Your answers
When I rang and asked the Vicar who would be preaching at evensong, she replied: “Why do you want to know?” Mentioning no names, I said that, though I found three of the regular preachers clear as a bell, the delivery of the fourth was totally unintelligible to me. “Oh, I can’t tell you that,” was her response. “It would be disloyal to X” (naming the preacher). Was her response reasonable?
When professional loyalty in parish ministry is at stake, every effort to demonstrate its importance is justified. In a sensitive matter, this vicar’s reply was extremely wise.
One of the secrets of effective collaborative ministry is mutual loyalty of the team members. My first vicar never tired of teaching his curates that colleagues owe one another complete loyalty, whatever their faults and failings. “Co-workers together with God”, as St Paul would say, must never allow indiscreet disloyalties to creep in and ruin ministerial relationships.
This vicar gave her support, when it was needed, to a fellow member of the team, because under no circumstances would this discrimination be tolerated. Her response was that of a ministry leader whose integrity and motive were unquestionably reasonable and outstandingly firm.
(Canon) Terry Palmer
Magor, Monmouthshire
Sermons will not improve without honest comments from congregations. A vicar should not inflict someone she knows is bad on a congregation, but has the responsibility to tell him his shortcomings or not invite him to preach. She could have suggested that the enquirer bring a book to read if the sermon proved unhelpful.
(Canon) John Goodchild
Liverpool
Your questions
I’ve always wondered about what it means that the disciples could lay their hands on two swords on the evening of Jesus’s arrest (Luke 22.38). Surely, Rome would strictly control such weapons?
M. W.
A parish has a distinguished NSM assistant priest of many years’ standing, who is a senior priest and a canon. The parish is now in vacancy, but that priest has been told that he must take no part in the interviewing for the new incumbent, and that there is no such thing as a senior NSM priest. What are the facts?
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