of every resident in the parish and not to the few who attended. Somehow quite substantial sums of money flowed from the communities themselves to sustain church buildings. These were regarded with affection even if the use of them was limited for most to times of national rejoicing or mourning. Goodwill from the community, both for the institution as well as the building could be counted on in my experience. Will this survive the depersonalisation of church life that the ‘monster’ parish system may create?
There is also the old maxim “always be the second person to move on from the team”…
I’ve seen folk have a very hard time being the only clergy left (usually a team vicar) in a team.
‘Minister Communities’ has that euphemism trigger feel about it as a phrase.
Team work can be very powerful, but I’ve rarely seen it work in church or the business world. In sport it is essential if you want to win, because the others are all doing it.
Generally the working maxim is “everyone for themselves”. Most people default to this if left unchecked.
I’m sure the Church here is trying to get more out of less. Would you pursue a calling to the Ministry, if this Minister Community were the only location to serve? I’m not sure I would. If “team work” is a cover for doing the jobs no one else wants or for which you’re not equipped or gifted, I’m not sure how this works. Generally as a leader you get a lot more out of your team (putting it crudely) when individuals are placed very much in their gifting. The converse also applies.
These are desperate measures for a couple of diocesan areas in decline. Whether this hastens the decline or lessens it, remains to be seen.
It seems to me that the path to ordination has an historic implied autonomy to it. Even with a large number of semiautonomous helpers (if you’re lucky) you thought and expected to be the captain. You were prepared for the responsibility of the buck stopping with you and the relative aloneness of leadership. But what is this?
Manchester (and I think Sheffield) are also moving to this model though the Mission Communities in Manchester are smaller in scale. Carlisle and St David’s also. Bob Jackson’s work and research shows that small rural churches can grow, though Truro and Carlisle have many retired clergy to help so the more radical push for lay leadership of local churches is diluted. He uses language of focal minister and oversight minister to distinguish two roles.
The model of the monarch / hierarch in their parish meant and means that teamwork even in the one parish was / is dominated by the leader, and this blog, more than any, is aware of the power problems that this causes.
Parishes can do things together and be more effective not just more efficient. Online services can be shared across groups of parishes and still feel local; administration can be shared (possibly even paid for); new curates can get wider experience (and those trained on courses and mixed mode are not always as tribal as the college-trained clergy); where there is a ‘vacancy’ local ministers can cover more collegially; a small team can help prepare for confirmation, provide some youth-work, connect with a secondary school, where one parish would not have the resources. We might even find we like the people in the neighbouring church and even quite enjoy the different style of worship (on occasion).
What does not work is local churches having a carousel of ministers – different each week: local congregations need to know who their minister(s) are – some will be ordained, some licensed. Nor does the research suggest services in different buildings at different times helps growth of new members.
Deployed ministers need to respect the history and narrative of the churches they minister in, and be gracious to discover what God is already doing, while tough enough to challenge the strong human instincts to form a club for the like-minded.
Finance is a challenge and in most parts of the world churches flourish (or not) with unpaid local ministers.
The OT offers us mostly monarchs and hierarchs; The NT hints at more collegiate and shared ministries, both within a particular congregation and across the congregations of the town. The OT helpfully reminds us that neither priests, prophets, judges or kings are the perfect answer, nor is there a perfect church or religious community. It also reminds us that succession is not easy. Samuel to Saul, Saul to David, David to Solomon – none of these are straightforward, while the Judges period is even more sporadic.
I heed the warnings in Stephen’s post but am more optimistic that (some) Mission Communities will flourish and be a blessing to their wider areas.
Confession – I am a Mission Community Leader (Manchester Diocese Terminology), currently off sick and so glad that the team can function and makes decisions.
Sheffield is continuing to introduce oversight ministers, and these oversee a much smaller group of parishes than is envisaged with Minster communities. All, except the largest parishes (measured by number attending on a Sunday), are formed into mission partnerships under the oversight of a minister supported by a team of focal ministers.
The concept of team ministry emerged with Arthur Smith in 1949. In 1960, shortly before his appointment to the archdeaconry of Lincoln, he published his reflections on it in ‘The South Ormsby Experiment’. In 1960 the benefice had three stipendiary clergy and one female lay assistant. There were about 60 hours’ worth of services each month, and a parish bus. Even such remote places as Oxcombe and Maidenwell had monthly services. About 18 months ago the Group was merged into a much larger unit (effectively comprising much of the Bolingbroke deanery). It is now served by one HFD priest, and there are now little more than 3 hours’ worship a month (nothing on the second Sunday). I am sure (and know) that people in the community are doing what they can but it is obviously an uphill struggle. Since 1960 several churches have been closed (most recently Farforth, with Haugh pending) or even demolished. The pioneering team ministry as projected by Smith could therefore be described as a quite abject failure.
The basic problem is one of finance. Parishes in South Lindsey had been failing financially since the 1870s. The model of a parson per parish was effectively bankrupt before 1914 and was only made possible thereafter by mass sales of glebe by incumbents or by the Faustian postwar pact between Malcolm Trustram Eve and Max Rayne, who profited mightily from the controversial commercial property boom after 1954. Had it not been for Rayne the parish system would have imploded at least two decades before it did.
The beau ideal of the freehold incumbent in his own parish has probably been over-sold, at least after most of the talent ceased to take orders after c. 1860. J. W. Robertson Scott probably hit the nail on the head in ‘England’s Green and Pleasant Land’ (1925, 1947) when he remarked that “The blunt fireside judgement of the mass of agricultural labouring families on many a parson is that he is witless and lazy, a self-satisfied drone, who by the advantage of his social position, has secured a soft job.” Many priests are wonderful, many more are mediocre, and quite a few are worse than useless. In this way the profession is little different from others, but the capacity to inflict damage is amplified within the parish because of the institutional stress on clerical leadership. Contrary to the self-interested aims of STP, there are some units (including multi-parish benefices) which are doing well despite enduring long interregna (indeed, I attended a service at one in Nottinghamshire last Sunday, where the prospect of having an incumbent is viewed as an unnecessary deadweight cost).
What matters is not clerical leadership but taking the initiative. Recently I had a conversation with a retired bishop, who remarked that what matters is that each parish has a ‘persona’ – in other words somebody who is willing to conduct services, because something is better than nothing, yet nothing is often all there is on offer.
I should add that mission communities have been in place for some time in dioceses like Exeter and Carlisle. As far as I am concerned there is a cigarette paper’s worth of a difference between those arrangements and other multi-parish arrangements across much of the rest of the country, which have been the rule rather than the exception for at least a generation.
According to STP this phenomenon has accelerated decline. No: that is to manipulate Voas’s evidence, and to confuse causation with correlation. Decline has accelerated because a reduction in stipendiaries has led to a reduction in the provision of worship. This is because may laypersons are intimidated by the moronic and self-defeating closed-shop-style rules which prevent many committed Anglicans from conducting worship, whereas – as any fule kno – a child of 10 could quite easily read a liturgy or a pre-prepared homily, and in some cases do so more competently than a few clergy – even clergy who have been through three year residential courses. As I have suggested, churchgoing is a habitual activity, and it worship is not provided consistently and regularly, the habit is soon broken and perhaps lost forever. This, then, strikes me as being the real cause of accelerating decline (granted that the decline would have occurred anyway, although not perhaps at the speed of recent years).
And as far as pastoral care is concerned, I grant that there are some quite superb clergy, but there are still rather too many who would be amongst the last people I would approach were I in need. Tellingly, pastoral incompetence is no bar to preferment: recently I encountered a priest who had managed to kill one of her churches and had been spending a number of years trying to kill another three. ‘Not a people person’ I was told, and as became evident from my exchanges with her. When this person was recently preferred to a residentiary canonry 11 people attended her leaving service. The following Sunday the congregation had swelled to more than 40. I should add that I have a great contempt for clergy on the make.
I repeat, some provision of worship is better than no provision of worship. One service per Sunday in a large multi-parish benefice does not cut it; for example, when John Habgood served his title at St Mary Abbots he was expected to take or attend 8 services on a Sunday, plus weekday offices and do a full round of visiting, so how is one service a week (which is what Synod sanctioned in 2019) anything other than laziness?
Suspecting that I know the new residentiary canon who is “not a people person”, if I am correct reports of the death of her earlier charge are exaggerated. Those without interpersonal skills should be filtered out by pre-ordination discernment, but are often passed because of other skills or abilities. Maybe cathedral ministry will be a better place for someone of ability but limited sensitivity.
One church definitely closed, though the closure scheme is to be made (there were other reasons for the closure). At two other churches it was attempted either overtly or covertly (at one for the better part of a decade). A third left moribund. Thus four out of six. Quite an achievement. I am not certain my assessment counts as an exaggeration.
I could cite other examples in other parts of the country, where clergy arrive in a benefice, decide the certain churches committed to their charge are either doomed or are excrescences, and press for closure, either by running down the provision of services and/or spinning a narrative that things cannot be turned around (which crushes the morale of PCCs and congregations). The pastoral consequences of this are usually deplorable. In some cases rural/area deans have even pressed for the closure of nearby churches to reduce pressure on their own churches. Others press closures for ideological reasons. I recall attending a hearing at Church House on the closure of a church in West Sussex and one member of the Pastoral Division noting one of the usual primary explanations for closure: “Have you met the clergy?” Of course, not all clergy are like this, but enough are to do real and lasting damage.
In some ways this attitude towards certain churches is understandable. The buildings are a crushing burden on many communities and congregations. The failure to pool risks nationally means that individual parishes must expend much more on maintenance than would be the case were there risk pooling.
Based on my experience of cathedrals, those wanting inter-personal skills are often as unsuccessful in cathedral ministry as they are in parish ministry. However, I have long thought that there should be a great reduction in the numbers of capitular clergy on the basis that there has been scarcely any reduction since the mid-19th century (following the 1840 Act) that has been proportionate to the remorseless reduction in the numbers of parochial clergy. Cathedrals never really become the centres of learning the reformers of the 1830s hoped, and too often capitular clergy do not help in neighbouring parishes (though some do). At the very least we should revert to a system where capitular clergy also have parochial cures and take turns in residence, as was commonplace prior to the mid-19th century. That would waste less manpower, and make them less vulnerable to the charge that they are drones in the ecclesiastical hive. Since the 1999 Measure the work of capitular clergy is shared with lay canons, reducing the burden of work, and making the existing numbers of capitular clergy even harder to justify.
I visited this area to ring at Langton by Partney a couple of months back. The fine eighteenth century church here is part of a group comprising no fewer than 36 parishes! Not surprisingly it only hosts a couple of services each year.
Actually, Langton still has fairly regular provision – there is usually a service there every month or two, and I went to one there a couple of years ago. It benefits from the support of the Langton family in the neighbouring big house. Services in the former South Ormsby Group are usually quite short. Langton is not part of the united parish of South Ormsby formed in 2021, and was not part of it when Smith wrote in 1960. The other units in the benefice are:
Bag Enderby: Worship every few months. Had 5 services in May 1960.
Brinkhill: Worship every couple of months. Had 8 services in May 1960.
Calceby: Demolished in the 1690s.
Dalby: Estate church which is inaccessible save during service times. About 2 services p/a. Not part of the Group in 1960 or now, but the HFD appears to take the services (quite respectable turn-out of 15 people last December).
Driby: Closed in 1974 and converted to residential use. Had 4 services in May 1960.
Farforth: Closed for monument use in 2018. No services. Had 2 services in May 1960. Full when I went there in 2018.
Harrington: Another classical church, with worship every couple of months. Had 6 services in May 1960.
Haugh: Completely neglected, and graded as 5 (i.e., to be closed as part of the diocesan plan) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBsKty04WgE&t=347s). No services. Not part of the Group in 1960.
Maidenwell: A chapelry in Farforth, which closed for monument use at an unknown date. No services. Had 1 service in May 1960.
Oxcombe: Like Maidenwell, Biscathorpe (closed in 2022) and Haugham (CCT, no services), another church designed by W. A. Nicholson; vested in the Lincolnshire Churches Trust; formerly an annual service, but nothing now. Had 1 service in May 1960.
Ruckland: Minute church with worship several times a year. Had 1 service in May 1960.
Salmonby: Demolished in 1978. Had 3 services in May 1960
Somersby: Tennyson connection, with worship every few months. Had 5 services in May 1960.
South Ormsby: Wesley connection, being restored (the restoration was to have finished at the start of the year, but has been delayed). Had 8 services in May 1960.
Sutterby: Friends of Friendless Churches (closed in 1972) – no worship that I know of at present. Not in the Group in 1960.
Tetford: This used to be the main church in the benefice; there is still regular worship, though far less than formerly. Had 13 services in May 1960.
South Lindsey, and especially the areas between Wragby and Louth, Louth and the sea, Louth and Alford, Alford and Spilsby, Spilsby and Skegness, and Horncastle and Spilsby, have by far the highest density of closures anywhere in England. There is nothing to compare with it, even in other regions where the ratio of churches to people could be described as excessive (such as the Blackmore Vale, the hinterlands of Norwich and Ipswich, etc.), or in much more thinly populated and poorer regions. Yet the DBF has more consolidated glebe than any…
Got cut off when I still had 30 characters to spare. I was intending to state that the DBF has more consolidated glebe (>£100m) than any other diocese in England. Under the Time to Change Together plan, about another 30 churches will close (graded as 5), with a further 180 being reduced to festival status (grade 4), most of which are likely to have fewer than the minimum 6 services a year necessary to prove public benefit for the purpose of obtaining grants. In other words, they will be on the flight path to closure. A tiny handful of churches will be graded a 1 (full provision), meaning that there is a general push towards gathered worship. The diocese claims that it has 640 churches (a number taken from Henry Thorold), but that includes the 100 or so mostly ancient foundations which they have closed since the Pastoral Measure 1968, and the reference to 640 units is presumably intended to exaggerate the burden (which is less than that carried by, say, Exeter or Norwich).
Having attended services at about 6,300 churches across every part of the country, I can attest that Lincoln is *by far* the hardest diocese to get around, not so much due to the difficulties of transport as the paucity of services and the often inadequate and/or confusing manner in which they are advertised.
I don’t have access to the data, but presumably predictions for the shape of the workforce under these new schemes exist, even if not made public, and can be seen in their effect on the planned numbers of training places for ordinands and other forms of ministry. Can anyone say what those numbers are?
Those numbers will presumably also reflect the expected success of the initiatives (are there one or two) for ten thousand new congregations this decade, which will be emerging at the rate of about three a day (two a month in the average diocese). Those will require a thousand new ministers of some form each year and the training requirements for those will be substantial: about 25 per diocese. Again, does anyone know where those places are?
I should have added to the ten or twenty thousand new congregations expected this decade that the minster model as discussed here will switch around ten thousand existing parishes over to a new form of leadership. In all of these congregations the new leadership will be predominantly lay, that is, unordained. The CofE currently has about 600,000 regular members of working age, and about 8,000 lay ministers. It will need to recruit about 60,000 new lay leaders (a modest two per congregation) so the proposals are to convert something like 10% of potential candidates into lay ministers, expanding the existing cadre eight-fold. To do all this by 2030 means training up nearly 10,000 people a year. Is there any sign of that huge training effort being put in place? How many lay ministers are being trained per year at present? Is it still around the 500 mark?
The only place I was ever treated as a member of the team was a cathedral. And it remains a pretty good example of collegiate working. Giving a benefice the title of Team Ministry doesn’t mean it actually is!