back back to Letters previous previous story  |  next story next

Episcopal doubts about how well the clergy are equipped for parish life

From the Revd Alan Horton
Sir, — You ask (News, 6 June) whether clergy are properly trained to run a modern parish. I find it difficult to see how they might be.

In my first degree, I studied economics and statistics. Before commencing theological training, I spent almost 20 years in a management grade in the Civil Service. During my time at college and since, I have had considerable guidance on managing volunteers and inter-personal skills in general, and yet still I struggle.

For me, there are three issues.

First, there is the nature of vocation in itself. I was called to be a priest: if I had wanted to be a manager, I could have stayed where I was, with considerable financial advantage for myself and my family.

Second, even in my 15 years as an incumbent, the pressure to innovate, the demand for variety in worship, and the whole area of compliance have all contributed to an increased workload. The availability of hard-pressed parishioners to assist has decreased by a similar amount.

Third, and I am aware that here I may be approaching a can of worms, procedures for selecting and training the laity for positions of responsibility often result in the giving of preference to those who shout loudest or are themselves in need of support, rather than modest people with the appropriate gifts. This then adds to, rather than diminishes, the incumbent’s burdens.

I am aware that we must live and minister in a world not of our own choosing, and I am increasingly of the opinion that the way forward for the Church in the present climate is to employ paid administrators to manage the parish, and allow self-supporting priests to do the work to which God has called them.

ALAN HORTON
St Thomas’s Vicarage
28 Pennington Road
Southborough TN4 0SL

From Dr Angela B. Summerfield
Sir, — I write in response to your leader comment (6 June) from experience gained as a deanery secretary, a member of a diocesan synod, and as a chartered psychologist working in both the public and private sectors.

The Church has a large number of people undertaking unpaid duties who are usually referred to as the laity. This obscures the fact that they are volunteers, a group in relation to which there is substantial knowledge of best practice and free expert advice, albeit in secular society. It is just as important for an organisation to have a policy and code of practice with respect to the recruitment, appropriate deployment of skills, training, development, and management of unpaid as of paid staff.

Anything that is codified tends to become a priority. The Church needs to apply the same standards of professionalism to volunteers as it does to finance and buildings. Younger people and those with rare skills are particularly sensitive to high standards, and there are many charitable competitors for their services, including Christian charities. The clergy deserve a Church that is as good a steward of human resources as of financial ones.

The Church has an incomparable opportunity to set the gold standard for volunteers, to demonstrate by its actions its commitment to the infinitely precious nature of human beings, and, in doing so, to solve both human and financial resource problems. A first step would be to identify those with high-level skills who would provide training for the clergy pro bono.

ANGELA SUMMERFIELD
Rose Bank
Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe
Thirsk, North Yorkshire YO7 2PR

From the Ven. Alan Davis
Sir, — As a retired poacher-turned-gamekeeper, may I thank you for your qualified support for the parochial clergy. You are right to reject the use of generalisation in judging our parish priests.

What I looked for, in vain, in your comment was some pronouncement on the pronouncers — that is, the bishops whose report was leaked. In my experience, there is a clear link between the parish clergy’s space and ability to carry out their ministry, and the amount of top-down assistance emanating from above. But one should not generalise.

ALAN DAVIS
71 North Street, Atherstone
Warwickshire CV9 1JW

From the Revd Toddy Hoare
Sir, — Without the full text of the bishops’ document leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, I hesitate to reply; but some things do need to be said to encourage more joined-up thinking.

If our senior staff find their clergy inadequate, it is because they themselves are floundering. There is too much crisis management; too many senior staff have not had parish experience; and the rank-and-file clergy were not trained for the multi-parish benefice that has become the norm.

Yes, most of the clergy are highly individualistic and not easy team people. Equally, the groups they are given have very disparate components. Often their churches are each the focus for the identity of the local community; so groupings do not easily gel together. Anglican compromise never strengthens a situation, but if priests were licensed to just one benefice with the charge to work more widely, mutual contracts for priestly cover might be more effective than those designed in a far-off diocesan office.

Since second curacies are now the exception, theological-college training needs to be residential in order to hone spirituality, but it also needs to stretch younger ordinands beyond the boundaries of liking only what they know. Our Lord’s ministry embraced the urban and the rural; so training needs to combine more than a whistle-stop tour of both ends of the spectrum.

If the Church of England is to match up to the expectations people have of us, perhaps the laity should be encouraged to run the plant, and every cleric should have a cure, however small, to take the local spiritual lead.

TODDY HOARE
Pond Farm House, Holton
Oxford OX33 1PY



back back to Letters up back to top previous previous story  |  next story next


© Church Times 2006 - All rights reserved

Website by Baigent